102 CHAPTER FOUR
an explanation for certain social and cognitive disorders, including autism.
The effects of administered oxytocin are not predictable, however, and in
some experiments they are explicitly manipulated by context. For example,
Bartz et al. (2011) cites three studies showing that the positive effects of
nasally administered oxytocin “disappear if the potentially trusted other is
portrayed as untrustworthy, is unknown, or is a member of a social out-
group” (305). Andrew Kemp and Adam Gaustella (2011) point out that in
human studies, oxytocin has been linked to not only positive emotions but
also envy and gloating.
Like mirror neurons, oxytocin is sometimes treated as if it operates sin-
gularly, rather than in intra- action with other bodily systems, and deter-
ministically, as if its properties can explain a particular affect or behavior.
For example, one can now find many references to oxytocin as a “love”
or “trust” hormone, or even a “moral molecule.” This atomistic treatment
of oxytocin not only reduces complex, multifaceted, and culturally rich
concepts to neurobiology but also obscures the many other neural sys-
tems that are thought to be involved in trust, cooperation, attachment, and
sexual response, and that are understood to intra- act with the production
and utilization of oxytocin, as well as the dynamic relations these systems
have with their environments (Zak 2012). Thus, while some researchers and
interlocutors of neuroscience attribute affects and behaviors to oxytocin,
others argue that its activity in the body cannot be understood independent
of context. Oxytocin functions “are extremely diverse” (Van Anders et al.
2013, 1116); oxytocin “may not have a ‘function,’ and may exert different and
even opposing influences on behavior, based upon the sophisticated pat-
tern of neuromodulation in the brain and a particular social arrangement”
(Churchland and Winkielman 2012, 398). In research examining the effects
of experience on oxytocin production and receptor density (e.g., Feldman
2012; Gil et al. 2013; Phelps et al. 2010; Veenema 2012), oxytocin is treated
more as an actant that participates in intercorporeal events and responds to
context and experience than as an atomistic or determining entity.
Pair Bonds and Monogamous Voles
The most influential research on oxytocin’s role in attachment has been
conducted on pair- bonding voles. Voles are a type of rodent native to North
America that look like chubby mice. They are considered ideal for studying