Oxytocin Increases Negative Cognitive Bias in Females with Eating Disorders

Abstract Eating disorders typically emerge in adolescence 1, a critical period for brain development and social change2, meaning interpersonal difficulties—including interpretation biases—frequently co-occur3. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that modulates social cognition and has been particularly linked to prosocial effects4. However, to date, no study has investigated oxytocin’s effects on negative interpretation bias in adolescents with eating disorders. Here we show that adolescent females with anorexia or bulimia nervosa made more negative interpretations than controls when presented with ambiguous social scenarios. As predicted, intranasal oxytocin reduced negative interpretations, but only in participants without an eating disorder. Unexpectedly, oxytocin increased negative interpretations with a large effect in participants with an eating disorder or reaching threshold on an autism screen. Oxytocin also reduced neutral interpretations overall with a large effect. The results of this study suggest that oxytocin administration may not benefit adolescent girls with an eating disorder or autism because it increased the degree of negative interpretation of social situations in these groups compared to controls. Oxytocin may increase a negative social signal in populations with extant negative social biases, which clinical practice might benefit from addressing.