Intranasal oxytocin drives coordinated social approach

Coordinated responses to challenge are essential to survival for bonded monogamous animals and may depend on behavioral compatibility. Oxytocin (OT) context-dependently regulates social affiliation and vocal communication, but its role in pair members’ decision to jointly respond to challenge is unclear. To test for OT effects, California mouse females received an intranasal dose of OT (IN-OT) or saline after bonding with males either matched or mismatched in their approach response to an aggressive vocal challenge. Pair mates were re-tested jointly for approach response, time spent together, and vocalizations. Females and males converged in their approach after pairing, but mismatched pairs with females given a single dose of IN-OT displayed a greater convergence that resulted from behavioral changes by both pair members. Unpaired females given IN-OT did not change their approach, indicating a social partner was necessary for effects to emerge. Moreover, IN-OT increased time spent approaching together, suggesting behavioral coordination beyond a further increase in bonding. This OT-induced increase in joint approach was associated with a decrease in the proportion of sustained vocalizations, a type of vocalization that can be associated with intra-pair conflict. Our results expand OT’s effects on behavioral coordination and underscore the importance of emergent social context.

The Interdependence between Individual and Group Decision-M aking with Applications in Chinese Stock Market

It seems that understanding how individuals make decision within a group is an attractive and difficult challenge for economists, managerialists and researchers in human and social sciences for a long time, which is closely related to the theoretical development of economics. The rational assumptions of traditional economic theory, which are highly simplified and cannot manifestly illustrate the inherent mechanism for complexities of economic or financial phenomena (from behavioural perspectives). This paper devoted to seek a reasonable theoretical foundation under the framework of game theory and complex network, based on behavioral big data and the establishment of integrated model, to analyze the behavioral compatibility between individuals and collective deeply, which includes their static consistency and dynamic interactive adaptability. In addition, the paper built relevant computational experiment models to further understand the complex macro-phenomena based on real and heterogeneous investor’s behaviors with more extensive applications. Specifically, the paper contains three sections. Firstly, some typical types of relationship are listed for decision-making behaviors between individual and collective; Then, it is discussed to establish more coordinating consistent institutions and rules for understanding the independence between individual and collective decision-making behaviors through introducing virtual public player(s) into collective decision games; At last, by building the integrated ACE/F model of Chinese stock market, we try to clarify the inner relationship between the real investors’ behaviors with heterogeneity, interactions at micro-level and stylized facts at macro-level. Consequently, our theoretic viewpoint, to some extent, is positively supported by empirical evidence.