Empathy and self-regulation in prosocial accountability: Gender and genetic (OXTR SNP rs53576) pathways

ABSTRACT

Empathy and self-regulation play key roles in prosocial accountability. Meta-analytic evidence for empathy—in relation to gender and a particular genetic variable (OXTR SNP rs53576) – guided design and power analysis to determine the size of this United States sample. We assessed 311 participants (51.4% female; 19% racial or ethnic minority). We conducted tests of hypothesized indirect effects of gender and genotype through empathy to trait and state accountability – reporting replication and extension tests of gratitude, forgivingness and relational repair in a supplement (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KZDF8). Gender tests controlled for SNP group and vice versa. Gender had indirect effects on accountability via empathy (higher in women than men). SNP group indirect effects on accountability via empathy (higher in GGs than A-carriers) showed roles of gender, race/ethnicity and self-regulation. SNP group also had indirect effects on accountability through self-regulation (higher in A-carriers than GGs). Findings underscore empathy and self-regulation in relational accountability and positive psychology.

KEYWORDS:

• Accountability
• empathy
• self-regulation
• gender
• genetic
• oxytocin
• rs53576
• virtue
• forgiveness
• gratitude

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust (TRT 0171). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Templeton Religion Trust. We thank student research assistants Matthew Schuiling, William Lake, Isabelle Matthews, Jonah Oman, Emily Peterson, Amanda Schultz, Hannah Bugg, Lucy Cousens and Victoria Gardner; colleague Lindsey Root Luna; and the interdisciplinary accountability team for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data deposition

Due to the sensitive information about genotype, gender and self-identified ethnicity, data are not available in a public repository.

Data availability statement

Due to the sensitive nature of these data including demographics and rs53576 genotype, the data without demographic identifiers are available via the researchers. If ethnicity information is needed for a meta-analysis or data were pooled with existing data, precautions would need to be taken so institution and personal identifying information could not be determined.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Materials. The materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/JKGZA

Notes

1. We appreciate the insights of an anonymous reviewer who invited reflection on whether social desirability could play a role in any of the relationships found. Given the possible role of social desirability in self-reported positive psychology variables, we note that after informed consent, all respondents endorsed this prompt: ‘This research really needs your thoughtful responses. It is important that you acknowledge how you actually are (even if you wish you were different). Will you accurately portray your real-life responses—including your human limits, faults, and weaknesses as well as your particular abilities, contributions, and strengths?’ We encourage future research to include multiple measures of social desirability to illuminate possible relationships.

Prior work on accountability introduced the idea of the ‘Mary Poppins effect’, in which respondents tend to report what seem to be favorable descriptions of themselves on positive psychology variables, including accountability (Witvliet et al., 2022). If this is so, we invite further research to specifically target this question and seek to resolve whether this affects only research environments, or whether and when it may affect self-presentation in relational contexts where accountability matters (e.g. on the job, in school, or other evaluative contexts) and who is most prone to do so under what conditions.