Blocking mu-opioid receptors inhibits social bonding rituals

This manuscript describes two pharmacological studies where the main purpose was
testing the role of mu-opioids in fostering social bonding in rituals across two double-
blind studies. The study one had twenty-four participants (16 females), 11 participants
(6 females) were randomly allocated into the Naltrexone group and 13 participants (10
female) in the placebo, this was not the 17 participants that at least would be needed
in each group by the pre-register power analysis. Furthermore, feelings of social
bonding were measured before and after the ritual. The Naltrexone group was
assigned 100mg of oral administration, which is a low dose but is not proved that is
totally effective and safe. They directed a pre-registration field study with Afro-
Brazilian religious ritual in São Paulo, Brazil.
The second study, they used a yoga-based ritual session inside the lab, the using of the
lab maybe is not the best place to run a yoga class so the results can be altered
because of the context. However, participants (N=9) had taken part in five continuous
weeks of yoga with spiritual orientation and in the sixth week were randomly assigned
to either Naltrexone or placebo condition and like the first study, feelings of social
bonding were measured before and after the session. This study had a very low
number of participants and all of them were woman which is not good to be
generalized. Moreover, as the first study they used 100mg of Naltrexone.

This manuscript is short but is extremely well written, it presents a good introduction
stating that taking part in rituals releases opioids which make it stronger the social
bonding, but they just rely on one study to accept the use of Naltrexone. Moreover,
the method and the statistical are well presented and explained making it easier for
the reader to understand the results. Though, in the first study there is not good
reliability between both pre- and post-ritual measures. Besides, they found a
significant interaction effect, which means that participants who took Naltrexone had
significantly lower social bonding scores after the service than the placebo, so the
Naltrexone has a significant effect in this experiment. Also is good that they carried out
some alternatives in the analysis scripts.

The discussion expresses them main purpose in a good way and suggest that more
studies are needed in this field and that they knew that had a modest sample sizes and
is necessary to replicate this. Furthermore, they encourage to do future research in
another neurochemicals as oxytocin and dopamine.
- Ritual: more info
-Effects naltrexone:
-No content, timing, justification, participant age, timeline
-statistics: only the interaction effect
T-test not use because of the lack of the participants, so they did a power analysis,
anova

NO WRITE IN THE SAME WAY THAN THE AUTHORS

SAY THE TIMING

SUMMARY
This manuscript describes two pharmacological studies aiming to address the
overarching hypothesis that endogenous mu-opioids underpin increases in feelings of
social connectedness induced by engaging in rituals. In study 1, n=24 members of an
afro-Brazilian church were randomly assigned to receive 100mg naltrexone or placebo
45-60 min before participating in a religious ceremony. In study 2, 9 healthy women
were randomly assigned to receive 100mg naltrexone or placebo 60 min before
engaging in the last of six in-lab yoga sessions. The studies are preregistered, and
sample sizes determined on the basis of power analyses. The data and study materials
are available on OSF. The authors conclude that endogenous opioids underpin
increases in social connectedness during engagement in human rituals. They do not
conclude that mu-opioids are necessary for such increases caused by engaging in
rituals, presumably because they did not find evidence for such an increase in the
placebo condition.

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