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Misuse of hierarchical linear models overstates the significance of a reported association between OXTR and prosociality

Kogan et al. recently reported an association between an intronic variant in the oxytocin receptor gene, OXTR, and perceived prosociality (1). The significance of this association is described as P < 0.001, but the reported t statistic corresponds to P = 3.2 × 10−16. This level of significance is striking given the small number of genotyped individuals (N = 23) compared with other studies of complex trait genetics (2, 3). We show that this highly significant P value is a result of a misapplication of the statistical technique of hierarchical linear models (HLMs), and that the P value under an appropriate analysis is much larger: P = 0.027.