BBC Health — A
key hormone helps determine whether we will trust lovers, friends or
business contacts, scientists claim. Exposure to an oxytocin “potion”led people to be more trusting, tests by University of Zurich
researchers found. They say in Nature the finding could help people
with conditions such as autism, where relating to others can be a
problem. But one expert warned it could be misused by politicians who
want to persuade more people to back them. Oxytocin is a molecule
produced naturally in the hypothalamus area of the brain which
regulates a variety of physiological processes, including emotion. It
also acts on other brain regions whose function is associated with
emotional and social behaviours, such as the amygdala. And animal
studies have shown oxytocin is linked to bonding between males and
females and mother infant bonding. The Swiss team suspected the same
effect may occur in humans and invited 58 people to take part in a
“trust test”. The participants in the study played a game, in which
they were split into “investors” and “trustees”. The investors were
then given credits and told they could chose whether to hand over zero,
four, eight or 12 credits to their assigned trustee. If the investor
showed trust, the total amount which could be distributed between the
two increased, but the trustee initially reaped all the reward. It was
then up to them to decide if they would honour the investor’s trust by
sharing the profit equally - or if they would keep the lot. At the end
of the game, the credits were translated into real money, meaning both
participants had a selfish financial incentive. Investors and trustees
were either given oxytocin via a nasal spray, or a dummy, or placebo,
version. Of 29 investors who were given oxytocin, 13 (45%) displayed
“maximal trust” by choosing to invest highly, compared to six (21%) of
the 29 investors who were given the dummy spray. Oxytocin did not
change the behaviour of trustees. In addition, when trustees were
replaced by a computer, the oxytocin effect was no longer seen on the
investors. (06/02/05)
more…

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 at 12:48 PM and is filed under The Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.