Researchers find that people who get dosed with oxytocin tend to trust strangers more. Of course, the first thing I think of is interrogation.
Smell this, Prisoner 52/b. We'll be back in an hour to talk.
Here, it's in New Scientist.
The research centred around a game in which an “investor” player gives part or all of his money on blind trust to an anonymous “trustee” player who earns interest on the combination of his own money and the invested sum. But the investor is told there is no obligation for the “trustee” to give any money back at all - they risk losing any money they choose to invest.
Michael Kosfeld at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who led the study found that investors gave away their money far more willingly if they had sniffed oxytocin than if they had sniffed a placebo. But this extra willingness disappeared when the trustee’s role was computerised, rather than carried out by another human, confirming that the effect was interpersonal, and not simply a general willingness to gamble.
...Kosfeld speculates that the hormone reduces people’s aversion to betrayal, overcoming an unwillingness to initiate interaction with strangers. This matches observations in animal studies. “It helps animals to approach one another, which is a parallel with trust in our game,” he says.
I heard about it on NPR this morning. They mentioned that it appears to work by somehow stimulating a sense of empathy. |
