Oxytocin Amplifies Bad Social Proclivities Too

For many years, researchers thought about oxytocin as the love hormone, a chemical that makes people feel good, in love, and all warm and fuzzy on the inside. But a new investigation demonstrates that the chemical can also get behind some pretty nasty stuff as well.

It is widely believed that this chemical is one of the main triggers allowing people to behave nicely to each other, trust one another, and also love. But experts speaking at a recent conference also showcased a different face for this substance.

On January 28, in an announcement made at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, experts at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City presented new evidence to support their claims.

According to study team leader and Mount Sinai psychologist Jennifer Bartz, it seem that oxytocin is involved with amplifying whatever social proclivities, or predispositions, an individual is in when the production of the hormone kicks into gear.

If a person is highly suspicious by nature, and is administered a whiz of oxytocin to the nose, then that individual is very likely to become even more hostile and uncooperative immediately afterwards.

“Oxytocin does not simply make everyone feel more secure, trusting and prosocial,” Bartz explained at the conference. The new results are concerning because they may force certain planned medical therapies to be stopped dead in their tracks.

Based on the results of past studies, psychologists were seriously considering administering the chemicals to people suffering from a range of psychiatric conditions, including autism. Many of these disease involve social difficulties.

The experts considered oxytocin to be the easy way out, a naturally-occurring drug that would increase interactions between psychiatric patients and other people. But now, in light of the new findings, administering the brain-altering substance may prove not to be such a great idea.

This research proves that “oxytocin is not a love hormone; its effects vary in different people,” comments Ohio State University in Columbus psychologist Greg Norman, quoted by Science News.

The Mount Sinai team conducted its investigation on 13 volunteers with no record of psychiatric conditions and 14 people who suffered from borderline personality disorder.

Details of the investigation appeared in the December 14, 2010 issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).