Oxytocin Does Not Turn People into Fools

Our brains produce a wide variety of hormones, but one of them has the ability to promote social bonding, by making us more trusting. This does not mean however that we become more gullible.

According to a new scientific investigation, it would appear that, while we indeed become a lot more communicative when under the influence of oxytocin, we also retain the use of our reason, which means we don't turn into fools.

In other words, it would appear that the warm and fuzzy feelings the “love hormone” promotes are not capable of clouding our judgments entirely, explain researchers in Belgium, who conducted the study.

Oxytocin is known among scientists as the chemical that facilitates human bonding. It is produced in copious amounts in would-be mothers and their offspring, and also between people who are in love with each other.

In order to determine how being exposed to the hormone influences human action, researchers at the Université catholique de Louvain developed an interesting experiment.

The study, which was led by expert Moira Mikolajczak, saw 60 young males, aged around 21, subjected to a game. Before the experiment, they were given a nasal spray that contained either oxytocin, or a placebo chemical.

The experts avoided conducting the test on women because they feared that the two genders would react differently to the hormone, thus skewing the results.

The participants were given cash at the beginning of the experiment, and the research team told them that they could choose to share some of their money with a partner.

If they gave money away, the partner would receive three times that amount automatically. The partner could then choose to repay a part of the money back, or could even return the entire amount.

Researchers set out assuming that a person who had been exposed to oxytocin would share more money with their partners. The latter were divided into two categories, trustworthy and unreliable.

Those exposed to oxytocin gave more money to reliable partners, who had been described for example as practicing first aid.

However, even when under the effects of oxytocin, they did not share the same amount of money with partners that had been labeled as unreliable by the researchers.

“Thus, the higher the perceived risk, the lower the trust-enhancing effect of [oxytocin],” the team writes in the August issue of the esteemed scientific journal Psychological Science, LiveScience reports.