chemical trust and love with oxytocin

A letter to the June 2, 2005 issue of Nature talks about intranasal administrion of a neuropeptide called oxytocin that appears to be linked to trust in social interactions.

so many questions

from the abstract:

Trust pervades human societies. Trust is indispensable in friendship, love, families and organizations, and plays a key role in economic exchange and politics. In the absence of trust among trading partners, market transactions break down. In the absence of trust in a country's institutions and leaders, political legitimacy breaks down. Much recent evidence indicates that trust contributes to economic, political and social success. Little is known, however, about the biological basis of trust among humans. Here we show that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals, causes a substantial increase in trust among humans, thereby greatly increasing the benefits from social interactions. We also show that the effect of oxytocin on trust is not due to a general increase in the readiness to bear risks. On the contrary, oxytocin specifically affects an individual's willingness to accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions. These results concur with animal research suggesting an essential role for oxytocin as a biological basis of prosocial approach behaviour.

Science News goes into a bit more detail for those of you who don't subscribe to Nature (which is far too spendy anyway).

fascinating and somewhat troubling.

so many questions

Apparently Oxytocin has been under investigation for about a decade. A dated, but fascinating overview is here (dated enough that it may not be useful, but there are researchers to hunt if you are fascinated by this).

Comments

[bob]

Bummer, I thought that said "oxycontin"! Got my attention because prescription narcotic analgesic addicts are pretty trusting in social interactions (not like those paranoid meth tweakers!) but I'm guessing when you're awash in opiate agonized euphoria you trust pretty much anything. Well except liberals!