Trust in a Bottle

flosofl writes "The BBC has a report on oxytocin and its ability to skew our trust levels. '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.' Some of the investors were given oxytocin via nasal spray. The results were surprising: '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.' When the trustee was a computer, there was no difference between the two test groups."

Comments

Re:Too Small of a Test

[Joe Random]

For this to really be worked out you need to do multiple test on a much larger scale.

Trust me, 29 people is more than enough to obtain statistically-significant results. Now where's my Oxytocin....

Re:If memory serves me correctly...

[ultramk]

It's released a lot of times... usually during intimacy.

it's released:
- during sex
- when a mother holds her baby
- when nursing
- when two people are holding each other

I had a professor who called it "the Cuddle Drug". It's been thought to play a major part of the "bonding" process, parent/child as well as romantic relationships.

And no, it's not Oxycontin, which is a completely different thing.

m-

I doubt it affects it.

[jd]

It is entirely plausible that people who are naturally charismatic are somehow making use of this mechanism. However, such people are often excused of wrongdoing by followers - including those followers who are burned, strongly suggesting that personal injury and self-preservation are NOT factors.

Since the effect seems to be producable by a spray, it is entirely possible that the human body releases low levels of this stuff naturally. If that is indeed the case, it might be interesting to see what the levels are around "in person" celebrities - stage performers, those politicians who mingle with the crowd, etc. My guess would be that people who make it in such environments differ at this kind of chemical level from those who prefer to be kept at a distance (it's hard to see how chemical traces could get through a movie screen, for example).

My guess would also be that cult settings include (by accident or design) an exceptionally high concentration of this chemical. If you think about the "stereotypical" settings for such things, you are generally looking at highly charismatic people (see above theory), and very probably a high usage of all kinds of evaporating oils, incence, perfumes, etc. In such a setting, the adding of something that lowered mental resistance would seem to be more of a question of what form it took, rather than whether it was being done.

Despite the First and Seventh Amendments, I would think that it would be a very good idea to ban the willful use of any chemical that impairs reasoning or ability to trust, especially in any religious or political situation where abuse has the potential to be monsterous.

I would also suggest that the law on such matters as criminal insanity be adjusted to allow for this finding, as it would seem possible that a person's ability to tell right from wrong, or make rational judgements as to who to believe on certain matters, would be impaired only in the presence of the person they were around at the time, making it impossible for an independent psychologist to accurately assess the state of mind under laboratory conditions.

It would seem a grave miscarriage of justice to allow serious abusers of human chemical imperetives to be utterly free and lawfully able to continue that abuse, no matter what the consequences. Likewise, it would also seem to be a grave miscarriage of justice if victims of that abuse could be imprisoned or executed because the law had failed to recognize the reality and implications of that abuse.

This is not to sat that all criminals are really innocent victims, but rather that some unknown percentage may well be, especially where cults and charismatics are concerned. I think that the authorities should be taking this seriously. At least, more seriously and more rapidly than said cults and charismatics are.