Oxytocin is not the 鈥渢rust elixir鈥� that internet vendors would have you believe. While the hormone does enhance trust, it won鈥檛 make you gullible.
鈥榮 team at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium, gave 60 male volunteers either oxytocin or a placebo. The volunteers played a game in which they could choose to give money to a trustee partner, in whose hands the amount could triple. The trustee could then choose to give back some or all of the money. Participants were told they were playing with partners described to make them seem reliable or unreliable, by providing their hobbies, for instance.
Subjects given oxytocin made larger transfers to reliable partners than the placebo group, but not when partners were primed as untrustworthy.
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鈥淥n the internet there are companies that sell oxytocin as a kind of truth elixir,鈥� says Mikolajczak. 鈥淭hey give the idea that oxytocin renders people completely nai茂ve: 鈥楪ive it to a business man and he鈥檒l buy your product; give it to a woman and she鈥檒l fall in love with you鈥�. Our study shows exactly the opposite.鈥�
鈥淭his is the first human study showing that oxytocin does not unfold its effect in every situation,鈥� says neuropsychologist of the University of Basel, Switzerland. The next question is what is happening in the brain to make this happen, he adds.
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