Here's another piece of research on oxytocin. (Links to past posts about oxytocin below.)
The study from Psychological Science is here: "Oxytocin Makes People Trusting, Not Gullible." Excerpt (citations removed):
The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) plays such a key role in social behavior that it has been referred to as “the love hormone” and “liquid trust”. These nicknames have an element of truth: When OT levels are increased, people do in fact seem to become more altruistic, trusting, and generous.
The effect of OT on prosocial behavior—and on trust in particular—is so strong that it has been suggested that OT may make people indiscriminately prosocial (e.g., trusting to a fault). While the press and researchers alike have worried about its potential misuse by politicians, the armed forces, and marketers, OT retailers have flourished by convincing clients that they can close deals with a few whiffs of OT.
But does OT really increase people’s trust in anybody, or can contextual cues of unreliability override the effects of OT? Animal studies suggest that OT’s social effects may be context dependent. In rodents, a female’s OT release after giving birth decreases her aggressiveness toward her offspring but increases her hostility toward potentially aggressive female intruders. It is not known, however, whether OT’s effects are context dependent in humans. To examine this issue, we used a customized version of the trust game. In this
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