It is shown 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.
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.
TL;DR: The evolution of cooperation by indirect reciprocity leads to reputation building, morality judgement and complex social interactions with ever-increasing cognitive demands.
TL;DR: It is shown that human amygdala function is strongly modulated by oxytocin, and this results indicate a neural mechanism for the effects of Oxytocin in social cognition in the human brain and provide a methodology and rationale for exploring therapeutic strategies in disorders in which abnormal amygdala function has been implicated, such as social phobia or autism.
TL;DR: There is growing evidence that the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin modulate complex social behavior and social cognition and suggest that variation in the genes encoding their receptors may contribute to variation in human social behavior by altering brain function.
TL;DR: Results from a series of clinical studies suggesting that childhood trauma in humans is associated with sensitization of the neuroendocrine stress response, glucocorticoid resistance, increased central corticotropin-releasing factor activity, immune activation, and reduced hippocampal volume are summarized, indicating the existence of biologically distinguishable subtypes of depression as a function of childhood trauma.
TL;DR: In this article, a new approach to describing both stability and change in social systems by linking the behavior of individuals to organizational behavior is proposed. But the approach is not suitable for large-scale systems.
TL;DR: Z-Tree as mentioned in this paper is a toolbox for ready-made economic experiments, which allows programming almost any kind of experiments in a short time and is stable and easy to use.
TL;DR: This paper showed that if some people care about equity, the puzzles can be resolved and that the economic environment determines whether the fair types or the selesh types dominate equilibrium behavior in cooperative games.
TL;DR: This article showed that if a fraction of the people exhibit inequality aversion, stable cooperation is maintained although punishment is costly for those who punish, and they also showed that when they are given the opportunity to punish free riders, stable cooperations are maintained.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used indicators of trust and civic norms from the World Values Surveys for a sample of 29 market economies and found that membership in formal groups is not associated with trust or with improved economic performance.
Q1. What are the contributions in "Oxytocin increases trust in humans" ?
Here the authors show that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals6,7,8, causes a substantial increase in trust among humans, thereby greatly increasing the benefits from social interactions. The authors also show that the effect of oxytocin on trust is not due to a general increase in the readiness to bear risks. These results concur with animal research suggesting an essential role for oxytocin as [... ]
Q2. How much did the subject receive for participation in the risk experiment?
Subjects received a flat fee of 80 Swiss francs for participation in the experiment; each MU earned in the trust and the risk experiment was worth 0.40 Swiss francs.
Q3. Why did the subjects wait in the rest area?
Owing to the crucial role of the social environment in triggering behavioural effects of oxytocin (as shown in animal research)13,29, subjects were asked to wait in the rest area while the next part of the experiment was prepared.
Q4. How many people were excluded from the trust experiment?
In total, 16 individuals out of the original sample of 194 were excluded because of incorrect substance administration (7 in the trust experiment, 5 in the risk experiment) or their stated disbelief that the opponent in the trust game was actually a human being (4 participants).
Q5. How did the experiment measure the psychological state of subjects?
To measure alterations in the psychological state of subjects throughout the course of the experiment, the authors assessed their mood and calmness at the beginning of the experiment (before substance administration) and immediately before the trust experiment or the risk experiment, by means of a suitable questionnaire26.
Q6. What were the criteria for participation in the trust experiment?
Exclusion criteria for participation were significant medical or psychiatric illness, medication, smoking more than 15 cigarettes per day, and drug or alcohol abuse.
Q7. How many subjects were included in the study?
Subjects received a single intranasal dose of 24 IU oxytocin (Syntocinon-Spray, Novartis; 3 puffs per nostril, each with 4 IU oxytocin) or placebo 50 min before the start of the trust or the risk experiment.
Q8. How many healthy male students participated in the study?
A total of 194 healthy male students (mean age ^ s.d., 22.0 ^ 3.4 yr) from different universities in Zurich participated in the study.