WSJ
April 27, 2012, 7:48 p.m. ET
The Trust Molecule
Why are some of us caring and some of us cruel, some generous and some
greedy? Paul J. Zakon the new science of morality— and how it could be used to
create a more virtuous society.
Could a single molecule—one chemical substance—lie at the very center of
our moral lives?
Research that I have done over the past decade suggests that a chemical
messenger called oxytocin accounts for why some people give freely of
themselves and others are coldhearted louts, why some people cheat and steal
and
others you can trust with your life, why some husbands are more faithful than
others, and why women tend to be nicer and more generous than men. In our
blood and in the brain, oxytocin appears to be the chemical elixir that
creates bonds of trust not just in our intimate relationships but also in our
business dealings, in politics and in society at large.
Known primarily as a female reproductive hormone, oxytocin controls
contractions during labor, which is where many women encounter it as Pitocin,
the
synthetic version that doctors inject in expectant mothers to induce
delivery. Oxytocin is also responsible for the calm, focused attention that
mothers lavish on their babies while breast-feeding. And it is abundant, too,
on
wedding nights (we hope) because it helps to create the warm glow that
both women and men feel during sex, a massage or even a hug.
Since 2001, my colleagues and I have conducted a number of experiments
showing that when someone's level of oxytocin goes up, he or she responds more
generously and caringly, even with complete strangers. As a benchmark for
measuring behavior, we relied on the willingness of our subjects to share
real money with others in real time. To measure the increase in oxytocin, we
took their blood and analyzed it. Money comes in conveniently measurable
units, which meant that we were able to quantify the increase in generosity
by the amount someone was willing to share. We were then able to correlate
these numbers with the increase in oxytocin found in the blood.
Later, to be certain that what we were seeing was true cause and effect, we
sprayed synthetic oxytocin into our subjects' nasal passages—a way to get
it directly into their brains. Our conclusion: We could turn the behavioral
response on and off like a garden hose. (Don't try this at home: Oxytocin
inhalers aren't available to consumers in the U.S.)
More strikingly, we found that you don't need to shoot a chemical up
someone's nose, or have sex with them, or even give them a hug in order to
create the surge in oxytocin that leads to more generous behavior. To trigger
this "moral molecule," all you have to do is give someone a sign of trust.
When one person extends himself to another in a trusting way—by, say, giving
money—the person being trusted experiences a surge in oxytocin that makes
her less likely to hold back and less likely to cheat. Which is another way
of saying that the feeling of being trusted makes a person more…trustworthy.
Which, over time, makes other people more inclined to trust, which in turn…
If you detect the makings of an endless loop that can feed back onto
itself, creating what might be called a virtuous circle—and ultimately a more
virtuous society—you are getting the idea.
Obviously, there is more to it, because no one chemical in the body
functions in isolation, and other factors from a person's life experience play
a
role as well. Things can go awry. In our studies, we found that a small
percentage of subjects never shared any money; analysis of their blood
indicated that their oxytocin receptors were malfunctioning. But for everyone
else,
oxytocin orchestrates the kind of generous and caring behavior that [ not
every ] every culture endorses as the right way to live—the cooperative,
benign, pro-social way of living that every culture on the planet describes
as "moral." The Golden Rule is a lesson that the body already knows, and
when we get it right, we feel the rewards immediately.
This isn't to say that oxytocin always makes us good or generous or
trusting. In our rough-and-tumble world, an unwavering response of openness
and
loving kindness would be like going around with a "kick me" sign on your
back. Instead, the moral molecule works like a gyroscope, helping us to
maintain our balance between behavior based on trust and behavior based on
wariness and distrust. In this way oxytocin helps us to navigate between the
social benefits of openness—which are considerable—and the reasonable caution
that we need to avoid being taken for a ride.
Consider a real-life experiment that I conducted with a bride named Linda
Geddes. A writer for the British magazine New Scientist, Linda had been
following my research and thought it would be fun to see if the emotional
uplift of her wedding would alter the guests' levels of oxytocin.
I arrived at the venue, a Victorian manor house in the English countryside,
with a 150-pound centrifuge and 70 pounds of dry ice. I unpacked my
equipment—syringes, 156 prelabeled test tubes, tourniquets, alcohol preps,
Band-Aids—and got to work. The plan that I'd worked out with Linda was to take
two samples from a cross section of the friends and family in attendance—one
draw of blood immediately before the vows and one immediately after.
After all the blood had been drawn, I slipped out with my test tubes
nestled in their cushion of dry ice. It took two weeks for the samples to
arrive
at my California lab via FedEx, but the results showed just what we were
hoping for: a simple snapshot of oxytocin's ability to read and reflect the
nuances of a social situation.
The changes in individual oxytocin levels at Linda's ceremony could be
mapped out like the solar system, with the bride as the sun. Between the first
and second draws of blood, which were only an hour apart, Linda's own level
shot up by 28%. For the other people tested, the increase in oxytocin was
in direct proportion to the likely intensity of their emotional engagement
in the event. The mother of the bride? Up 24%. The father of the groom? Up
19%. The groom himself? Up 13%…and on down the line.
But why, you may ask, would the groom's increase be less than his father's?
Testosterone is one of several other hormones that can interfere with the
release of oxytocin, and the groom's testosterone level, according to our
blood test, had surged 100%! As the guests admired Linda in her strapless
bridal gown, he was the alpha male.
Our study at the wedding had demonstrated just the kind of graded and
contingent sensitivity that allows oxytocin to guide us between trust and
wariness, generosity and self-protection. Should I feel safe and warm and
cuddly
in this crowd, or do I have to be on guard? Or maybe it is a situation in
which the best outcome results from oxytocin dominating in one person and
testosterone driving the other.
It is the sensitivity of oxytocin in its interaction with a range of other
chemical messengers that helps to account for why human behavior is so
infinitely complex—and why the bliss of the wedding day (and night) is often
hard to maintain. (Consider the old joke about the guy who couldn't
understand why his wife was unhappy. "I told you that I loved you when I asked
you
to marry me," he said. "I don't see why I need to tell you again.")
But there is a larger payoff from this research: After centuries of
speculation about human nature and how we decide what is the right thing to do,
we at last have some news we can use—empirical evidence that illuminates the
mechanism at the heart of our moral guidance system. So what can we do to
shift behavior a bit more toward the expression of oxytocin and thus improve
the workings of our entire society?
The experiments I have conducted show that many group activities—singing,
dancing, praying—cause the release of oxytocin and promote connection and
caring. As social creatures, we have created activities that prompt the
expression of oxytocin in order to foster connection to others. In fact, those
who release the most oxytocin when they are trusted are happier and
healthier because they have richer social lives.
Even the sort of "social snacking" that happens through Twitter or checking
out a friend's Facebook page can prompt an oxytocin surge. But the real
criterion for success is whether these online activities complement more
substantial personal connections. Does this form of communication foster human
bonds or does it foster anonymity and abstraction to the point of cutting
off empathy?
Another approach to tune oxytocin release is to seek exposure to people
outside our own families or cultural and geographic "tribes." There are solid
evolutionary reasons why our species developed the tendency to be wary of
those whose physical appearances or behavioral patterns are different from
our own. For millions of years an individual's social world was limited
almost entirely to her village and tribe, and outsiders were, for good reason,
considered a threat until proven otherwise. Yet research has shown that
this suspicion is malleable, and it fades with exposure.
With worries on the rise about the country's cultural and political
divisions, some bottom-up boosts of oxytocin, based on face-to-face
interaction,
could help. It might take the form of a domestic student-exchange program,
allowing kids from the big cities and small-town, rural kids to get to know
one another. The revitalization of urban life, with its varied and
crosscutting relationships, is a step in the right direction, too. One city
going
in the opposite direction is Washington, D.C., where fraternizing across
party lines—once the norm—is nearly unheard of these days. Acrimony on
Capitol Hill reflects, in part, these oxytocin-starved relationships.
A few years ago, I began warning visitors to my lab that before they left,
I was going to give them a hug. This scares some people, but I've found
that my slightly eccentric announcement changes the depth of the conversation,
making it more intimate, more engaging and more valuable to us both. I
suspect that by forecasting a hug, I'm also signaling how much I trust the
person, so I'm inducing a release of oxytocin in their brains. Those people,
in turn, will connect better to others and treat them more generously.
Nothing grander is required for a virtuous circle to begin.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
