The physiology of oxytocin (and to a lesser degree vasopressin) are really fascinating.
One interesting result that doesn't seem to be in this article is that oxytocin levels go up in the giver, not just the receiver. A cautionary note. I know at least one person who's tried intranasal oxytocin as a treatment for attachment issues (short of a formal diagnosis of attachment disorder) but unsuccessfully. So it's not a panacea. -- Charles On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 12:22 AM, Udhay Shankar N <ud...@pobox.com> wrote: > This will annoy some of you who don't buy into reductionism, but this > is fascinating. Does it all come down to oxytocin? > > Udhay > > https://medium.com/aspen-ideas/the-moral-molecule-3c8170f6c938 > > The Moral Molecule > > I want to start out by telling you about a woman that I interviewed in > the San Diego County jail a couple of years ago. Let me call her Lisa. > Lisa had been arrested for the 13th or 14th time for possession of > methamphetamine for sale. She had served time many times. And I was > part of a team that was interviewing her to understand how she had > gotten to where she was and if we might help her change the course of > her life. > > You have to imagine this tiny little room in the county jail. We’re > sitting almost knee to knee, about to have a long clinical interview. > She’s in an orange jumpsuit, her hands are shackled, and there’s a > guard outside the door. Slowly I start talking to her, asking her > questions. “When did you first start smoking marijuana?” She said age > thirteen. And then I asked, “When did you first start smoking > methamphetamine?” She said age thirteen. > > So what’s the natural question? “Gee, what happened to you when you were > 13?” > > She said, “Oh, my mom was a meth user, and she wanted to have someone > to party with, so she introduced me to meth.” And then she started to > cry, and she said, “And now when my mother calls me in prison to say > she loves me, I can’t say it back to her.” > > Breaking all appropriate clinical protocol, I said, “I don’t think you > have to. Your mother did a terrible thing to you.” And indeed, Lisa > had been raped because of meth, she had prostituted herself to get > meth, she had married a man who was a meth user who beat her > regularly, once fracturing her skull. She had two teenage children who > lived in a state far from her because she couldn’t care for them. And > she supported herself?—?though she was homeless?—?by selling meth. > > The deeper question, then, I think, is how is it possible for a mother > to do something so horrendous to her child? The trivial answer is, > well, her brain was addled by drugs. But when she invited her daughter > to start using meth, she was not high, right? She was sober. And she > made a decision, a very bad decision. > > So then the larger question, which I spent about twelve years in my > life trying to understand, is why do any of us treat each other well > at all, particularly when no one is looking? > I’m staying at a hotel right now and all the windows in my room are > open because it’s hot. My computer is in there, all my stuff is in > there. It would not be hard to just walk in there and take all my > stuff, right? > > Why do I have the windows open? Because I have a sense somehow that > it’s safe based on the environment, the people. Earlier today before > the talk, I sat next to this stranger, Marissa, and we were chatting. > And she didn’t look stressed out or anything, even though I’m some > giant stranger. > > How do we do that? How do we navigate through the sea of strangers > that we all live in without having something in our brains that tells > us who to be around and who not to be around, who is safe and who’s > not safe? That’s what we began studying around 2001. > > Oxytocin, this molecule that’s classically associated with child birth > and breastfeeding, is released in all kinds of settings in which > humans have positive social interactions, and it plays the role of a > safety-signaling molecule. So when I see Marissa, her brain releases > oxytocin, she feels safe to be around me, and now we can interact with > each other. > > Now, if I did something scary and crazy and weird, her stress hormones > would turn on and she would immediately get away from me. Part of this > story is that we have this built-in ability to come together as human > beings to form relationships with people we have no direct genetic > relationship to, and we can extract value from those relationships. > > > I want to tell you a little about how we’ve actually done this > science. These field studies are fun. They show that this really works > in the world that we live in. > > Maybe there’s a reason why people behave nicely even when they don’t > have to. There is a rich literature in social animals showing that > oxytocin allows members of the same species to identify burrow-mates. > This is generally done by smell. So when I see my friend > Bavindra?—?but I don’t really see him, I smell him, and he’s in my > burrow?—?I think, Bavindra, he is my friend, I like him. And my brain > makes oxytocin and then we can affiliate; we can huddle up for warmth > or for safety. > > Human beings, I thought, might do the same kind of thing. We don’t > initially smell each other, but we recognize through all kinds of > signals like body language that someone is safe or not safe. And we > can do the same thing. We can affiliate and get all the value of > relationships, except as human beings we do it very broadly. > > We do it all of the time. We can’t help it. On airplanes, in meetings, > all the time we see people we like, they’re friendly, and we can do > projects with them or we can form friendships or romantic > relationships. It’s all the same molecule. But in 2001, this was > really a heterodox. > > One of my colleagues actually said, “Paul, this is the world’s > stupidest idea. It’s a career-ending decision.” I said, okay, maybe, > but there is a big animal literature, and there must be a way to > measure oxytocin in humans. > > He said, “It’s irrelevant, just a female hormone,” indicating that if > this is for women, it can’t be that important. > This was a guy, by the way. And I said, “Yeah, but men’s brains make > oxytocin too. There must be a reason why.” > > He said, “It’s just residual. You know, it’s not important.” > > I said, “Well, I think I can test this, and if I can test it, then I > can actually determine for men and for women or for both if oxytocin > really matters.” > > > We decided to tempt people with virtue and vice by using money. Here’s > the experiment. Let’s do it, we’ll do it right now. We’ll split the > room in half. So half of you guys have $10. You guys have $10, too. > You get matched up by computer. We don’t do face-to-face interactions > because, since it’s a reproductive hormone, imagine if you’re sitting > across from a cute guy or girl, of course you will be totally nice to > them. We know that. We don’t want that confound. You’re matched by > computer to somebody. You’ll have ten dollars and you’re randomly > assigned in this pairing. And it says you’re first decision-maker or > you’re second decision-maker. And here’s the task: If you are first > decision-maker, you can give up some of your $10, ship it by computer > to the other person you are matched to. > > You can’t see them, you can’t talk to them, you make just one > decision. Whatever you send comes out of your account and gets tripled > in the other person’s account. Then the second person gets a message > by computer saying, “Person 1 sent you say $15. With the $10 you got > for joining the study, you now have $25. Do you want to keep it all, > or send some amount back?” No one will know, you get paid in a > different building. You’re totally in private. > > So the standard view in economics was that if you’re Person 2, money > is good. I think it’s a sort of caveman economics: “Oh, money good, me > keep money.” It almost never happens in these experiments. What we see > happening is that the more money someone sends you, the more money you > tend to return to that person. > > Person 1 has to sacrifice to make Person 2 better off. What do they > expect you to do? Share the money with me, all right, and almost > everybody does that. We didn’t care how people feel, we just followed > the money. A kind of a Jerry Maguire approach to research: Show me the > money, I’ll show you what I care about. > > We did blood draws before and after, and we found that the more money > you received as the second person in this transaction, the more your > brain made oxytocin, and the more oxytocin your brain made, the more > money you reciprocated. > > This is actually really amazing. This basically blows up all standard > economics, and it tells us something important about human nature: > Oxytocin is the biological basis for the golden rule. > You play nice with me, I’ll play nice with you?—?usually. And the > “usually” is where the story gets interesting, so I’ll get to that in > a minute. > > > So we’ve done this now for hundreds of people, and in 95 percent of > them, their brains make oxytocin and they reciprocate the money. > > The next question we asked was, is this just a trust molecule or does > it apply to a larger set of moral behaviors? I’m using the word > “moral” here in an agnostic sense. I have no religious or > philosophical tradition that I’m trying to support. I just mean those > social behaviors that we recognize as positive: social behaviors like > generosity, trustworthiness, honesty, compassion. > > I’m going to study all the behaviors I can. I have a great tool now, > and actually oxytocin is hard to measure and has a very short > half-life?—?it is a quick on/off switch. Meaning, if I cause your > brain to release oxytocin and you trust me, you don’t leave that > switch on because you might run into some bad guy, and this guy might > steal all your money. > > So we had to do very rapid blood draws. Oxytocin degrades at room > temperatures. You have to get the blood fast to keep them cold. So we > have to work out these kinds of protocols that now everybody uses, > which is great. But it wasn’t an obvious thing when we started. > > And I should say lastly that the oxytocin in your blood actually > reflects what’s going on in your brain because oxytocin is an > evolutionarily old molecule. It actually pre-dates mammals. And we can > see in humans we have many more receptors?—?particularly in the front > of the brain?—?for oxytocin. We’re kind of hyper-social. We are social > with people we don’t even know, and it’s because we’re much more > sensitive to oxytocin. > > We studied that by just changing these tasks over and over and over > until we could figure out when this effect kicked in and when it > didn’t. In addition, because nothing in the brain or the body happens > in isolation, we wanted to make sure that we could actually show a > direct causal relationship between oxytocin and these moral behaviors. > > We did that by manipulating the oxytocin system. We took these really > big drills and we drilled into people… No, we didn’t do that. Instead, > we developed this nasal inhaler with which you can spray oxytocin in > your brain, it will actually go in your sinuses and kind of leak into > brain after about an hour. And it turns out that when you give people > intranasal oxytocin, we can turn on moral behaviors like opening up a > garden hose. They just spurt out. > > People know what they’re doing with others, they just don’t care as > much about their own welfare and care more about others. So I think > oxytocin is this little molecule that evolved in mammals to motivate > care for offspring, and when your brain releases oxytocin, it’s > signaling that I’m a member of your family. So it causes us to treat > strangers like family, and that’s really beautiful. > > We have this deep evolutionary system that motivates us to care about > complete strangers. > > One of the questions that we asked was, what is the feeling that > people have when their brains make oxytocin? Could you tell your brain > was making it? The short answer is no, but let me tell you how we > discovered it. I had a graduate student in my lab, now a faculty > member at Claremont, who’s a social psychologist. He said that in > social psychology, we use all kind of things like videos to try to > change people’s social states. I wonder if it changes people’s > physiologic states, too? > > Well, I’m not so keen on that because I don’t want to rely on people > telling me how they feel. I’m more interested in behavior. Anyway, he > presented this little video that he got from St. Jude Children’s > Hospital about a little boy with cancer, and the video runs 100 > seconds. I’m not going to play it for you today because the last time > I played was at a law conference at UCLA, and several lawyers actually > cried when they saw it, and you guys are aware lawyers don’t have > souls, right? > > > West Virginia Route 193, also named “Big Ben” Bowen highway since 2006. > So, you nice people would definitely cry, too. It’s quite sad and it’s > actually a real case. The little boy’s name is Ben and he died of > terminal brain cancer. So it’s emotional, and we took blood before and > after and people watched this video and then did these same > share-the-money tasks. What we found was that the more oxytocin your > brain made, the more empathic you felt towards Ben and his father; you > felt emotionally connected to them. So that’s really interesting. And, > people who watched the video were generous towards others and to a > childhood cancer charity. > > So now we have this underlying psychological mechanism that the > physiology induces. For example, it’s not that I don’t want to steal > Bavindra’s phone?—?I really do?—?it’s just that I’m going to feel bad > if I do that. And then he’ll feel bad. If I’m a social creature, and > if I have any sense of empathy, I’m going to feel bad because he feels > bad and then that feeling makes me not want to steal from him. > > I think that’s the same reason why in our studies people donate money > to childhood cancer charity. When people’s brains release oxytocin, > they’re giving up their money?—?even though we’re torturing them with > needles and all kinds of things, they’re giving their money to the > childhood cancer charity, not because they can fix Ben, but because > they feel terrible that a child was suffering. Again this is a really > beautiful thing about human beings?—?that we care about people at a > distance. It’s not just the face-to-face interactions; it’s really the > connection to the entire human family. > > > So why are people moral? What’s the punch line? We can think of three > ideas. One is that we’re moral because God made us that way. So as a > scientist, I don’t know if God exists or not, it’s not my place to say > that; if that works, fine. I’m just not going to go there. Well, we’re > going to go halfway there?—?I’ll tell you about that later. > > The second is the government is watching us. Big Brother is here. > There must be cameras in this room somewhere, we’re all being > recorded, the NSA knows everything we’re doing. I can’t cheat because > I’ll get caught, right? Well, these experiments give people a lot of > privacy, you can do whatever you want to do, and honestly there are > all kinds of situations we’re in which no one knows what we’re doing. > > > Adam Smith The Muir portrait. Courtesy of National Gallery Scotland. > And the last idea is that, as social creatures, we actually care about > what the other humans think about us. You know, we say we don’t, but > of course we do. And this idea actually is quite old and traces back > to Adam Smith, who you guys may remember from Econ 101. He wrote The > Wealth of Nations in 1776. It turns out The Wealth of Nations was his > second-best book. His best book was written 17 years earlier. It was > called a The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It turns out Smith was a > moral philosopher, and he was a kind of a nobody in Scotland?—?no one > heard about him. He writes this book in 1759, and Smith becomes an > absolute rock star in Europe. > > He’s having dinner with the king of France, he’s hanging out with > Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin. He developed the first fully > terrestrial theory of why people are moral, and he said, “Why are we > moral?” Because we have what he called “fellow feeling.” If I do > something to hurt somebody, I share that emotion. Since I don’t like > pain, I avoid doing those things. > > If I do something that brings you joy, I get to share that joy. I like > doing that. So most of the time, I’m going to behave in a way that > keeps me embedded in the social fabric in which I am. So why is this > Smith’s best book? Because he revised The Wealth of Nations three > times, he revised The Theory of Moral Sentiments six times, including > on his deathbed. He thought it was his more important work. > > We have this sense of emotional connection to others which works as > sort of a moral compass. It doesn’t always work, and that’s the second > half of this lecture. > It doesn’t always work, and when it doesn’t work, the neuroscience is > really interesting on what shuts down morality. Smith was doing this > by intuition and casual observation of people. But now we can run > experiments to ask what inhibits this response, what promotes this > response. > > But I think he was mostly right. So we can’t help but feel empathy > when we see the dog, the homeless person, the child with cancer, and > that motivates us to do things that improve our social standing, that > make us better human beings, that motivate us to serve others which is > just amazing to me. And now we know why. > > > I want to give you a cautionary note on how not to improve society > from a moral perspective. When we first published the research for the > oxytocin inhaler, the media frenzy was enormous and overwhelming and > mostly wrong. We used synthetic oxytocin, a drug, to show the direct > causal relationship between oxytocin and positive social behaviors. We > spent most of our time in the intervening six or seven years working > on the large variety of situations that causes your brain to make its > own oxytocin, and how that affects your behavior. Synthetic oxytocin > administration is not the way to improve society. > > That’s what I really want to talk about. That’s where the rubber hits > the road. Everyone isn’t nice all the time. Why is that? That’s what > we started investigating. It turns out that there’s a larger brain > circuit that oxytocin activates which I call the HOME circuit, Human > Oxytocin-Mediated Empathy circuit, and this circuit utilizes oxytocin > and two other neuro-chemicals. > > I’ll spend thirty seconds on this because it’s important. One is > called dopamine, which is this reinforcement-learning chemical. So > when we do something that’s nice, say, I hold the door for Ken and he > says “thank you,” our brain makes a little oxytocin and it releases > this little reinforcement chemical that says, “Oh, that’s nice. > Apparently he must like it when you do that, you should keep doing > that.” > > We learn from an early age that these are the important behaviors that > help sustain us in the community of humans. Second, oxytocin > facilitates the release of serotonin, a neuro-chemical you all have > heard about. When you have more serotonin, you have an improvement in > mood and reduction in anxiety. > > So social interactions change body states. So it actually feels good > to do good for others. > > Given that, the question is what inhibits activity in the circuit, and > what promotes activity? > > The first is something that you all have experienced, which is high > levels of stress. When you’re super-stressed out, you are not your > best self, right? You’re grumpy, you’re cranky, you’re not nice to > people. > > Then what do you have to do the next day? You’ve got to go to your > spouse, to your work colleagues or whatever, you say, “I was such a > jerk yesterday, I’m sorry.” “I was having a bad day, I got in a car > accident and my dog died.” Whatever it is, we understand that. We can > have a bad day, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, you’re just > having a bad day. > > So high levels of stress inhibit the release of oxytocin, and we > become less focused on others and more on ourselves. We’re in survival > mode. It turns out that moderate levels of stress increase oxytocin > release. So for all the single folks out there, for your first date, I > recommend riding a roller coaster, tandem skydiving, or bungee > jumping. You have this big arousal response and you really want to now > be with this person. Or just flying out of the Aspen Airport, I think > that will do it, too. > > So high stress is one inhibitor. The second inhibitor for oxytocin is > the most important chemical for half the people in this audience, > which is testosterone. When we administer testosterone to men and > compared their behavior to themselves on placebo, men on testosterone > are more selfish and more entitled. > > For those of you with teenage boys at home, this is not news to you. > Why is that testosterone focuses our brain on ourselves? It’s like > your brain whispering to you, you have the best genes on the planet, > you’re a little god, everyone should bow down in front of you. Now, > this is not only valuable for people with teenage boys at home?—?it > turns out that if you win a chess match, your testosterone goes up. > > If you do anything challenging, your testosterone goes up. > Testosterone goes up both in men and women. It turns out that in men > it’s about ten times higher than in women, so the effect is more > egregious. But for both sexes, testosterone increases make > interactions all about you. > > You are the center of attention. By the way, what happens when you > speak in public? Your testosterone goes up. So I’m sorry, I’ll try to > be more empathic later. So we know a lot about how this system works. > We also know that for every study we’ve done in twelve years, on > average women release more oxytocin than men. Again, not surprising. > Women are nicer than men, we know that. Except when they’re not. Now > you know why. > > So it turns out that estrogen primes the brain to be more sensitive to > oxytocin. And it turns out that progesterone inhibits this response. > So it puts on a little brake. > > Women are nicer than men but also more complicated. > We also looked at developmental factors that affect oxytocin. Animals > that are abused or neglected, not cared for by the mother, have fewer > oxytocin receptors, particularly in the front of the brain, which is > part of the feel-good circuit. > > We studied women who have terrible life histories, who as children > were repeatedly sexually abused. So really long-term sexual abuse. We > find about half of them don’t have a functional oxytocin system. And > they’re socially withdrawn, they are clinically depressed, they have a > lot of difficult issues. > > On the other hand, the other half was resilient against that abuse, > and it didn’t depend on the length of abuse, the extent of the abuse. > So the oxytocin system seems fairly robust to moderate amounts of > abuse, although all abuse is bad for sure. This system is mostly > protected, but enough abuse shuts this system down. By the way, we > talked about methamphetamine earlier. Stimulants, like methamphetamine > and cocaine, also damage oxytocin receptors. This may be one reason > stimulant addicts become socially withdrawn. > > > I said earlier that 95 percent of people we have tested in a variety > of situations release oxytocin in the appropriate way and reciprocate, > but 5 percent don’t. Who are the 5 percent? About half of those are > people who are just having a really bad day. They are stressed out, > but otherwise they are okay people. > > The other half have all the attributes of psychopaths. > Last summer my lab and I spent two weeks in the cornfields of > Wisconsin at a treatment center for criminal psychopaths. And we took > blood from a 161 of these wonderful human beings, all men, and we > found that on average when they watched that cancer kid video that > makes lawyers cry, nothing. They don’t produce oxytocin. One hallmark > of psychopathology is a lack of empathy. It’s not that these > individuals are necessarily planning to hurt others. They just don’t > care. They see individuals as a tools to an end. They’re going to use > you for sex or for drugs or for money. You’re just a hurdle they have > to jump over. They just don’t have the same feeling that we do. So > they’re dangerous. I recommend you avoid them. Not good people to be > around. It’s 2 percent of the free roaming population; it’s around 40 > percent of prison population. > > > But 2 percent isn’t bad, right? Three percent of people are having bad > days, and 95 percent are releasing oxytocin and behaving quite nicely. > Most of the time, for most people, the system works pretty well. But > how do we really know it works well? I’m going to show you some > experiments we’ve done around the world in different populations, not > just in North America or Europe, and also what I think one of the > interesting legal implications, a defense against criminal > responsibility. > > > Hans Reiser walking through courtroom. Photo courtesy of SFGate. > Let me tell you about a case of a gentleman named Hans Reiser. Reiser > was a rising star in the Internet world in Silicon Valley. He started > a couple of companies. One of those hit big. He’s married. They have a > little child together, a little girl. And at some point, his wife > decided she is going to divorce Reiser. And then what happens? > > She goes missing. You wonder how that happened, right? It’s always the > spouse. You guys know that, you’ve seen all the crime shows, you’ve > seen the data, particularly when a woman dies. About 90 percent of the > time it’s the spouse. So Reiser is arrested, but they have not found > the body. He goes to trial and by the last day of the trial, it’s > clear that he’s going to get convicted, and he’s up for the death > penalty. So he agrees to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. > He’ll get life in prison if he shows them where the body is. > > They go to the Berkeley hills, and he shows them where he dumped her > body. He’s in jail for life in San Quentin. After a year at San > Quentin, he writes a four-page handwritten appeal in pencil to the > governor of California requesting a new trial, citing my research, > claiming that his lawyer had what I’ve called oxytocin deficit > disorder, ODD. He’s saying his lawyer was a psychopath. Think of the > irony of this. Reiser is clearly a psychopath and he’s claiming his > lawyer couldn’t represent him fully because his lawyer wasn’t empathic > enough. > > So that appeal was turned down. I didn’t get to be on the stand as an > expert witness (yet). But this is coming, and I think that’s a > conversation we need to have as a society. > > If my genes made me do it, if my lack of oxytocin made me do it, am I > fully responsible for that act? I don’t know. > > > The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity by Paul J. Zak, 2012. > I’m going to conclude with what you can do with this information. As I > started writing my book The Moral Molecule, I spent a bunch of time > thinking about why I spent ten years of my life trying to understand > morality. > > It started out with work I had done on cross-country levels of trust > which are predictive of countries’ levels of prosperity. High-trust > countries have more social interactions. More social interactions lead > to more economic transactions that create wealth that sustains > prosperity. The highest trust countries in the world, Norway, Sweden, > Denmark, are very homogenous and have good governments. There is > almost no social strife. Everything works well in these societies. So > trust is a very good measure of a well-functioning society. That’s the > dishonest answer about why I studied oxytocin. > > Once I understood trust at the country level, then I wanted to > understand it at the individual level. But I started writing the book, > and I realized that I had another motivation for this, and it was > driven by this woman, Sister Mary Maris Stella, also known as…my > mother. > > > My mother was a former Catholic nun. And when I was a child, mom was > the ultimate moral authority in our house because she was trained and > we were not. You know, the white glove test: dust in your room, you > could be going to hell. So mom was a little experimenter with her > family, and God bless her, she just passed away about a year ago. But > as I got older, I thought, why does mom know best, or why is promoting > a top-down morality? Why do some words in a book apply to me? > > Why isn’t there a ground-up morality? Why don’t we know what morality > is? So I rejected her views, and because of that, in our experiments, > we asked the most simple questions about people’s religious beliefs, > but basically I didn’t want to touch this issues, it’s the third rail > of science. We just asked things like “Do you believe in God?,” “Do > you pray?,” “Do you go to church?” None of that really mattered for > the experiments, it didn’t affect oxytocin, and it didn’t affect > people’s behavior. We just ignored it. > > And as I was writing the book, I thought to myself, you should > actually address this issue. So we got permission to actually go into > churches and take blood before and after religious services, > everything from Buddhist to Quakers to Protestants. And we went to > different rituals that have the aspects of religious services, but > aren’t religious at all. > > We had soldiers march around our lab for fifteen minutes and took > their blood. We went to folk dances and took blood before and after > people danced. And we found in all these situations that a majority of > people would release oxytocin, and when they did that, they felt > closer to the communities they were in. We did not find that the > release of oxytocin changed their sense of connection to God or some > ultimate reality. > > We used lots of different words to get at this issue. So whatever that > feeling comes from, it doesn’t seem to be an oxytocin effect; it’s > driven by something else. But I still think that these rituals, just > like weddings, are important because they connect us to communities. > > So this story I’ve told to you sounds like a kind of human universal, > and this work has been replicated now by lots and lots of labs. And we > can talk about all the details of the studies if you want, but one > question that also nagged me was, is it really universal? Because > honestly we did these studies first on college students in the U.S. > and in Europe. Then we did free roaming humans. We found in all the > same response. > > But what about as far away from the developed world as we can get? So > to address that question, I flew for thirty hours to the highlands of > Papua New Guinea, which is a rainforest. There are 700 distinct > languages in Papua New Guinea. It’s the Stone Age there. No running > water, no electricity, no bathrooms. I was embedded in a village for a > week and took blood before and after an ancient war dance was done by > indigenous tribe members. It was really an amazing and life-changing > experience. This tribe, it’s about 1,000 people. They live in huts. > They live way in the highlands, too far from any markets to grow cash > crops. They trade pigs for brides. > > It’s really an amazing place in many ways. None of these men had ever > been to a doctor or dentist in their life, so they had never seen > their blood drawn. So it was an interesting experience for them. > > So we had them do the dance. We did a baseline blood draw, had them do > their dance for twenty minutes, and then took their blood again. These > people are pretty healthy. They’re vegetarian. They do do drugs > because they’ve got a lot of spare time. So they smoke pot which, you > know, not surprising for you guys in Colorado, and they also use an > indigenous drug called betel nut which stains their gums red. It’s a > euphoric, and so some of them are kind of spaced out. > > Anyway, what we found is that just like in all the other rituals we > studied, a majority of men who danced in this ritual released > oxytocin, and when they released oxytocin, they felt more connected to > the community, they said they were more willing to volunteer to help > their community. For example, they are subsistence farmers. They just > grow roots, tubers, broccoli, and collect nuts. The people who are > addicted to betel nut don’t tend their plots. > > What happens to the drug users? Do they starve? I mean, what happens > to their plots? They said, “Ah, no, we just take care of it for them. > There’s this real sense of community in which if you’re not able to > feed yourself, we’ll just take care of you, no big deal.” > > So it looks like oxytocin is a universal factor in promoting morality. > A moral molecule. The Papua New Guinea experiment was so compelling > for me because if you remember this old saying from World War II, > FUBAR, this is the FUBAR experiment. Everything went wrong. The liquid > nitrogen evaporated on the flight. It was gone. The generators, the > voltage was wrong, that didn’t work. We had all these things set up. > We had an anthropologist who had to work with this tribe, who had > arranged all this. We had gotten permission from the government. Their > government, our government, lots of permissions. It took two years to > do this. And you’re exhausted, and you get there, and you can do > nothing. > > So I’m in the village. People are sitting around the hillsides kind of > watching the show, the weird white people with cameras coming in. And > there’s nothing I could do. The crew was trying to work on getting > more liquid nitrogen. In fact, I was so freaked out the camera crew > told me, “We do this for a living, you need a break, just take a > break.” So I sit down on the grass. People start coming over, looking > at me, and in Papua New Guinea, they’re very touchy, they like to > touch your hands. And I’m thinking, oh my God, I have to eat with > these hands, like, we’ve brought all our own food. Where’s the Purell? > Oh my gosh, the body odor is powerful. > > And then the little children came up to me, and they started looking > at me and I started making faces at them. I don’t speak in this > language at all of course. I started making faces, I started playing > with them. All of a sudden, we were laughing, we were having fun, and > I just relaxed and enjoyed this wonderful opportunity to be in > people’s homes. > > Amazing people. And I felt so close to my village. So when I got ready > to leave with our blood samples, with more liquid nitrogen coming in > from Tokyo, we have to get down the mountain and get these things back > to LA. And the chief who’s got a fifth grade education says, “Stop, > you need to sit down, we have gifts for you.” So I sat down. And the > film crew sat down. > > These people have nothing. They have no money at all and they made me > this beautiful hand-spade, and the chief had someone translate into > English a little note that said “In our village, all leaders have > hand-spades to till their fields to feed their people, and we thought > you needed a hand-spade.” Isn’t this amazing? That’s amazing. > > So how stupid are we if we can’t connect to the people around us where > we speak the same language, we’re in the same culture, and yet we go > around the world and we’re connecting to people who are in some sense > totally different than us and another sense, completely the same as > us. They have the same things, they love their kids, they want to have > a good life. They want to be healthy, they want to enjoy themselves. > > > We have this sense of morality or appropriate social behaviors, and > one of those is trust. As I said earlier, we showed that trust is a > big engine for prosperity at the level of countries, and when > prosperity is higher, if that wealth is shared equally enough, it > means we’re reducing poverty, which reduces the stress people have, > which gives them the luxury of releasing more oxytocin, increasing > morality. > > If prediction by the neuroscience were true, we should see evidence for it. > > When we look at cross-country data, we find measures tolerance for > people who are different than ourselves increases with income. We find > that happiness levels increase with income. > And we recently looked at this in individuals?—?those who release more > oxytocin are more satisfied with their lives. Why? Because they have > high quality relationships of all types?—?romantic, with friends, with > family, and even with strangers. > > > I want to tell you what happened to Lisa, the prisoner. Lisa was > either going to serve a three-year jail term for her sentence or do > a?—?a three-year jail term usually is a year-and-a-half for good > behavior. So it’s a year-and-a-half in jail or a year-and-a-half in > lockdown rehab. And through a series of interviews she was eligible to > do a year of lockdown rehab. She learned about drug use. She learned > how to stay away from the cues that motivate drug use. > > Her goal was to get out of San Diego, where she had been sucked into > this drug lifestyle, and move to the state where her children lived. > And she indeed did that. The last I heard from her, she had rented an > apartment in the same city in which her children lived with her aunt > and uncle. And she was beginning to rebuild her relationship with her > children. She wasn’t able to care for them yet, but at least she > started to rebuild that relationship. And the last note she sent me, > she said she had not contacted her mother. > > So what’s the take-home? Oxytocin is sometimes called the love > molecule. It makes us care about our offspring, our romantic partners. > My lab showed that it also makes us care about complete strangers. And > we looked at lots of ways we could cause oxytocin release, and one of > those was touch. In rodents, if you stroke the belly, you can cause > the release of oxytocin. I thought, oh, that’s a good experiment. > You’ll come in, I’ll rub your belly and then… That’s kind of weird, > right? So I thought, maybe I can do an experiment where you come in > and have all the participants hug each other for like ten minutes. > > So what’s wrong with that experiment? First of all, I get sued because > someone gets their butt grabbed, and that’s not good, and also it’s > just creepy, right? So instead we thought, who gets to touch you who > you don’t know? Your doctor. Your hairstylist. Your massage therapist. > > So we did this study at UCLA, and this was the easiest recruiting of a > study we’d ever done. You came in, you get a blood draw, you get ten > minutes professional massage therapy, another blood draw, then do a > “share the money” task. We found, indeed, that touch released oxytocin > and made people much more generous towards strangers. So I thought, > how do I apply this to my own life? > > > I decided some years ago to refuse to shake hands with people and > begin to hug everybody. So the students in my lab like to tease me, > and they starting saying you’re Dr. Love now, you’re hugging people. > Whatever. Anyway I had a reporter come down a couple of years ago from > Fast Company magazine. He wanted to interview me, be in some > experiments. It’s always kind of weird when reporters come out because > I don’t really know what they want from me and why they’re there > and?—?anyway, he’s getting ready to go, so I said, “Before you go I’m > going to give you a hug because I’m the oxytocin guy and I’m all about > connection.” > > So he titles his article “Introducing Dr. Love.” So I’m outed now as > Dr. Love. At first I was kind of unhappy, I’m a serious scientist, I > do this work every day. It’s hard, you know, we spend a lot of money > on experiments. We work hard to do this work right. > > But then when I thought about it, I thought, what a great thing he > gave me. I get to go places and talk about love. > Love is a biological reality. Your brain is designed for love. We need > love. It’s super important to us. We’ve shown that touch not only > increases oxytocin, it reduces stress hormones and improves the immune > system. So we need those social relationships. So I encourage you to > embrace the “L” word, tell the people around you that you love them. > > Even at work, I encourage people to say “love.” It just means I’m > interested in you as a human being. I care about what happens to you. > And generally people will reciprocate and care about what happens to > you as well. > > That’s how oxytocin works. I can’t force you to love me, I can only > give you love. In the same way, I can’t make my brain make its own > oxytocin, but I can give you the gift of oxytocin by, for example, > giving you a hug, and you will generally reciprocate. You might even > try to use the “L” word. > > WRITTEN BY > Paul J. Zak > Neuroeconomist and the Oxytocin Doctor. Author of THE MORAL MOLECULE. > For some reason, people call me Dr. Love. > > > -- > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) > >
