'Love Hormone' Makes You More Trusting, but Not Foolishly Gullible

A new study has it that although the famed "love hormone" Oxytocin (OT) fosters trust in people, it doesn't make them gullible.

Increased levels of OT have been associated with greater caring, generosity, and trust.

The Love Hormone Also Causes Envy
Love hormone oxytocin, also known as cuddle chemical , intensifies feelings of envy and gloating, a new study suggests.

But researchers wanted to find out if OT increases people's trust in just anybody or if it act more selectively.

Psychological scientist MoIra Mikolajczak from the Universite catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and her colleagues investigated just how trusting OT can make us.

In this experiment, volunteers received either a placebo or OT nasal spray.

'Love Hormone' Makes Strangers Look More Attractive And Trusting
The so-called 'love hormone' oxytocin, which is linked to a mother's tender feelings for her child and long-term devotion between partners, can play a crucial role in picking...

Then, they played a trust game in which they received a certain amount of money, which they could share with a partner (any amount shared with the partner would then triple).

The partner then decides what to do the money-they can keep it all for themselves or split the amount with the giver.

Love Hormone and Falling in Love
Why do we fall in love? Is love instinctive? Can we pin this life-altering emotion to a play of chemicals and hormones in the body? Discover what makes for the inextricable bonding of love and life.

If the volunteer is trusting, they will share more money with their partner (in the hopes of having some of it returned to them) than volunteers who are not as trusting.

The participants played the trust game against a computer and virtual partners (which were supposedly in another room), some of whom appeared reliable (they seemed likely to share the money with the participants) and some of whom appeared unreliable (they seemed likely to keep the money for themselves).

Break-Ups Make Men 'Socially' Poor; Women Become Just Plain Poor
Break-ups leave women much poorer financially while men become much poorer socially, says a new study.

The results, showed that volunteers who received the OT nasal spray were more trusting of the computer and the reliable partners-that is, they offered more money to the computer and the reliable partner than did volunteers who received the placebo nasal spray.

However, OT did not have an effect when it came to sharing with a seemingly unreliable partner-the volunteers were not generous towards a potentially unreliable partner, regardless of which nasal spray they received.

These findings suggest that OT fosters trust, but not gullibility: OT may make individuals more trusting, but only in certain situations.

The authors conclude that "oxytocin is not the magical 'trust elixir' described in the news, on the Internet, or even by some influential researchers."

The study has been published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Source-ANI