Oxytocin, Trust and Investments

Oxytocin, popularly known as the love hormone, is vastly released during labour, breast feeding, and during the time parents bond with their baby. Other than enabling a child-mother bond since the moment of birth, oxytocin plays a role in other behaviours such as social recognition, orgasm, and bonding. Bonding refers to the process of building trust to further establish social relationships, encourage mating with a monogamous partner, produce offspring, and perpetuate the species. 

Trust and Oxytocin

Kosfeld and colleagues performed an experiment to examine the effects of oxytocin on building trust. The researchers hypothesized that oxytocin promoted pro-social behaviours like trust, which contributed to the success of social interactions. In their study, they showed that an intranasal administration of oxytocin could increase trust between share investors. To do so, they compared the behaviour of the group who received an oxytocin dose, versus that of a control group who received a placebo drug. 

The groups interacted in a trust game with real monetary stakes. In each game, “two subjects interacting anonymously play either the role of an investor or a trustee.” Each investor could choose to give money to a trustee. By transferring the money to the trustee, they had the chance to increase their overall profit. Still, investors carried the risk of the trustee choosing to violate their trust and not return part of their shares. 

The researchers concluded that oxytocin causes increased trust in humans, who benefit from social interactions, not due to a readiness to take more risks, but to a willingness to “accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions.” This way, oxytocin, plays a role in people’s capacity to form lasting attachments. 

Oxytocin supports “physically intimate forms of sociality and nurture,” activating neuroendocrine pathways that regulate emotional states. Moreover, oxytocin enhances the effects of dopamine, serotonin, sex steroids and cortisol, which control pleasure, mood, arousal, and stress, respectively. Oxytocin heightens feelings of trust and intimacy, even among strangers. As a result, researchers compared the effects of oxytocin to those of ecstasy, and perfumes containing oxytocin are branded as “love elixirs.” 

Source: Amazon News (No 9 Bask, 2022) 

The perfume company No 9 Bask sells oxytocin colognes, marketing them as a pheromone product supposed to acts a “love formula so intense and it's designed to attract & lure anyone.” 

Risk and Negatives 

Oxytocin’s potential is both exhilarating and frightening –not unlike ecstasy. Wudarczyk and colleagues researched oxytocin’s potential as a relationship enhancer, lowering couple’s emotional defenses, while promoting empathy and generosity. However, oxytocin can have some unintended effects, increasing in-group favoritism and outside envy. 

Patients with borderline personality disorder might become suspicious and uncooperative. Patients with anxious attachment styles selectively decreased their own agency. Oxytocin also alters self-reported perceptions, which users depicting themselves as more extroverted than before. In the ingestion of oxytocin, the context and person matter. 

Early life experiences influence people’s reaction to oxytocin, with people who experienced childhood trauma having decreased levels of the hormone. Ironically, people’s oxytocin levels rise when exposed to fearful situations, as a damp to the perceived stress. 

Returning to Kosfer and colleagues’ investor experiment, oxytocin does not change a person’s beliefs, such as the likelihood of a good outcome. While users showed more trust in others, they did not change their ideas about others perceived trustworthiness or changed an interaction’s level of reciprocity. In other words, while investors became more willing to transfer money, trustees did not necessarily change their behaviour to encourage this trust based on oxytocin intakes. 

Future Implications 

On a positive note, while a single dose of oxytocin for people with mental health issues might bear negative effects, some studies showed that the long-term administration of oxytocin has potential as a therapeutic treatment. Patients who had ingested oxytocin over long periods of time experienced “attenuated subjective and physiological stress reactivity and improved emotion recognition.” Oxytocin also helps regulate chronic pain, by acting as an analgesic. 

At the moment, some researchers such as Wudarczyk and colleagues go even further, by arguing for the implementation of oxytocin in relationship therapies. In their own words, “we have reviewed a range of preliminary studies that show that the exogenous administration of oxytocin may confer a number of pro-social outcomes, and we have argued that these could serve to enhance at least some romantic relationships.” 

While a future in which a neurotransmitter with the potential of ecstasy mediates our romantic relationships might not sound appealing, Wudarczyk and colleagues argue that the effects of not forming a pair bonds –social isolation and illness– should frighten us more. If we can be sure about anything regarding the so-called love-hormone is that we need more research before moving forward with any kind of therapy. Still, as the investor-trustee experiment shows, when it comes to oxytocin, it is all a matter of trust. 

Sources

Carter, C. S. (2022). Oxytocin and love: Myths, metaphors and mysteries. Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology 9. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666497621000813 

Cormier, Z. (2013). Gene switches make prairie voles fall in love. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13112 

Kosfeld et al. (2005). Oxytocin increases trust in humans. Nature 435, 673-676. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03701 

No 9. Bask (2022). No 9 Bask - 99 Percent Pure Oxytocin Cologne Spray (1.05 oz.) - Lavender Label [Photograph]. Amazon. https://www.amazon.ca/Bask-Percent-Oxytocin-Cologne-Lavender/dp/B07TW8NLXD 

Olff et al. (2013). The role of oxytocin in social bonding, stress regulation and mental health: An update on the moderating effects of context and interindividual differences. Psychoneuroendocrinology 38(9), 1883-1894. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453013002369 

Shen, H. (2015). Neuroscience: The hard science of oxytocin. Nature 522, 410-412. https://www.nature.com/articles/522410a 

Wudarczyk et al. (2013). Could intranasal oxytocin be used to enhance relationships? Research imperatives, clinical policy, and ethical considerations. Curr Opin Psychiatry 26(5), 474-484. https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC3935449&blobtype=pdf