Scientists Discover Trust Potion

Scientists discovered that inhaling the chemical made people more trusting in social situations with random people.

Researchers know very little about the biological basis of trust. Michael Kosfield and his colleagues at the University of Zurich believed oxytocin - a chemical widely known to enhance social bonding in animals and currently used to induce labor and lactation in human mothers - might play a role.

So Kosfield and his colleagues set up a game involving two people - one playing the role of an anonymous trustee who asked an investor for money for a risky scheme. Investors who sniffed oxytocin trusted the trustee significantly more and handed over their money much more readily, the scientists found.

To determine whether this result was truly trust oriented, the researchers did a control experiment that replaced the trustee with a computer. Investors - even those given oxytocin - were not as likely to risk their money to the automaton. Researchers say this result shows oxytocin enhances trust between individuals rather than just making people less averse to risks.

This study will be detailed in the June 2 issue of the journal Nature.

"The finding opens up possibilities for investigating conditions in which trust is either diminished, as in autism, or augmented," said Antonio Damasio, a University of Iowa researcher who was not involved in the research.

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