Trust morality and oxytocin Paul Zak
do anything unique about human beings
there is were the only creatures with
fully developed Moral Sentiments we’re
obsessed with morality of social
creatures we need to know why people are
doing what they’re doing and I
personally am obsessed with morality
it’s all due to this woman sister Mary
Maris Stella also known as my mom as an
altar boy I breathe in a lot of incense
and I learned to say phrases in Latin
but I also had time to think about
whether my mother’s top-down morality
apply to everybody I saw that people who
were religious and non-religious were
equally obsessed with morality I thought
maybe there’s an earthly basis for moral
decisions but I wanted to go further
than to say our brains make us moral I
want to know if there’s a chemistry of
morality I want to know if there was a
moral molecule after 10 years of
experiments I found it oh would you like
to see it I brought some with me this
little syringe contains the moral
molecule
it’s called oxytocin so oxytocin is a
simple an ancient molecule found only in
mammals in rodents it was known to make
mother’s care for their offspring and in
some creatures allowed for toleration of
burrow mates but in humans was only
known to facilitate birth and
breastfeeding in women as released by
both sexes during sex so I had this idea
that oxytocin might be the moral
molecule I did what most of us do I
tried it on some colleagues one of them
told me Paul that is the world’s
stupidest idea it is he said only a
female molecule can’t be that important
but I countered will men’s brains make
this - there must be a reason why but he
was right it was a stupid idea but it
was testily stupid in other words I
thought I could design an experiment to
see if oxytocin made people moral turns
out it wasn’t so easy
first of all oxytocin is a shy molecule
baseline levels are near zero without
some stimulus to cause its release and
when it’s produced has a three-minute
half-life and degrades rapidly room
temperature so this experiment will have
to cause a surge of oxytocin have to
grab it fast and keep it cold I think I
can do that now luckily oxytocin has
produced both in the brain and in the
blood so I could do this experiment
without learning neurosurgery then I had
to measure morality so taking on
morality with a capital M is a huge
project so I started smaller diet study
one single virtue trustworthiness why
I’d show in the early 2000s that
countries with a higher proportion of
trustworthy people are more prosperous
so in these countries more economic
transactions occur and more wealth is
created alleviating poverty so poor
countries are by and large low trust
countries so if I understood the
chemistry of trustworthiness I might
help alleviate poverty or am also a
skeptic I don’t want to just ask people
are you trustworthy so instead I use the
Jerry Maguire approach to research if
you’re so virtuous
show me the money so what we do in my
lab which we tempt people with the
virtue advice by using money let me show
you how we do that
so recruit some people for an experiment
they’ll get $10 they agreed to show up
they will give them lots of instruction
and we never ever deceive them then we
match them in pairs my computer and in
that pair one person gets the matches
saying do you want to give up some of
your 10 dollars you earn for being here
and ship it to someone else in the lab
with a trick is you can’t see them you
can’t talk to them you only do it one
time now whatever you give up gets
tripled and the other person’s account
gonna make them a lot wealthier and they
get a message by computer saying person
1 sent you this amount of money do you
want to keep it all or do you want to
send some amount back okay so think
about this experiment for a minute you
know Sydney’s hard chairs for an hour
and a half some mad scientist says to
jab your arm with a needle and take four
tubes of blood and now you want me to
give up this money and ship it to a
stranger so this was the birth of
vampire economics make a decision give
me some blood so in fact extremal
economists had run this task around the
world and from much higher stakes and
the consensus view was that the transfer
from the first person to the second was
a measure of trust and the transfer from
the second person back to the first
measured trustworthiness when in fact
economists were flummoxed on why the
second person would ever return any
money they assumed money is good why not
keep it all that’s not what we found we
found 90% of the first decision-makers
sent money and if those who received
money 95 percent returned some of it but
why well by measuring oxytocin we found
that the more money a second person
received the more their brain produced
oxytocin and the more oxytocin on board
the more money they returned so we have
a biology of trustworthiness but wait
what’s wrong with this experiment two
things one is that nothing in the body
happens in isolation so he measured nine
other molecules that interact with
oxytocin may they have any effect but
this
it is that I still only had this
indirect relationship reading oxytocin
and trustworthiness I didn’t know for
sure oxytocin caused trustworthiness
so for mating experiment I know I’d have
to go into the brain and manipulate
oxytocin directly I used everything
short of a drill to get oxytocin into my
own brain and I found I could do it with
a nasal inhaler so along with colleagues
in Zurich we put two hundred men in
Washington or placebo had them do that
same trust task with money we found that
those mosquitos mentally showed more
trust we can more than double the number
of people who sent all their money to a
stranger all without altering mood or
cognition so oxytocin is the trust
molecule but is it the moral molecule
using that stoves inhaler we ran more
studies we showed that oxytocin infusion
increases generosity in unilateral
monetary transfers by eighty percent we
showed it increases donation to charity
by 50 percent I’ve also investigated
nonpharmacologic ways to raise oxytocin
these include massage dancing and
praying yes my mom was happy about that
last one and whenever we raise oxytocin
people willingly open up their wallets
and share money with strangers but why
did they do this what does it feel like
when your brain is flooded with oxytocin
to investigate this question we went an
experiment where we had people watch a
video of a father and his four-year-old
son and the son has terminal brain
cancer after they watched the video we
had them rate their feelings and took
blood before and after to measure
oxytocin the change in oxytocin
predicted their feelings of empathy
so it’s empathy that makes us connect to
other people it’s empathy that makes us
help other people it’s empathy that
makes us moral now this idea is not new
a then-unknown philosopher named Adam
Smith wrote a book in 1759 called the
Theory of Moral Sentiments in this book
Smith argued that we are moral creatures
not because of
down reason but for a bottom-up reason
he said we’re social creatures so we
share the emotions of others so if I do
something that hurts you I feel that
pain so I tend to avoid that if I do
something that makes you happy I get to
share your joy so I tend to do those
things now this is the same Adam Smith
who’s 17 years later would write a
little book called The Wealth of Nations
the founding document of economics but
he was in fact a moral philosopher and
he was right on why we’re moral I just
found the molecule behind it but knowing
that molecule is valuable because it
tells us how to turn up this behavior
and what turns it off in particular
tells us why we see immorality so
investigate immorality let me bring you
back now to 1980 I’m working at a gas
station in the outskirts of Santa
Barbara California
you send a gas station all day you see
lots of morality and morality let me
tell you so one Sunday afternoon a man
walks into my cashiers booth with this
beautiful jewelry box opens it up
there’s a pearl necklace inside he said
hey I was in the men’s room I just found
this what do you think we should do with
it putting lost-and-found so this is
very valuable when we have to find the
owner for this so we’ll try to decide
what to do with this the phone rings and
a man says very excitedly I was in your
gas station while ago and I bought this
Dewar for my wife and I can’t find it I
said pearl necklace yeah hey I just
found it Oh saving my life here’s my
phone number
tell that guy to wait half an hour I’ll
be there and I’ll give him a $200 reward
great so tell the guy look relax get
yourself with that reward
life’s good I can’t do it I have this
job interview and Goleta in 15 minutes
and I need this job I gotta go again he
asked me what do you think we should do
I’m in high school I have no idea so I
said I’ll hold it for you said you know
you’ve been so nice that you put the
reward I’ll give you the jewelry you
give me a hundred dollars and when the
guy comes all right you see it I was
conned right this is a classic con
called the pigeon drop and I was the
pigeon so the way many cons work is not
that the con man gets the victim to
trust him
is that he shows he trusts the victim
now we know what happens the victims
brain releases oxytocin and you’re
opening up your wallet or purse and
giving away the money right so who are
these people who manipulate our oxytocin
systems we found testing thousands of
individuals that five percent of
population don’t release oxytocin on
stimulus so if you trust them their
brains don’t release oxytocin if there’s
money in the table they keep it all so
there’s a technical word for these
people in my lab we call them bastards
these are not people you want to have a
beer with they have many of the
attributes of psychopaths okay now there
are other ways the system can be
inhibited one is through improper
nurturing so we’ve studied sexually
abused women and about half those don’t
release oxytocin stimulus okay you need
enough nurturing for the system to
develop properly also high stress
inhibits oxytocin so we all know this
when we’re really stressed out we’re not
acting our best as another way oxytocin
is inhibited which is interesting
through the action of testosterone so
we’ve in experiments have administered
testosterone to men as to have sharing
money they become selfish okay but
interestingly high testosterone males
were also more likely to use their own
money to punish others for being selfish
now think about this it means within our
own biology we have the yin and yang of
morality
we have oxytocin that connects us to
others makes them makes us feel what
they feel and we have testosterone and
men have ten times the testosterone as
women so men do this more than women
we have testosterone that makes us want
to punish people who behave in morally
we don’t need God our government telling
what to do is all inside of us right so
you may be wondering oh these are
beautiful laboratory experiments do they
really apply to real life yeah I’ve been
worrying about that too so I’ve gone out
of the lab to see if this really holds
in our daily lives so last summer I
attended a wedding of southern England
200 people this beautiful Victorian
mansion
to a single person and I drove up in my
rented Vauxhall and I took out a
centrifuge and dry ice and needles and
tubes and I took blood from a bride and
the groom in the wedding party in the
family and the friends before and
immediately after the vows guess what
weddings caused the release of oxytocin
but they do so in a very particular way
who is the center of the wedding solar
system the bride she’d the biggest
increase in oxytocin who loves the
wedding almost as much as a bride her
mother that’s right
her mother was number two then the
groom’s father then the groom then the
family then the friends arrayed around
the bride like planets around the Sun so
I think it tells us that we’ve designed
this ritual to connect us to this new
couple connect us emotionally why
because we need them to be successful
reproducing to perpetuate the species
also worried that my tres experiments
with small amounts of money didn’t
really capture how often we actually
trust our lives to strangers so even
though I have a fear of heights
I recently strapped myself another human
being and stepped out of an airplane at
12,000 feet
I took my blood before and after and I
had a huge spike on oxytocin and there’s
so many ways we can connect to people
for example through social media many
people are tweeting right now
so we investigate all social media and
found that using social media produces
solid double-digit increases oxytocin so
I ran this experiment recently for the
Korean Broadcasting System and they had
the reporters and their producers
participate and one of these guys must
have been 22 had a hundred and fifty
percent spike in oxytocin
I mean astounding no one has this so he
was using social media in private when I
wrote my reports the Koreans I said look
I don’t know what this guy was doing but
my guess was interacting with his mother
or his girlfriend they checked he was
interacting on his girlfriend’s Facebook
page there you go that’s connection
alright so there’s tons of ways that we
can connect to other people and it seems
to be universal two weeks ago I just got
back from Papua New Guinea where I went
up to the Highlands very isolated tribes
of
subsistence farmers living as they have
lived for millennia there are 800
different languages in the highlands
these are the most primitive people in
the world and they indeed also release
oxytocin
okay so oxytocin connects us to other
people eisah Tosun makes us field other
people feel and it’s so easy to cause
people’s brains to release oxytocin I
know how to do it and my favorite way to
do it is in fact the easiest let me show
it to you give me a hug there you go
so my penchant for hugging other
people’s ermine they nicknamed dr. love
I’m happy to share a little more love in
the world it’s great but here’s your
prescription from dr. love eight hugs a
day we have found that people release
more oxytocin are happier and they’re
happier because they have better
relationships of all types dr. love says
eight hugs a day eight hugs and a you’ll
be happier and the world would be a
better place of course if you don’t like
to touch people
I can always shove this up your nose