The Moral Molecule

Dining Blind

Paul J. Zak — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:44:50 +0000

There is an enormous amount of trust we show to strangers without even paying attention to it: the pilot flying your airplane, the chef preparing your dinner, or the taxi driver taking you across town. We often trust strangers with our lives, blind to their identities or intentions. We do this because most of the time it works out just fine. I experienced an extreme form of stranger-trust when I went to dinner with friends at a trendy "dine in the dark" restaurant in Los Angeles. These restaurants, first started in Zurich, Switzerland by blind clergyman Jürg Spielmann, seat you in a pitch black dining room where you are served by blind waitstaff. After we had ordered our meals in a dimly-lighted reception area, our blind waitress Kathy had us line up behind her at the door to the dining area and put one hand on shoulder of the person in front of us. We shuffled into the pitch black room hearing others talking and silverware clinking on plates. Directions were passed back from the person ahead to the person behind. "Small step in coming up." "Turn sharply to the right." Soon we were seated and we instinctively felt the table for size. I encountered a wall behind me and beyond it I touched the doughy shoulder of someone at the next table and apologized.

My senses were on high alert, searching in vain for landmarks. My tablemates said they were doing the same. How big was this room? How could we ever get out? Then we heard snapping fingers as Kathy was returning from the kitchen and was signaling her path to the other blind waitstaff. We had to touch her to get our food and return plates we had emptied. Initially, I also touched my tablemates to alert them I wanted to talk. After a while, I just spoke up during a conversation lull using a name to get attention. I found myself not even turning toward the person I was speaking to--there was no reason to. The novelty of having no visual input subsided in about 20 minutes and I felt Iike I was just floating in dark space. The food was enjoyable, and I mostly ate with my fingers. Spearing lettuce leaves or scooping up risotto in the dark was a low yield process. Without visual cues, time also slowed down. It was one of the most relaxing meals I've ever had. We spent a total of three hours at dinner, but it could have been one hour, or six. Re-entering the dim reception area, we all found it took several minutes to get over the feeling of floating in a sea of darkness. What had I eaten? Was it undercooked or burnt? I had no clue. I simply trusted those who had agreed to serve me.

Moral Sentiments in the Brain

Paul J. Zak — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:02:16 +0000

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is best known for the idea in his 1776 The Wealth of Nations that self-interested behavior leads to the best outcome for society as if through the working of an invisible hand. But Smith was an intellectual rock star before The Wealth of Nations. His 1759 book The Theory of Moral Sentiments catapulted him to fame by presenting what philosophers and theologians had always wanted: An explanation of good and evil.

Morality, Smith said, came from "fellow feeling" or our sympathy for others. We are, Smith argued, discomfited by seeing others in distress. This motivates us to engage in costly but socially beneficial acts like helping those in need. He called this the "healing consolation of mutual sympathy." You know this yourself: it is uncomfortable to see someone suffer physically or emotionally. And we ourselves suffer if our actions have led to another's suffering. Today we would call this empathy (a word coined in 1858 by German philosopher Rudolf Lotze (1817-1881) and therefore unavailable to Smith). We are undeniably emotionally connected to others. But why?

Recent research at the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies (CNS) has not only found that moral sentiments are real and measurable, but we have been able to manipulate these mechanisms in human brains to cause people to be moral in the lab. To understand how moral sentiments operate, I developed the Empathy-Generosity-Punishment (EGP) mathematical model. Based on principles in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, the model shows that empathy varies according to the distress one observes in others and this can motivate costly helping behaviors, including generosity with resources. The model predicts that generosity is more likely when we take another's perspective, and when our offer of help to another can be rejected as insufficient.

A body of evidence developed at CNS has demonstrated that the neuroactive hormone oxytocin is the brain basis for empathy and helps us understand another's emotional state. For example, a recent CNS study with graduate student Jorge Barraza found a direct relationship between oxytocin released in blood and the subjective experience of empathy when participants watched an emotionally charged video about a four year old boy with terminal brain cancer (see movie here). Those who were more empathically engaged were more generous when asked to share resources they controlled with a stranger in the lab. Infusing synthetic oxytocin into people caused them (relative to those given a placebo), to be 80% more generous towards a stranger.

While oxytocin amplifies the empathy response in the EGP model, studies at CNS have shown another hormone, testosterone inhibits empathy by blocking the action of oxytocin. When we administered synthetic testosterone to men, we made them less generous when they were asked to split money with a stranger. We also found that these "alpha males" were more likely to punish those who were ungenerous towards them (!). While oxytocin increases empathy, testosterone inhibits it, making men stingy and selfish. By changing participants' neurologic states using oxytocin and testosterone, we showed that we can directly cause them to be virtuous--in these studies, to be more generous.

So which Adam Smith is correct: unbridled self-interest or fellow-feeling? Just as individuals are not fully rational or irrational, neither are we purely other-regarding nor entirely self-interested. We can be both empathic and insensitive, and we constantly seek a balance between these two extremes in responding to different social, economic and institutional contexts we find ourselves in. As much as we say otherwise, our behavior is also influenced by the perceptions of others around us.

Our studies and the EGP model show that the brain circuit that produces moral behaviors depends critically on sufficient childhood nurturing, a stable the legal-political environment, and the social support we receive. Without these, moral behaviors recede. When these elements are present, morality is high and we have shown also shown that happiness increases. This is big news: oxytocin not only connects us to others by increasing our empathy, it also makes us happier! Read the original research here.

Adam Smith was right: we are moral creatures because we are empathic. Research at CNS reveals the science behind Smith's insights: we are virtuous because of the moral molecule, oxytocin. Adam Smith said it best, "Whatever appears to be the proper object of gratitude, appears to deserve reward; and that, in the same manner, whatever appears to be the proper object of resentment, appears to deserve punishment."

If you accept evolution, you must oppose over-regulation of the economy

Paul J. Zak — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:29:13 +0000

Political liberals and conservatives butt heads on several topics: the size of the welfare state, teaching evolution in the schools, and the amount of economic regulation. Actually, these are all same issue. Political bulwarks notwithstanding, those on both sides of these issues often reveal ignorance of their commonalities. This is one cause of obstinate political conflicts.

Here's the resolution: biological systems are complex, nonlinear, and adaptive. This irks social conservatives because such a system has no place for a God who is intervening in life's daily activities. No one is in charge in biology. Creatures mutate and those that are more successful at leaving offspring increase their number. If a mutation is detrimental, creatures with it leave fewer offspring and may become extinct. Competition for scarce resources drives this effect so plants and animals evolved to use resources efficiently. Call this biological creative destruction--species adapt or disappear.

The laws of biological evolution apply directly to that human brainchild, economic trade. Businesses that adapt to customers' needs better use their scarce resources more efficiently and "reproduce" faster. This drives out less efficient companies. Think Wal-Mart. And Google. These initially mutant forms either survive and increase their market share or go extinct. Just as with biological creatures, even successful businesses face competitive pressure from the next innovative mutant business. No one is in charge. Call this economic creative destruction. This irks liberals because it shows that no one can or should direct the economy.

Just as a mouse with two legs is less well-adapted to its environment than is a four-legged mouse, a business that cannot survive a recession is not well-adapted to its environment and will go bankrupt. When an animal dies, its remaining energy is recycled as food for predators and insects that consume it. In the same way, the physical and human assets of a bankrupt business are recycled into companies that are better adapted to their environment. Scarce resources drive adaptation and efficiency. If we bailout losing business, we don't allow resources to be recycled to better uses, driving efficiency and adaptation.

Yes, if you have lost your job during this recession it is awful. But, new jobs are created every day and these can be found. Bailout out failing firms is analogous to using scarce biological resources to save the two-legged mouse. One could do this, but this is just throwing good resources away--this will not stop the mouse's inevitable end due to maladaption. Regulation undergirds economic exchange and is necessary, but having government officials micromanage businesses ignores the wisdom of millions of people voting with their wallets every day. The opinion of the millions will always win out.

In fact, "bailouts" are much worse than just wasting resources. Without scarce resources to drive competition, there is no incentive for people to think of new and better businesses. No failure, no innovation. It is innovation that increases living standards. Raising incomes gives us greater ability to reduce hunger, disease, infant mortality, and improve education. Higher incomes also increase trust in other people, and raise our happiness (e.g. see my research on this here).

The main point is that there is no free lunch: resources are always limited and biological and economic adaptation is driven by scarcity. Just as no one controls biological evolution, no one controls economic evolution. There are substantial costs of trying to over-regulate the economy, both in higher taxes but also in reduced innovation and lower living standards. Seeking to manage all economic transactions has been tried in the Soviet Union (and Communist China, and North Korea and Cuba, etc.) and these failed spectacularly because of the lack of adaptation and innovation. Totalitarian economic models are counter to our human nature of exploration, self-direction, and reciprocity. The imposition of over-regulation violates not only the human desire for self-determination, but also the physical laws that govern all of life.

Harnessing America's Brain Power

Paul J. Zak — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 05:55:19 +0000

This is the best op-ed from a class Michael Shermer and I teach at Claremont Graduate University called "Brain, Evolution, and Society". It was written by
Andrew Shaindlin, your guest blogger.

Despite what you've been hearing, America has a surplus.

Not the financial kind. The mental kind. We have an untapped pool of brainpower waiting to be applied to solving problems and absorbing information. And it's time we did something about it.

In a talk at the Web 2.0 Conference in April 2008, Clay Shirky (adjunct professor at New York University) put a name to the excess intellectual capacity currently being used to analyze what happened on Desperate Housewives last week. He called it America's "cognitive surplus."

Cumulatively, said Shirky, Americans spend an astounding 100 million hours watching just the ads on television - every weekend. Add to that the time spent updating Facebook pages and playing video games and pretty soon you're talking real time. Shirky's observation hardly scratches the surface: "This is a pretty big surplus," he says. Gee, do you think?

Why is this a surplus? Because, by definition, those hundreds of millions of hours aren't being used productively. Sure, we all need some "down time," and it's nice to take a break from the grind of work. But just think about the potential for creating a different kind of surplus - a financial one - if just a fraction of the time wasted on Wii boxing or LOLcats was spent, instead, in pursuit of a way to hone our mental acuity.

The Onion, a national humor publication, carried a mock headline in its July 14, 2004 issue, illustrating perfectly the time wasted on commercial airline flights. "Copies of Da Vinci Code Litter Crash Site," the headline declared. A doctored photo accompanying the story showed a rescue worker surveying the tangled wreckage of a downed airliner, surrounded by dozens of copies of Dan Brown's intellectually lightweight best-selling thriller.

Look around at the frequent fliers on your own flights from Seattle to San Diego and from L. A. to London and you'll see it plain as day.

Locked in a seated position for hours at a time, Americans will choose the cognitive equivalent of a tranquilizer to avoid thinking about anything more difficult than this week's Word Search. And of course, that's our privilege. We love our freedom, and if we define "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as three hours of Large Print Easy Sudoku, that's our inalienable right.

But maybe it's time to offer a way for the more ambitious to engage in something more rewarding. The result might just be a greater long-term return on the time Americans spend with "nothing to do."

So here's my modest proposal.

Want to curl up with The Bourne Supremacy in paperback, or camp out in seat 24B engrossed in Kindergarten Cop on your iPod Touch? Nobody is going to stop you. But in the next seat, I'll crack open the collected short stories of Vladimir Nabokov, or dive into a book explaining the importance of evolutionary theory. Or maybe I'll watch a documentary, or a performance of Agamemnon.

"But you can do that now," you say. "What's the big deal? Go ahead with your egghead pursuits and leave me in silence to finish my Wolverine collector's edition!" And I'll be happy to, secure in the knowledge that, upon completing a test covering the material I read or viewed during the same flight, I'll be rebated up to 30% of the price of my plane ticket - depending on how well I've absorbed the material.

That's right: I propose a national rebate on self-improvement, a return on an American investment in perspicacity. For every unit of self-directed learning or productive mental work, conscientious travelers will earn credits toward the cost of their travel.

There's no obligation. Freedom of choice is preserved. If you don't want to help absorb some of the nation's cognitive surplus, you certainly do not have to. You can still pay full retail for airplane tickets and watch How Stella Got Her Groove Back on your personal video player.

Nationally, the result of even a few passengers passing up Tom Clancy for Charles Dickens will be a more learned and liberally educated public, more prepared for intellectual understanding, for knowledge work, and better able to solve tomorrow's problems. Folks who slept through American Lit, who snoozed through Economics, or bailed on Business 101 will have a chance to regain a spot at the head of the class.

We'll also get a more engaged, insightful and educated person to talk to during our next long flight - as well as a more productive, analytical and effective corps of American problem solvers in the long run.

So put down the Sudoku, save a few dollars, and read along with me: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."

Oxytocin-Raising Tips to Make This Valentine's Day the Best Ever

Paul J. Zak — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:52:52 +0000

If you want to make this Valentine's Day fabulous, raise your partner's oxytocin. Here's how to do it.

Why We Cry at Movies

Paul J. Zak — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:23:25 +0000

It first happened on an airplane. Returning home from a long five days in Washington, DC, I allowed myself to stop working and watch the movie Million Dollar Baby. I hadn't seen it and wondered how a movie with such an awful title could have won the Best Picture Oscar. I had only the vaguest sense of what the movie was about.

Six years earlier and recently married, I had informed my wife that "chick flicks" were out. Take a girlfriend, I implored, not me. Unless something is blown up or Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or Eastwood was in the movie, I had screws to turn and holes to drill in my spare time. Million Dollar Baby did star Eastwood so it was in my realm. Since that time I had had two daughters, so the Walt Disney Company supplies most of the movies I watch.

At the climax of Million Dollar Baby, the tear floodgates opened. And I mean opened wide. I was aware that all the snuffling and slurping was inappropriate, but I couldn't stop. I cried so much that I think the guy next to me thought I was having a breakdown (have you seen that movie!?)

So, why do we cry at movies? Cognitively, we know that the story we are watching is (usually) fictional and the actors are paid to play on our emotions. But still we can't help it. I can understand crying when you see your child or spouse get a painful medical procedure, or even when you watch an injured person on the TV news, but at a movie? In previous posts, I introduced the neuropeptide oxytocin as modulating empathy. Oxytocin engages brain circuits that make us care about others, even complete strangers. Perhaps surprisingly, oxytocin engages at the smallest suggestion that someone wants to connect to us. I've showed, for example, that a person's brain releases oxytocin when he or she is entrusted with money by a stranger. Could oxytocin make us cry in movies?

To see if movies cause our brains to release oxytocin, my graduate student Jorge Barraza designed an experiment where participants watched a video from St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. One group saw a part in which a father discusses his four year-old son Ben's terminal brain cancer. The other half watched as Ben and his father spend a day at the zoo. You can see the video here.

Yes, it is really emotional. OK, take a short break to recover.

In research that will soon appear in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, those who saw the highly emotional part of the video had a 47% increase in oxytocin as measured in blood. Controlling for distress (which was associated with elevated stress hormones), empathy was highly correlated with the spike in oxytocin. This is the first evidence for the speculation, often from my mouth, that oxytocin is a physiologic signature for empathy.

We also had subjects make decisions that involved money and other people to see if those who were empathically engaged are nicer. Participants were paid for agreeing to let us stick them with a needle (twice). When given a chance to share this money with someone else in the lab being similarly tortured, we found that empathy predicted generosity towards a stranger. Yes, these people were generous with their hard-earned blood money! And they couldn't even see the people to whom they were giving money, it was all done by computer. Their generosity didn't even merit a thank you or a smile in return. Empathy made them generous anyway.

At the end of the experiment, we also asked if participants wanted to donate some of their money to the American Red Cross or St. Jude Hospital. Many of them did, even those who had already given money away to a stranger in the lab. We were surprised to discover that some people donated all of their remaining money to charity. Can you guess who responded the most to the emotional video? Yes, women released more oxytocin and were more empathic than men. They also gave twice as much to charity.

So, we cry at movies because the oxytocin in the human brain is imperfectly tuned. It does not differentiate between actual human beings and flickering images of human beings. Either one is enough to kick oxytocin into high gear and impel our empathy. And it reveals why men like me avoid chick flicks--we don't want to be seen bawling when the guy finally gets the girl.

Well, if Clint Eastwood can cry in Million Dollar Baby, I guess I can shed a couple of tears, too.

Pampered Pooch Syndrome

Paul J. Zak — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:32:37 +0000

Several years ago I stopped the execution of Teddy by adopting him. Sorry, "put down" is the polite euphemism. Today, Teddy is 98 in human-equivalent years. Inevitably, I will soon have to decide if I should spend thousands of dollars to extend Teddy's life when he undoubtedly begins to suffer from cancer, kidney failure, or some other ghastly malady. In public lectures, I have often asked who would spend $5,000 to save their dog's life. Typically, one-half of the hands go up. When I ask who would spend $10,000, many hands remain up. Why do we care so much about our dogs?

To the best of our knowledge, about 15,000 years ago people in East Asia domesticated wolves to guard huts, help with the hunt, and to be companions. Selective breeding has produced the roughly 400 types of dogs today. A 2004 study by the American Animal Hospital Association reported that 94% of U.S. pet owners believe their pets have human traits. If recent reports on tabloid TV and my own experiences living in Southern California are any guide, many people, including media magnets like Britney, Paris, and Jessica have gone farther, dressing up their dogs in human clothes and taking them on "dates." Yipes!

Why do we pamper our pooches so much? This is where science can help us. You may remember from earlier posts that oxytocin has two primary characteristics: hungry and fuzzy. Hungry means it is looking for attachment figures. The brains of highly social animals like humans have evolved to make caring for others rewarding, and we are on the lookout for rewards. Fuzzy means the oxytocin-addled brain does not pick attachment targets very precisely. Because dogs are around us, they are available attachment targets.

Some evidence: a 2003 study in the Veterinary Journal showed then when people pet a dog, oxytocin is released in the dog and in the human. The uniquely mammalian hormone oxytocin facilitates that hallmark of mammals, care for offspring, by activating reward circuits in the brain. An earlier post described research from my lab showing that touch between humans primes the brain to release oxytocin and causes people to sacrifice money to help a stranger. Dogs love to be pet. The oxytocin response leads to reciprocal rewards, reinforcing human-to-dog bonding.

Now look at who we see "babying" dogs. Often, these are successful young women who have delayed reproduction due to career opportunities or an extended period of mate selection. The dogs they choose to dress up and take out are tiny Chihuahua-type dependents. Huum, perhaps you're seeing a pattern: delayed reproduction has moved the nurturing oxytocin system to seek an infant-substitute as a target. But, we can all be oxytocin-ed into treating our dogs like our children. Oxytocin makes us treat strangers like family, and dogs like humans. It's that powerful.

As I mentioned in an earlier post oxytocin is also released when we are shown trust by another person. In my experiments, this occurs when one person gives money to another person. Classic research in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography showed that people with dogs are judged to be more trustworthy. Why? Dogs are very dependent on humans, so one cannot have a healthy dog without being a dependable person. It is likely that dog owners have greater oxytocin levels than non-dog owners due to repeated petting, providing a physiologic rationale for our have-a-dog-seem-more-trustworthy intuition. When I walk Teddy, children and adults alike approach me to pet him, and a conversation almost always begins. Conversation is the basis for building social relationships.

Oxytocin also reduces stress levels and makes us more likely to reach out toward others. Let's be honest, it is hard to be a grump when you walk in the house and your dog is happy to see you. This is why many hospitals use "canine therapy" to cheer up patients.

Dogs are our companions, and make us happier, healthier and nicer people. That's a neat trick for a wolf's relative. So what if we sometime dress them up like humans. Yes, dogs really are our best friends. So how much would you pay to keep your dog alive?

Super-Trusters

Paul J. Zak — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:31:16 +0000

Let me tell you about a patient I know, Ms. X. She is in her mid forties, a bit overweight and somewhat disheveled. She has four children with three different fathers, only one of whom she had married and then divorced. She has average intelligence, but is socially awkward. Maybe awkward is not the word. Forward is better, or inappropriately intimate. She commonly reveals lots of personal information that most of us would be embarrassed to tell our best friends, therapists, or priests. She doesn't seem to sense the expressions of disgust people have when she describes her sexual life or recent medical exam.

When tested, Ms. X is impulsive, socially fearless, and terrible at "reading" people. More to the point, she does not change her behavior as she interacts with different people: friends and strangers, old and young, kindly or malicious, all are treated as intimates. Unfortunately, this means that Ms. X is often a target for predation. She has lost significant amounts of money to those she trusted that she should not have.

Ms. X has a rare genetic disorder that has damaged a single structure in her brain. If you were to meet her, she would appear at first as "normal" as any one of us. Yet, she cannot do what most of do quickly and effortlessly: assess the moral character of those we meet.

Think about it: nearly every day you interact with a sea of strangers. Most of them have intentions that are neutral or considerate toward you. Some small subset of people cannot be trusted, and we watch these people carefully to maintain our safety. Indeed, we spend considerable energy teaching our children to beware of strangers. We have to do this because while actual violence due to strangers is rare, when it occurs it can be catastrophic.

The teaching of children is meant to tune their oxytocin systems. Because most children begin their lives with loving attachments to adult caregivers, the oxytocin system rapidly develops to facilitate reciprocal love: you are nice to me and I'll be nice to you. Most children have some stranger anxiety, but adults work to appropriately tune this system. Uncle George or neighbor Sue or teacher Ann should, we intone, be treated like family; others you need to avoid. All parents know that we also use the fear response to get children to behave, from raised voices to time-outs to spankings; these tell children that adults can be scary as well as loving.

Ms. X does is missing the fear-processing regions of her brain. When she encounters new people, she is unable to adjust the love-fear, approach-withdraw spectrum that oxytocin modulates. Everyone is family to Ms. X. Patients with a spontaneous genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome also treat everyone as family.

Williams Syndrome occurs in 1 out of every 20,000 live births in the US. These patients are missing a suite of genes on chromosome 7, including one that codes for a gene called elastin. Elastin does what it sounds like, keeping tissues elastic. Williams Syndrome patients typically have drawn or "elfin" facial features, heart defects, and moderate mental retardation. They are also hyper-acute to sounds, typically love soft music, and are unconditionally trusting. Others with congenital disorders like autism or Down Syndrome do not typically trust everyone, but Williams Syndrome patients do for reasons not yet fully understood.

It is likely that oxtytocin is running in high gear in Williams Syndrome patients: they are hyper-responsive to the smallest opportunity for social interaction. They seek it out, invade your physical space, and invade your emotional space. They are super-trusters. Like Ms. X, this is clearly maladaptive because predators are out there. Predators do serve a valuable function-they keep us on our neural toes. That is, they allow us to tune oxytocin so that we are watchful and careful when the situation calls for this, and cooperative and reciprocal otherwise.

Both Ms. X and Williams Syndrome patients reveal how powerful oxytocin can be when it is unregulated by cognitive brain regions. Fear is the flip-side of trust, and balancing these is essential for the social species Homo sapiens.

How to Run a Con

Paul J. Zak — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:16:41 +0000

When I was in high school, I took a job at an ARCO gas station on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, California. At the time, I drove a 1967 Mustang hotrod and thought I might pick up some tips and cheap parts by working around cars after school. You see a lot of interesting things working the night shift in a sketchy neighborhood. I constantly saw people making bad decisions: drunk drivers, gang members, unhappy cops, and con men. In fact, I was the victim of a classic con called "The Pigeon Drop." If we humans have such big brains, how can we get conned?

Here's what happened to me. One slow Sunday afternoon, a man comes out of the restroom with a pearl necklace in his hand. "Found it on the bathroom floor" he says. He followed with "Geez, looks nice-I wonder who lost it?" Just then, the gas station's phone rings and a man asked if anyone found a pearl necklace that he had purchased as a gift for his wife. He offers a $200 reward for the necklace's return. I tell him that a customer found it. "OK" he says, "I'll be there in 30 minutes." I give him the ARCO address and he gives me his phone number. The man who found the necklace hears all this but tells me he is running late for a job interview and cannot wait for the other man to arrive.

Huum, what to do? The man with the necklace said "Why don't I give you the necklace and we split the reward?" The greed-o-meter goes off in my head, suppressing all rational thought. "Yeah, you give me the necklace to hold and I'll give you $100" I suggest. He agrees. Since high school kids working at gas stations don't have $100, I take money out of the cash drawer to complete the transaction.

You can guess the rest. The man with the lost necklace doesn't come and never answers my many calls. After about an hour, I call the police. The "pearl" necklace was a two dollar fake and the number I was calling went to a pay phone nearby. I had to fess up to my boss and pay back the money with my next paycheck.

Why did this con work? Let's do some neuroscience. While the primary motivator from my perspective was greed, the pigeon drop cleverly engages our oxytocin system. If you've been reading The Moral Molecule, you will remember oxytocin from earlier posts on robot brides, couchsurfing, and why we touch each other. Social interactions engage a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown--even with strangers.

The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of oxytocin and its effect on other parts of the brain, we feel good when we help others--this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. "I need your help" is a potent stimulus for action.

Let's break down the oxytocin hooks that caused me to get conned. The first hook was the desire to help the man get this nice gift to his undoubtedly sweet wife. He needed my help. The second was the man who wanted to give the necklace back but who was late for his interview. If only I could help him get that job. My oxytocin system was in high-gear, urging me to reciprocate the trust I had been shown and help these people. Only then does greed kick in. Hey, I can help both men, make a wife happy, and walk away with $100-what a deal! Yes, suspend all suspicion and give up the cash. Cons often work better when a confederate poses as an innocent bystander who "just wants to help." We are social creatures after all, and we often do what others think we should do.

My laboratory studies of college students have shown that two percent of them are "unconditional nonreciprocators." That's a mouthful! This means that when they are trusted they don't return money to person who trusted them (these experiments are described in my post on neuroeconomics). What do we really call these people in my lab? Bastards. Yup, not folks that you would want to have a cup of coffee with. These people are deceptive, don't stay in relationships long, and enjoy taking advantage of others. Psychologically, they resemble sociopaths. Bastards are dangerous because they have learned how to simulate trustworthiness. My research has demonstrated that they have highly dysregulated oxytocin systems.

Oxytocin's effects are modulated by our large prefrontal cortex that houses the "executive" regions of the brain. Oxytocin is all emotion, while the prefrontal cortex is deliberative. I hope that by knowing that your oxytocin system can easily be turned on, you will be less vulnerable to people who might want to take advantage of you. But, don't be too vigilant: two percent of bastards isn't so bad. And, oxytocin causes us to empathize with others, the key to building social relationships. Russian playwright Anton Chekov said "You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible." I'd say that's about right-just watch for the occasional con.

Watch Skeptics Society founder Michael Shermer run the classic pigeon drop on the street in Westwood, CA.

The Oxytocin Cure

Paul J. Zak — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:54:31 +0000

I received a call several months ago from Ethel, a middle-aged woman living in Northern England. Ethel had read an interview I did with The Times of London about the clinical uses of oxytocin. The reporter who interviewed me kept asking if oxytocin would cure shyness, or autism, or other psychiatric disorders. I repeatedly said a "cure" was not possible for these disorders as oxytocin is only one of the contributing causes, and that simply replacing oxytocin in patients would have only limited effects. Of course, "cure" appeared in the article and a frenzy of media coverage led to Ethel's call to me.

Ethel called seeking help for her daughter who had such severe social anxiety that she had trouble at her job. Because I had developed an oxytocin nasal spray for use in my research studies, The Times wanted to hear about its possible clinical applications. "Was this shyness spray available in the UK?" Nope. Several clinical trials are underway in the US, but there was no easy way to get intranasal oxytocin in the UK. I told Ethel I could not diagnose or treat her daughter, but I could tell her about how the research we are doing at the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies may help those who are socially anxious. The same caveat holds for you: this is my opinion about how to use our research but should not be considered a clinical treatment regime if you suffer from social anxiety.

To be honest, the intensive media coverage about oxytocin since my lab discovered that it mediates trusting behaviors in humans in 2004 has worried me. Oxytocin is a media darling. My staff discovered that in the first nine months of 2008, the TV, radio, and print interviews I had done (and could track) were seen by 84 million people worldwide. Wow! And that number assumes each story is seen only once. With online posting, blogs, and the newswires, many of those stories were seen two or three times above the stated circulation. Even a recent meeting I attended sponsored by the National Institutes of Health produced a bevy of psychiatrists around me wanting to know how they could get a hold of oxytocin inhalers for their patients. Although I'm normally an oxytocin cheerleader, I had to restrain the rumpus.

In this article I want to cut through the hype and focus on what we know scientifically about oxytocin and how you can use it. The human behavioral research on oxytocin is still in its infancy, so findings are in still in flux. Still, I think there is enough solid evidence for a number of recommendations to be given.

The first important finding is that 98% of the hundreds of people I have tested release oxytocin properly when they are trusted. The human oxytocin system motivates a desire to interact with others, and those whose brains release a spike of oxytocin reciprocate the trust they have been shown. Now, the other 2% of people I have tested have dysregulated oxytocin-typically high and non-responsive to signals of trust. These people do not develop strong attachments to others.

In research with Dr. Elizabeth Hoge and her colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, I have also found those diagnosed with social anxiety disorder have high and dysregulated oxytocin. You can read the research paper reporting these results here. A quick neuroscience digression on what this means. The brain seeks contrast-on or off-this must be clear to affect behavior. In healthy people, oxytocin is a fast on-off switch; it is released a couple of seconds after a stimulus. The release of oxytocin signals that social interactions are safe. In patients who have the oxytocin switch stuck in the on position, there is no contrast. This means oxytocin is not providing the brain with a clear signal to guide behavior. As a result, high oxytocin does not result in increased sociality, it means the social factors that typically cause oxytocin release are behaviorally impotent.

So, should those with impairments in social behaviors be dosed with additional oxytocin? The "stuck on high" profile of these patients indicates that they may have a problem with oxytocin receptors. That is, oxytocin is not binding to the receptors and producing an "off" signal for oxytocin production. Increasing oxytocin in these patients is likely to have little or no effect. Having said that, I have infused oxytocin safely into hundreds of people and oxytocin infusion is unlikely to hurt anyone. Several groups are now testing whether flooding the brain with oxytocin alleviates psychiatric symptoms.

Unlike those with social anxiety disorder, those with autism have been shown to have low levels of oxytocin. Dr. Eric Hollander at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City has had modest success in reducing stereotyped behaviors and improving sociality when giving high-functioning autistics intranasal oxytocin. Brain imaging studies have shown that oxytocin reduces the activity of brain regions that produce anxiety. Those with autism and other social disorders are often highly anxious and when these patients are given oxytocin anxiety wanes.

So what can people do to ease their social anxiety short of putting oxytocin up their noses? There are ways to coax your brain into releasing more of its own oxytocin. These include
1. Use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), drugs typically used to treat depression, such as Prozac or Paxil. Serotonin and oxytocin co-release in the brain so increasing serotonin likely increases oxytocin, too. Speak to a psychiatrist about this.
2. Get a dog. Petting a dog releases oxytocin in the dog and the human. Starting with a canine companion can help some patients become more comfortable with human companionship.
3. In research my lab published in September, 2008, we have shown that moderate-pressure massage primes the brain to release oxytocin and motivates interactions with strangers.

After I went through this list with Ethel, she told me something amazing. Her daughter had recently quit her corporate job-she couldn't take the stressful social interactions. She was now attending school to be a massage therapist. Her daughter said that the only time she felt that she could comfortably connect to another person was while giving a massage. To my mind, this is diagnostic of an oxytocin dysfunction.

Will we cure shyness, social anxiety or autism with oxytocin? Unfortunately, no. We are, though, gaining important insights into how the human brain makes us social creatures that we are, and new ways to apply this knowledge to patients.