Oxytocin and Trust
Tyler Shields
New York University
The fundamental ability to form relationships with attachment involved, is truly indispensable in terms of forming and having proper human social relationships. One emotion that is extremely important to have in order to take part of these important types of relationships include: trust. Trust is extremely important for various reasons. It is “truly indispensable” in friendship, love, families and organizations. Trust- which pervades human societies, plays a key role in important endeavors in various dimensions of life; these dimensions include economic exchange as well as certain parts of politics. The need for trust in these examples along with others are crucial for various reasons; which include the issues that come with exhibiting lack of trust in particular situations. For example: in absence of trust among trading partners, market transaction will be much more likely to breakdown. In the absence of trust in a country’s institution and leader relationships, political legitimacy is also much more likely to break down. (Kosfeld, 2005) Research has indicated that trust plays a major roll in economic, political, and social types of success.
Although, the dimension of trust impacts societal behavior in many ways, it is important to explore the biological basis of this emotion in order to gain a meaningful understanding.
There is actually a “moral molecule” as Paul Zak would call it. The “moral molecule” is –Oxytocin. Oxytocin is a neuropeptide, has been found to mediate trust, along with various other social emotions.
Neuropeptides are small molecules that help neurons communicate with one another. They represent the lar...
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“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair. - Anonymous”. If you have ever felt isolated from society, or feel that you are constantly begging for the mercy of your own subconscious, then you know the pain accompanied by expending trust. It is imperative for humanity to cultivate trust; if we lose it, we will simply degenerate into insanity. For instance, in the texts “On the Sidewalk Bleeding”, “The Tell-Tale Heart” as well as “The Landlady”, characters were tasked with uncovering the role that trust plays in conquering challenges. In doing so, they also suffered through fluctuating degrees of tailored hardships.
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Vasopressin has long been implicated in the memory of faces and is thus useful for research on recall and recognition of faces. Because of the role vasopressin plays in relationships, it is important to consider its value in affecting romantic relationships and perception of romantic partner's faces. In a study by Thompson and colleagues (2004) researchers looked at how vasopressin administration affects responses to happy, angry and neutral faces in terms of attention, and arousal and physiological measures like corrugator supercilii electromyograms (EMG), heart rate and skin conductance (Thompson, Gupta, Miller, Mills, & Orr, 2004). This was based on previous experiments with the effect of oxytocin on facial perception. Neutral faces were found to elicit higher responses in the EMG. They argued that because the faces were ambiguous having been taken from Paul Ekman's series of faces, vasopressin may have lead participants to view those neutral faces in a more aggressive way causing that increased EMG response. This study demonstrates that there is a link between vasopressin and facial recognition responses and further studies have added on to this. In a follow up study in 2006, they looked at vasopressin effects on perception of friendliness for both men and women on pictures of same sex faces. They found that the results of vasopressin depended on the gender as women were friendlier when presented with same sex faces (Thompson, George, Walton, Orr, & Benson, 2006). Interestingly, they did not repeat the study to see the effect of vasopressin between both sexes seeing opposite sex pictures. In men, however, the familiarity of the romantic partner when combined with insecurity would decrease the per...
The research conducted by Paul Zak about trust, morality, and oxytocin was very enlightening as well as, entertaining to watch the video. Watching the video first made reading his article easier to understand and follow. His research suggests that oxytocin is a moral molecule that makes people moral and trustworthy. The research conducted was very convincing and provides several different experiments to support the claim.
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Summary: Purpose of the study: According to Dinc and Gastmans, the purpose of this study is to look over empirical studies on the trust within the nurse- patient relationship and to analyze and synthesize the results.
Trust is the first one of the characteristics and is very important in our profession. Without trust in our profession we could not accomplish anything. In Chapter on...
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279-301.
... of long-term, monogamous relationships. Dr. Fisher believes that oxytocin and vasopressin interfere with the dopamine and norepinephrine pathways, which might explain why passionate love fades as attachment grows.” (Obringer).
They found that the intranasal administration of oxytocin increased the gazing behavior of female dogs which in turn significantly increased the oxytocin levels in their owners. Although they found it strange that only female dogs seemed to be effected by the oxytocin administration, they concluded that it likely had to do with the administered oxytocin affecting the male animals differently, causing them to be more vigilant. The paper then concluded that the results of their experiments supported the theory of a self-perpetuating oxytocin-meditated positive loop existing in human-dog relationships caused by
Gurtman, M. B. (1992b). Trust, distrust, and interpersonal problems: A circumplex analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 989-1002.
To address the argument, psychologists on both sides have conducted their own experiments in order to assert whether true altruism exists or not. Batson and colleagues argue yes, empathic reaction is a source of altruistic motivation. On the contrary, Cialdini and colleagues argue that egoism is a source for helping and that altruism does not exist. Although neither truly answered the original question, they came up with different viewpoints from similar results based on Batson’s original experiment.
of trust can begin to shape. “We have to recognize that there cannot be relationships unless there is
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