Five Surprising Ways Oxytocin Shapes Your Social

Life
By Jeremy Adam Smith
This essay originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of
the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
Its been called the cuddle hormone, the holiday hormone, the moral
molecule, and morebut new research suggests that oxytocin needs
some new nicknames. Like maybe the conformity hormone, or perhaps
the America-Number-One! molecule.
Where does this many-monikered neuropeptide come from? Scientists
first found it in mothers, whose bodies flood with oxytocin during
childbirth and breastfeedingwhich presumably helps Mom somehow
decide that its better to care for a poopy, colicky infant than to chuck it
out the nearest window. And, indeed, one study found a shot of oxytocin
more rewarding to rat-mommies than a snort of cocaine. (Dont worry,
Dads: You can get some of that oxytocin action,
too.)
As time went on, researchers found oxytocin
playing a role in all kinds of happy occasions,
from social activities (recognizing faces at a
party) to more intimate ones (achieving orgasm
with someone you met at that party). Lab tests
found that oxytocin made people more trusting,
more generous, and more gregarious. Thus
oxytocin seemed, for a little while, to deserve its
glut of touchy-feely nicknames.
In the past few years, however, new research is
finding that oxytocin doesnt just bond us to
mothers, lovers, and friendsit also seems to
play a role in excluding others from that bond. (And perhaps, as one
scientist has argued, wanting what other people have.) This just makes
oxytocin more interestingand it points to a fundamental, constantly
recurring fact about human beings: Many of the same biological and
psychological mechanisms that bond us together can also tear us apart.
It all depends on the social and emotional context.
The research is ongoing, and scientists are still debating how their
findings fit together. But heres a round-up of recent discoveries about

oxytocin, boiled down to five cuddly and not-so-cuddly ways it might

shape your social life.
1. It keeps you loyal to your loveand leery of the rest.
Men are dogs, right? They just want one thing, huh? Well, not if theyre
jacked up on oxytocin. In fact, if theyre already in a loving relationship,
they can become downright unfriendly to the opposite sex, according to
a 2012 study in the Journal of
Neuroscience.
Fifty-seven hot-blooded,
heterosexual German men
sprayed either oxytocin or a
placebo up their own noses
and were then sent, alone, into
a small room with beautiful
young woman holding a
clipboard. The questions she
asked were irrelevant; instead,
these scientists were measuring how close the men stood to the
temptress as the two talked. (Heres a tip: When you walk into a lab,
never trust an experimental psychologistthose people areliars).
It turned out that if an oxytocin-snorting guy was already in a
relationship, boyfriend actually kept his distancefrom his lovely
interlocutor. Partnered guys who sniffed the placebo leaned in a little
closer than their partners might have liked. The single guys, meanwhile,
were probably too busy staring down her cleavage to hear the
questions.
So oxytocin doesnt simply make you all lovey-dovey, suggests this
study. It also keeps you faithful to your partnerand wary of her rivals.
2. It makes us poor winners and sore losers.
Lets say youre playing a nice friendly game of poker. You like the
people youre playing with, youre enjoying yourself. Until you start
losing. The bastard on the other side of the table shows four of a kind or
a full house every single time, and you cant even get a pair. Damn him;
he must be cheating. But then one hand later, you lay down a straight
flush and take all his chips. Are you gracious? Hell, no. You light a cigar
and gloat like a goat.

You might be surprised to hear that

your posterior pituitary gland was
probably secreting oxytocin through
every step of that game, from the
good feeling to the envy to the
taunting. Quite a few studies have
found that people dosed with oxytocin
are more likely to spite their
opponents when playing games of
chance, which has led Andrew Kemp of
the University of Sydney to argue that oxytocin plays a role in what
psychologists call approach-related emotionsones that have to do
with wanting something from someone.
What about the friend who lost the game? You may have just lost that
particular poker buddyand again, oxytocin may play a role. If your
friend is a mouse, anyway.
Researchers at Northwestern University put three groups of cute, gentle
mice in a cage with another pack of crazy, aggressive ones. One of those
three groups of mice had their oxytocin receptors removed. The other
group had more receptors than usual. The third was normal.
All three groups were equally mauled by the psycho-mice, until the
researchers rescued them. Their whiskers twitched, their pink noses
happily wiggledthose mice thought they were safe.
But then, six hours later, scientists put the three groups back in the cage
with the psycho-mice. (Remember, folks: Never trust an experimental
psychologist.) Guess what? The oxytocin-free mice didnt remember the
mauling and didnt know to run away, poor little guys. The other two
groups scattered in fear.
The study, published in July by Nature Neuroscience, suggests that
oxytocin strengthens social memories in the lateral septum, which has
the highest oxytocin levels in the brains of both mice and humans. Yes,
oxytocin is involved with attachment and social bonding, but that neural
system can get tangled up in fear and anxietyit gives us a visceral
memory of those who have harmed us, as well as those who have cared
for us.

The takeaway? If you beat the pants off your friends at poker and you
want to play with them again, dont gloatbut if you do, be sure to first
remove their oxytocin receptors.
3. It makes you cooperative with your groupsometimes a little
too cooperative.
Now, say youre a single male chimpanzee. You enjoy sleeping in trees,
attacking rival males, mating with random females, and eating the bugs
you find in the fur of your friends.
Those bugs are tasty, but according to
a study published in March, theres at
least one more benefit from grooming
your chimp buddies: an oxytocin boost.
Research finds that this reduces any
stress that may have accumulated
during a busy day of vying for the
alpha male position.
Humans generally engage in other
kinds of affiliative behaviors. I like to
see movies with my human friends
but, hey, if you like eating bugs off yours, I for one will not judge you.
Because just like other primates, studies find that oxytocin plays a
critical role in helping us become more relaxed, extroverted, generous,
and cooperative in our groups.
Sounds utopian, doesnt it? Perhaps a little too utopian. Mirre Stallen and
colleagues dosed Dutch study participants with either oxytocin or a
placebo, and then divided them into groups of six. Each group watched a
series of images and the individuals in the group voted for which ones
they found most attractive. The results: The oxytocin-influenced
participants tended to go with the flow of their group, while the placebodosed participants hewed to their own individualistic path.
The implication: Oxytocin is great when youre out with friends or solving
a problem with coworkers. It might not be so great when you need to
pick a leader or make some other big decision that requires
independence, not conformity.
4. It makes you see your group as better than other groups (to a
point).

So far, dear reader, Ive cast you in the roles of a hot-blooded lover, a
poker-playing sore loser, and a chimp.
Now lets pretend youre Dutch.
If a group of researchers in the
Netherlands dosed you with oxytocin,
you might find yourself developing a
sudden affection for windmills, tulips,
totally legal soft drugs and prostitution,
and tall, blonde, multilingual bankers.
You might also decide that the life of a
Dutch person is more valuable than that of, say, a Canadian.
Thats exactly what Carsten De Dreu found in 2011. His study was
sternly criticized for overstating its effectsand yet its not the only one
to find that oxytocin seems to make us really, really, really like our own
groups, even at the expense of other groups.
But loving our own groups doesnt necessarily lead to hating other
groups. Paul Zaks lab at Claremont Graduate University has taken blood
samples from members of campus groups like ROTC cadets and dance
troupes. Then the groups perform some typical ritualthe cadets march,
the dancers learn new steps togetherand Zak and his minions draw
more blood.
Zak isnt a vampire. Hes not even an experimental psychologist; hes
actually an economist, so obviously you can trust him (right?). Being an
economist means that his experiments always come down to money. He
had those cadets and dancers play a series of trust and sharing games
that ultimately earned them an average of $56 in real money. At the
end, they could donate money to their own group or to a random charity.
Thats where things get nuanced. Yes, performing that ritual increased
oxytocin counts by about 10 or 11 percent, but did cadets start favoring
their team more than others? Across all 400 participants in his studies
this number of blood samples must make Zak the bloodiest economist in
historythe increased oxytocin did not predict where they donated their
money.
But there are some caveats. The more marginalized a group felt on
campus, the more likely they were to circle their wagons and favor their
own in-group (presumably, the band nerds werent as generous as frat
boys to other groups). The effects of oxytocin could also change
depending on what else was happening in the body: If Zaks lab induced

stress or acted to jack up testosterone, participants could, in fact,

become more aggressive toward out-groups.
Which leads us to our final item
5. It does make us trustingbut not gullible.
The research Ive described so far probably sounds pretty great. If youre
a dictator. Or Don Draperthink about all the defective products you
could sell by blowing oxytocin into the
air.
Face it, we all want to rule the world
sometimes, and I can certainly
understand the desire to keep
everyone else docile, compliant, and
hostile to out-groups. The drug soma
from Aldous Huxleys Brave New World
probably contained some oxytocin. The
two-minutes hate in Orwells 1984 probably got the oxytocin pumping as
well.
But before you start getting excited, you wanna-be dictator, theres one
more bit of new research you should know about: Studies find that we
can cognitively override oxytocin-driven impulses.
Several experiments suggest that while oxytocin makes us more
generous and trusting, it does not make us more gullible. If we have
evidence that someone is deceiving us, we can withdraw trust and
resources no matter how high we are on oxytocin. If we think someone
doesnt have our best interests at heart, we can end the relationship
with a person or a group.
But the effects go beyond self-interest. We may like being part of a
group so much that were willing to hurt others just to stay in it. The
desire to belong can compromise our ethical and empathic instincts.
Thats when the conscious mind needs to come online and put the
brakes on the pleasures of social affliliation.
Your mom was right about keeping good company, says Paul Zak: We
do have to be in the right environment to be virtuous. That might be
the bottom line with oxytocinand, indeed, any neural system that
bonds us to other people: The impulse to join and conform in a group is

always very strong in human primates, and so the key lies in choosing
the right groupand then not getting carried away.
Jeremy Adam Smith is producer and editor of the Greater Good
Science Centers website. He is also the author or coeditor of four
books, including The Daddy Shift, Rad Dad, and The Compassionate
Instinct.