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Mad Neuroscience: The "Trust Me" Drug That Makes You Take Social Risks

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Mad Neuroscience: The "Trust Me" Drug That Makes You Take Social Risks
Topic: Society 10:57 am EDT, May 22, 2008

A study coming out tomorrow in the journal Neuron explains how this scenario is possible today, with just a small dose of the brain chemical oxytocin.

Oxytocin is a chemical associated with many of the "pleasurable" feelings you have, from basic trust, to love and orgasm. Researchers in Switzerland theorized that people playing social trust games might change their behaviors if given doses of oxytocin, since the chemical might artificially enhance their willingness to trust someone. Indeed, they were right: subjects dosed with Oxytocin were willing to trust people even after they'd been explicitly told that those people had behaved in untrustworthy ways in the past. People who had not been dosed did not trust the "untrustworthy" people.

Mad Neuroscience: The "Trust Me" Drug That Makes You Take Social Risks



 
 
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