‘Love hormone’ oxytocin can boost mistrust, study finds
February 15, 2011
Lorianna De Giorgio
TORONTO STAR
The hormone oxytocin, regularly thought of as the so-called “love hormone,” doesn’t uniformly build trust and pro-social behaviour, according to new research out of New York.
In a study in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience presented in January at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Texas, researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found that oxytocin can amplify a person’s behavioural traits, whether positive or negative.
The study counters recognized research that the hormone builds only love and positive pair bonding, the study’s lead researcher, psychologist Jennifer Bartz, told the Star.
“It’s not a love hormone for (everybody),” she said.
Bartz and her team investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin on cooperation and trust in people with borderline personality disorder (BPD), which is marked by interpersonal instability, impulsive aggression, and difficulties with cooperation.
Study participants played a social dilemma game with a partner. Results showed that oxytocin produced different effects in those with BDP disorders, including decreasing trust and the probability of cooperative responses, Bartz said.
Further research by Bartz, focusing on individual differences of people with BPD, found that the results were driven by those with the anxious and rejection-dominated traits.
“These data suggest that oxytocin does not uniformly facilitate trust and pro-social behaviour in humans; indeed, oxytocin may impede trust and pro-social behaviour depending on chronic interpersonal insecurities, and/or possible neurochemical differences in the oxytocin system,” the authors write in Oxytocin Can Hinder Trust and Cooperation in Borderline Personality Disorder.
The research is a sharp contrast to the universal belief that oxytocin — not to be confused with the drug OxyContin — is the “cuddle chemical.”
Scientists have long linked oxytocin to maternal care, sexual pleasure and overall positive feelings.
In recent years an intranasal version of the drug has been studied in clinical trials as a possible treatment for behavioural disorders, including autism.
In the January 2010 study Promoting social behaviour with oxytocin in high-functioning autism spectrum disorders, researchers from France tested the behavioural effects of oxytocin in people with autism.
In a series of tests, the researchers found that after oxytocin inhalation, participants reported enhanced feelings of trust.
“Thus, under oxytocin, patients respond more strongly to others and exhibit more appropriate social behaviour and affect, suggesting a therapeutic potential of oxytocin through its action on a core dimension of autism,” the authors reported.
At the very least, Bartz hopes her study will raise some questions about the hormone before it becomes readily available in the U.S. or Canada.
“It raises questions about oxytocin. We hope to understand how oxytocin influences certain behaviours,” she said. “If it is given as a treatment. . . who might benefit (from it)?”
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