Hormone nasal spray makes you a sucker
Previous studies have shown that participants in "trust games" took greater risks with their money after inhaling the hormone via a nasal spray.LinkIn this latest experiment, published in the journal Neuron, the researchers asked volunteer subjects to take part in a similar game.
They were each asked to contribute money to a human trustee, with the understanding that the trustee would invest the money and decide whether to return the profits, or betray the subject's trust by keeping the profit.
The subjects also received doses of oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray.
After investing, the participants were given feedback on the trustees. When their trust was abused, the placebo group became less willing to invest. But the players who had been given oxytocin continued to trust their money with a broker.
"We can see that oxytocin has a very powerful effect," said Dr Baumgartner.
"The subjects who received oxytocin demonstrated no change in their trust behaviour, even though they were informed that their trust was not honoured in roughly 50% of cases."
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Beware of people offering free perfume samples outside of polling places. ("Vote for General DeathSlasher of the Eternal Crusade party? Why yes!")
Sigh. We not only need a privacy law, we need a Neurochemical Intrusion ban.
Coming to a casino vent near you...
or possibly already there?
Holy shit, imagine this in a casino. They could get you to gamble everything away just by saying, "Hey, so you lost $25K. Put your house deed on black 13."
Eeeerie.
Coming to an airport near you. And stores where salespeople work on commission. Car dealerships.
Limitless.
Eeeerie.Casinos are the least of our worries.
I know half a dozen recruiters who would line up for this.
"Sergeant, yes SERGEANT!"
The perfect cologne for sleezy used car salesmen everywhere...
The effects of oxytocin are well known. In fact,your brain produces it when you are infatuated with someone or something, which explains the often clouded judgement.
Serious question:
What if interrogators simply dosed subjects with oxytocin until they trusted them enough to tell the truth?
Is it torture? No pain, stress, intimidation or deprivation of any sort was applied. And the information you get might actually be accurate, because the subject is telling you in trust.
Was the subject even coerced to act or speak against their will?
Typically, interrogations (especially "harsh" ones) leave the subject aware they acted against their will.
How do you classify methods that use a "trust-altering" substance?
Date rape officah? It inna rape when she got sum oxywhatchima-callit in her noses.
@9 - That's probably the first place we'll see it in the mainstream press. Sad.
WEIGHTEDCOMPANIONCUBE #8
'chemically coerced'?
We're probably going to be seeing a lot more of this in the near future, as we gain greater understanding of brain chemistry.
Casino was my first thought. Not that those people need much encouragement; my mother-in-law has been losing money in those places for forty years and still can't get enough.
Available in 2012? This is being hawked now, and has been for awhile.
http://www.verolabs.com/
http://www.oxycalm.com/t3/index.shtml
Etc.
Maybe the magical word "Zurich" will give these folks a boost in sales...
Made me think of Envoy from the Wildcard series.
I thought of the US election. The republicans need a lot of blind trust right now. Well from the non Christian Right anyhow. Those guys have blind trust down pat.
doesn't oxytocin induce labor contractions during birth?
@Poops: That's pitocin.
Pitocin is the trade name for synthetic oxytocin. Oxytocin is indeed released naturally by the body during labour, and also by the nipples during breastfeeding.
Arrested Development's Teamocil?
@Chris - No, more likely it's Boston Legal's oxytocin. When they are not preaching liberalism they have their science right. Actually, even when they are preaching liberalism they have their facts straight (in that if you are paying any attention to the fact, you have a liberal bias...)
hah, I actually knew what oxytocin was before reading the article.
yay for a university education!
yay for a university education!
I'm going to start putting that on my resume, then! Fie on those who require four-year degrees, I know what oxytocin is. :D
fear not, the power of mind and will remains paramount. This can tip the unwitting but any person not willing to be fooled from the onset cannot be deluded anymore than the fundamentally unwilling can be hypnotized.
A sucker's made every minute?
How long until someone proposes to spray Iraq?
Apparently a company called vero labs sells an oxytocin body spray called "liquid trust". Which by is very name makes it(or the person doing the spraying)untrustworthy.
Wow, the Verolabs website is hilarious. You'd think it was a joke. I mean, really, it's a website straight out of GTA4. Here's an excerpt from the testimonials:
"I just wanted to say thank you......I was stuck in the same old job, barely making ends meet...I tried Liquid Trust and I finally got a very nice corporate job...While I was using Liquid Trust my relationship with my girlfriend wasn't going well. Without really knowing what was going on it went from bad to wonderful.
Brainwash your way to wealth and happiness!!!
@23: We are all to some extent unwitting. Nobody is on guard all the time and most people are not on guard at all, ever. The difference between a good salesman and a wildly successful one can be extremely subtle. Watch them both and you can't find it. But the results are significant.
This is not a mass mind control technique, but small influences over large numbers of people can yield profound results. I won't worry about this unless someone finds a reason and a method for putting it into a substance that people are already snorting up their noses. The implications are interesting to think about though.
To Stefan (#1) who said:
We not only need a privacy law, we need a Neurochemical Intrusion ban.
You could call second hand smoke that. Probably would be easy enough to tack on to an anti-smoking law, which I believe is handled on the city/county/state level, right?
This is the kind of thing that makes me think that we as a species are doomed in the long run. MegaCorp won't rest until they've finally devised the perfect methods for turning us into sheep.
This sort of technology is still in its infancy. Look at how far our technology has progressed in the last century, then imagine how far it will progress in the next century. I'm glad I'm alive now instead of a century from now.
Or maybe it's 20 years from now.
Ah, science-fiction in the real world! I'm thinking about Stanislaw Lem's Futurological Congress...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Futurological_Congress
For a brief moment I thought it read an "oxycontin" spray. That would just cause me to trust whoever had more oxycontin.
These are not the hormones you're looking for.
Nobody is on guard all the time
Ross, you must not have PTSD (which appears to be the disease of the week here at BB). PTSD can cause hypervigilance (see Mad-Eye Moody). It is literally impossible to surprise me, and if you tried it, you could lose a limb.
I@34.
I on the other hand am unnaturally credulous. Zero sales resistance. Couldn't recognize a lie if it walked up to me in broad daylight with 'LIE' written on its forehead. Took me a decade to figure out that my best friend was gay, and was the burglar who drove me out of my apartment. This might be laziness, denial, abnormal psychology or plain garden variety stupid.
You seem very happy-go-lucky. I'm quite open, but very suspicious. If you say, "How are you?", I'll ask you to define 'how' before I answer.
I have coffee, music, interesting work and a way to argue with people who can't punch me. What's not to be happy about?
This whole oxytocin issue is interesting in an academic way but I suspect its practical applications will be severely limited by the need to get the stuff into people to have an effect. It bears watching, though.
I suspect its practical applications will be severely limited by the need to get the stuff into people to have an effect.
Ah, but remember scopolamine. Blow a little powder in someone's face or paint it on a hooker's nipple and your victim is in the bag. "You like that baby? Let's go shopping at Neiman-Marcus."
Scopolamine is so totally 2007.
What I still fail to understand about this study is how the Oxytocin administered to subjects passes through the blood-brain barrier. If administered as a nasal spray it could rapidly enter the bloodstream (whereas if consumed orally it would be broken down in the stomach) so the Oxytocin could certainly be affecting non-brain emotional systems such as adrenal glands but I fail to see how it directly affects the brain.
Anyone have a guess?
Looks like the same study Cory mentioned in 2005: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/06/01/oxytocin-nasal-spray.html
I'm guessing the blood/brain barrier thing isn't an issue because oxytocin is a hormone, which acts as a neurotransmitter. But because it's a hormone, it's metabolised by the thyroid, which is conveniently located outside the brain.
That's my guess, and it's based on a handful of undergrad neurology classes, a few moons ago. Feel free to correct me, anyone.
My question: I seem to recall a study a few years ago which found that women produce x times more oxytocin upon orgasm then men do. It made a hell of a lot of sense at the time, (disclosure: I'm a lady) but I can't find any info on that study, or any study like it studying the amount of plasma oxytocin, by gender, post-nookie. Anyone?