Love the far one
Oxytocin urges to be generous with strangers
Scientists from the National University of Singapore have studied the effectiveness of oxytocin depending on social distance. It turned out that the hormone increases generosity towards strangers to a greater extent than to loved ones.
It is known that the hormone oxytocin produced by the brain plays an essential role in the formation of prosocial behavior, that is, beneficial to other people. This was deduced thanks to numerous experiments, the participants of which were often not familiar.
A group of psychologists and neuroscientists from Singapore decided to set up an experiment that showed how the hormone affects generosity depending on social distance. The aim of the study was to test to whom the participants are willing to donate their funds to a greater extent: loved ones, or those whom they never knew.
172 Chinese undergraduates were selected to participate, 75 of them women, aged 20 years. The participants were randomly divided into two groups. In the first group, participants were injected with oxytocin, and in the second all received a placebo. The hormone was injected with a nasal spray.
Then the selected participants of both groups were asked to choose eight people from their social environment and arrange them according to the level of closeness to themselves. For example, the number one, as the closest person, would be the mother, and the last number (100) would be a complete stranger. After that, each participant of both groups was asked to write down the names of people with a social distance equivalent to 1,2,3,5,10,20,50 and 100.
Then each participant was offered a thought experiment – to take a hypothetical amount (which increased by 20 yuan with each repetition of the study – from 130 to 290) and divide 260 yuan equally with someone from his entourage. Thus, each participant passed 72 tests – 9 choices for each of the 8 people from the social environment. Then the researchers chose a random trial and 5% of the money that the subject chose in this case was actually paid to them and people from their environment.
Then the scientists calculated how much money each subject "transferred" to each person from his environment. Statistical research has shown that oxytocin does not increase generosity to everyone. Part of the group that was injected with the hormone preferred to share money not with loved ones, but with complete strangers. Thus, social distance plays a significant role in experiments with the effect of the hormone on the human body.
Scientists have suggested that such generosity to strangers may indicate a desire to cooperate with new people.
It is important to note that during the experiment, only one type of prosocial behavior was observed – generosity, since it is easy to measure with money. The researchers note that their previous experiments and the experiments of other researchers have shown both intra- and extra-group desire for cooperation.
So in the future, experiments should be carried out with other variables in order to fully reveal the essence of the action of oxytocin.
A study by Pornpattananangkul et al. Generous To Whom? The Influence of Oxytocin on Social Discounting is published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
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01.03.2017