According to Nicholas Wade’s article Hormone of Love Has its Limits written for the New York Times News Service and reprinted in The San Diego Union-Tribune on 24 January 2011, a hormone broadly categorized as one which engenders an overall feeling of love may not be living up to its name. Oxytocin, a substance secreted from the hypothalamus portion of the brain, “…gives rat mothers the urge to nurse their pups, keeps male voles monogamous, and …makes people trust each other more” according to Wade. Recent studies of this hormone however, are beginning to shed new light upon nature’s supposed love drug.
Oxytocin Spurs Love but not for Everyone
Wade’s article cites a study done by Carsten K.W. De Dreu, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam, postulating that oxytocin does increase a sense of love and trust in an individual but specifically toward an individual group with which that person is connected rather than toward all people. Carsten began by theorizing that a person who placed complete trust in others would never survive. Such naiveté would put that individual at the mercy of evolutionary theory to become another statistic of extinction by failing to adapt realistically to an unforgiving environment.
Carsten used this theory as a basis for experiments he performed and published in Science where he gave specific amounts of money to specific subjects. Doses of oxytocin were then administered to the subjects. Subjects appeared to be more willing to share with their assigned group but not with other groups. Wade summarizes Carsten’s experiment reporting “…that doses of oxytocin made people more likely to favor the in-group at the expense of an out-group.”
The Innate Nature of Ethnocentrism
Dreu performed other sets of experiments reported in the 18 January 2011 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which further substantiated his theory. Although administering doses of oxytocin to subjects does not necessarily foment biases or hatred for out-groups, the research to date tends to support the fact that it does engender a sense of loyalty to a group with which the subject feels a part.
In a sense this shows that this misunderstood hormone is the biological basis for an individual’s innate feelings of ethnocentrism. Dreu sees this as nature’s way of nudging individuals into group settings for both physical and emotional safety and security. He feels that his research helps to verify the assumption by stating that “…In the ancestral environment, it was very important for people to detect in others whether they had a long-term commitment to the group…” Oxytocin appears to be the hormone which aids humans in making this detection.
Wade is careful to point out that according to Bruno B, Averbeck, a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dreu’s studies are interesting, but his conclusions are not necessarily the central role of oxytocin. Averbeck feels that there are several environmental factors that may also aid an individual when determining whom to trust and which group with which to identify. He was surprised, however at the ability of the human body to produce a substance which affects specific social behaviors such as those described above.
Oxytocin is just another of the human body’s countless secretions which help to promote the overall health of the individual by engendering a feeling of trust and loyalty to that which is larger than the self.
Chris Williams - Among other things, Chris Williams was an NCAA swimming champion, honored as the State of California Beach Lifeguard of the Year, and is ...
