Paul Zak: Trust, morality - and oxytocin 

Having a laugh with someone whilst standing in a queue, whose name you don't even know, or see the exhilarated look of surprise and appreciation on a stranger's face when you go out of your way to help them with something, is a great feeling. It is like a drug effect.

I hug my dog 8 times a day. I love my poochie and my poochie loves me. I'm glad that she can make oxytocin too. Life is good.

Mr Zac, that was incredibly interesting and makes so much sense of things that I've wondered about! I saw something on telly (a few years ago-English) where they measured the levels of oxytocin produced during a wedding, and I'm rather guessing that was the wedding you were talking about.

This is so fascinating!! Back when TED used to be amazing to watch.

That was amazing!!! One of the best TED talks ever!

Massage, Dancing and Praying- Yes!

Thank You

Excellent! This is a real breakthrough! I wonder what effect music has on this...

Great speaker. This is one of those 1 in 50 ted talks that I'll really remember

YES> Love this guy and his work. Met him yesterday. A kind and connected soul... Hugs are the future... RVE

I'm so glad they lowered the intro volume!

i have his book and i find his ideas very interesting and logical ,i dont know why people judge him wrong.

I thoroughly enjoyed this! What a great guy =) Need more research from him!

I learned a lot from this. Thank you!

John Oliver had some things to say about this talk

This reminds me of the "Ron Gutman: The hidden power of smiling" and the "Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are" TED Talks...interesting!

reminds me why i subscribed to TED, love it :)

Paul Zak , I just sent this to everybody I love and to the World. About Prayer, That was so cool. 307,950 views •

8:13 - a words to live by

I love this video. Everything just makes sense. It is so true that when you are feeling ramped up on testosterone, your emotional connection with others is down. I find it interesting that testosterone and oxytocin are opposite (in effect) to each other.

Brilliant--engaging--powerful!

Woow!! I came here from Método CIS by Paulo Vieira from Febracis. Amazing how great is to produce confidence through people to build a better world. OGA! (The Giant Awake - O Gigante Acordou!)

Thank you! This eviscerates anything sacred or pure about a notion of higher truth. I don't disagree with research (in fact, I myself am part of oxytocin research and aging) but I at least someone recognizes the gravity of this

I want a hug :( I want more oxytocin!

I've actually been very interested in morality as of late because it came up in a debate with a very nice Christian, and I was unable to explain morality at that time. Now I have an answer for both myself and others regarding the reason we are moral, as well as a new line of research to follow!

Excellent presentation!

good researcher and a good showman !

Love this

Very interesting and informative.

thank you great video

brilliant thanks

Thank you science!

i like this alot...this made me happy

@Mgopro omg they did. I didn't notice because I'm so used to skipping past it. FINALLY

very nice talk.

Amazing!

@1:30 "Breathe it in!!! Breathe ittttt!"

So good.

I loved this talk! It's a little hard to swallow though; I always regarded morality as a social convention that varies in each culture. Maybe oxytocin would be more related to empathy, from which morality stems?

Thank you ! :)

It works I heard about hugging your kids to reduce stress years ago and something so little makes a big difference

This made me wanna hug somebody right now : )

I've loved it!

Just watching the hug increased my oxytoxin, I could feel it

Wonderful speech! I am watching it over and over again... Maybe it's my oxytocin. :-)

Fantastic! A must see :)))

This is the first talk where the Ted gingle didn't try to make me deaf! I love it!

@delatroy You miss the point completely. He's argument was that the capacity to produce oxytocin is a human faculty, but that the faculty can be inhibited by various factors (chemical, psychological, etc.). His aim is not to paint it as being a niche-specific factor in contributing to empathy and trust, but as a prima facie heuristic for gauging empathic social interaction.

Very intresting talk 👍👍

Touching research.

Incredible !

@Bracerjack reading your comment spiked mine, I believe...empathy is powerful...

I love it when I understand what the top comments actually are saying when I've seen the whole Ted Talk.

Me and my friend Aldous Huxley approve !!! Please create this drug for wide use as soon as possible

love this :)

I love it!

Interesting talk about molecular interactions forming societal changes

I really love his voice... O_O

Wonderfull

@Anthrax1551 I agree. I don't think it would be enough data to base conclusions on on its own but combined with other measurements it would surely give us some great insights!

this guy is too good

@mellamosean Exactly, the thing is what psychologists bring is not a conflicting answer to what Paul Zak brings.

So cool.

@aadrian13 It basically helps us cooperate so we can survive. If a person's oxytocin system is well-developed, they'll be more likely to be caring and giving individuals. By the experiments in this video, it looks like it makes a fairly significant difference in a person's generosity level. I agree, it will definitely not inhibit our reason of why someone values generosity, but I think instead, it will make someone value it through the rewards and feelings of giving.

I would be interested in oxytocin levels under the influence of different drugs, particularly comparing alcohol and pot, but also coffee, sugar, nicotine. Also what about different jobs, habits, etc. It would be really interesting to see if there is any connection between drinking coffee before work, or listening to a specific genre of music, stuff like this, and the economic state of a country.

An excellent talk. All we need now is to find the Higgs Boson :)

John Oliver makes some great points about science - I’d highly recommend that video to everyone! (Search “John Oliver science” - it’s about 20 minutes long. The four minute one is not impressive when compared to the whole thing.) I also want to throw out some resources for people watching this who are interested in learning more about this particular research or oxytocin in general. One main point was brought up by John Oliver - oxytocin doesn’t necessarily make you happier all the time, but it does seem to be involved with the ability for social adaptation by normalizing under- or over-active functioning Ma, Shamay-Tsoory, Han, & Zink, 2016). That might sound a little vague and dry, but it provides the foundational knowledge for a whole lot of research that goes beyond morality. A lot of the research looks at social perception or social cognition. One interesting study reports that in a game of chance with a confederate, oxytocin appears to increase envy and gloating when participants won less and more, respectively, than the confederate (Shamay-Tsoory et al., 2009). Perhaps, that counts as being involved with morality. For a more comprehensive picture, I’ll outline a few possible situations that I considered and try to reason through some perspectives on oxytocin research. Any error or misinterpretation that follows is mine alone. When I was reading some literature on oxytocin for a class last term, I tended to think about 3 possible interpretations of this talk. If it was not already clear, these possibilities are more conjecture than systematic literature review. Anyone who is interested in this topic is encouraged to conduct their own literature review, but I have included references to some sources. 1) Paul Zak’s findings have been appropriately interpreted in the literature. Question: What did Dr. Zak find? Answer: It’s complicated; see “Option 1” below. 2) Paul Zak’s findings have been misinterpreted in the literature (as they were in this video). Question: Has the research begun to correct itself? Answer: Outlook is good; see Ma et al. (2016); Leng & Ludwig (2016). 3) Paul Zak’s findings are the result of questionable research practices and intranasal oxytocin does not increase trust. Question: Is there evidence for this? Answer: Uncertain; for one perspective, see Conlisk (2011). Option 1 What did Dr. Zak find? Below is a quote from Kosfeld, Heinrichs, Zak, Fischbacher, & Fehr (2005): “Our hypothesis that oxytocin increases the trusting behaviour of investors implies that the investors in the oxytocin group (n = 29) will show higher money transfers than those in the placebo group (n = 29). In fact, our data show that oxytocin increases investors’ trust considerably. Out of the 29 subjects, 13 (45%) in the oxytocin group showed the maximal trust level, whereas only 6 of the 29 subjects (21%) in the placebo group showed maximal trust (Fig. 2a). In contrast, only 21% of the subjects in the oxytocin group had a trust level below 8 monetary units (MU), but 45% of the subjects in the control group showed such low levels of trust. These differences in the distribution of trust result in higher average and median trust levels for subjects given oxytocin (Table 1). The investors’ average transfer is 17% higher in the oxytocin group (Mann-Whitney U-test; z = -1.897, p = 0.029, one-sided), and the median transfer in the oxytocin group is 10 MU, compared to a median of only 8 MU for subjects in the placebo group.” (p. 674) What does that mean? One finding seems very interesting - if you look at the figure (not included), there’s one very important bar - the “percentage of people showing maximum trust”. It’s a lot higher for the oxytocin category. Does this reflect trust per se, or a social adaptive process of weighing financial risks and gains? The researchers interpret the phenomenon as an increase in trust because the oxytocin only seems to work when the participant invests with a person, compared to a game played with a computer. I don’t know if I’d think “if I give all my money to this computer, its randomization procedures might spit out more money” in the computer game. While the researchers may have controlled for details like this, I’d be inclined to factor in social considerations when giving my money to a person who may or may not provide a return on the investment. Do we think that this is trust? I didn’t do much research into trust, and I won’t claim to be an expert on trust or morality. I think looking at how oxytocin is involved in many different situations helps to understand a larger, more nuanced picture of the role of oxytocin. A personal summary (no citations). Oxytocin seems to increase desire for investment returns, and specifically investment behavior when there is financial risk involved with investing money through a human banker. Don’t let corporations give it to people and be skeptical if your stock broker gives you a hug! Conlisk, J. (2011). Professor Zak's empirical studies on trust and oxytocin. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 78(1), 160-166. Kosfeld, M., Heinrichs, M., Zak, P. J., Fischbacher, U., & Fehr, E. (2005). Oxytocin increases trust in humans. Nature, 435(7042), 673-676. Leng, G., & Ludwig, M. (2016). Reply to: improving research standards to restore trust in intranasal oxytocin. Biological Psychiatry, 79(8), e55-e56. Ma, Y., Shamay-Tsoory, S., Han, S., & Zink, C. F. (2016). Oxytocin and social adaptation: insights from neuroimaging studies of healthy and clinical populations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(2), 133-145. Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Fischer, M., Dvash, J., Harari, H., Perach-Bloom, N., & Levkovitz, Y. (2009). Intranasal administration of oxytocin increases envy and schadenfreude (gloating). Biological Psychiatry, 66(9), 864-870. Zak, P. J., Kurzban, R., & Matzner, W. T. (2004). The neurobiology of trust. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1032(1), 224-227. Zak, P. J., Kurzban, R., & Matzner, W. T. (2005). Oxytocin is associated with human trustworthiness. Hormones and Behavior, 48(5), 522-527.

@mobubabe You can click on the time to skip the loud intro. It is really just for everyone's convenience.

обожаю обнимашки!!)) видимо мой окситоцин на высоком уровне)) есть ощущение, что людям при взаимодействии со мной становится лучше им не хочется от меня уходить 😊 хоть пожилые хоть совсем маленькие детки 🥰

Makes me feel sane that others think this way:)

Uaooo FANTRASTIC, THANK YOUUU Dr. PAUL ZAK.

I always heard that hugging it out 8 times a day would make you go blind.

wow this is fantstic!

Interesting. I relate a lot to empathy and sharing. Have been doing both very easily since childhood. I don't think twice about giving something away, even if I could still use it. But the hugging part is tough. It is very uncomfortable. I stiffen up and only do it because I have to. So is it better to just skip that action or force it until I get used to it?

On a spur of the moment thought , it may be interesting to take an underlying look at some of the research being done at the institute of Heartmath like the youtube video example "Heartmath I am" and cross reference it to research on this subject the two subjects may cross relate.

@aadrian13 Actually it explains the current physical reason for generosity in high regard, i.e. the "moral molecule" being released. However, from a slightly more complicated thought it does not explain for what reason this is started ocurring etc. I think that will come from evolutionary biology, but currently we work with what we've got.

Paul Zak needs Tony Robbins to teach him how to catch the crowd's attention using EMOTION. Great topic, monotone lecture.

Empathy―the ability to feel what another person is feeling―is a very important human characteristic.This is because it encourages us to treat other people with kindness.But why do some people feel more empathy than others? Scientists believe that the answer may lie in a chemical called oxytocin.This chemical is related into the blood when women are pregnant,leading them naturally to form strong bonds with their babies

Lots of hugs¬¬¬¬¬!Q!!!!!

Thanks for introducing the trust molecule, oxytocin.

we have a biology of trustworthiness. fascinating stuff.

Yes, it's mostly utilitarian, but i've arrived at it through analysis and reflection, and actually use it in practice. I also do some charitable work because i can, by donating some of my computers idle processing power to science (Folding@Home) and some money to other causes (currently SOS Children's Villages). I don't advertise this, but confronted with your comment it gives context. I'm quite cynical and emotionally reserved, but if you ask people who know me i'm a "nice and helpful guy".

Oxytocin Factor is a supplemental health product sold on Amazon.

Interesting

@mellamosean cool. i do wonder about sample of the experiment.

Interesting... I need a hug.

this is how equilibrium starts

@TheChrisMedico you should watch serenity ( the movie )

@joeloud1 He's a neuroeconomist, not an economist. From wikipedia: It combines research methods from neuroscience, experimental and behavioral economics, and cognitive and social psychology.

Wait was this about oxytocin or Paul Zak?

@alexander33345 what you are referencing is similar to some of the reflection i did before defining myself as amoral. It also makes it easier not to be apologetic about being a-moral or a-theist. (i'm also a-social (not anti-social, which is a disorder)). And to answer, yes, what is moraly correct depends on culture and time. I reject morals in my own life and use applied ethics and game theory based on my values i've arrived at after reflection.

@aadrian13 it seems like the decision to make "the right moral" choice may come from previous experiences i.e. brain chemistry/neural pathways reinforced by the reward from a previous 'analogous' interaction. Moral dilemmas may arise from the fact that there is no strong oxytocin induced neural pathways and no way to establish it because of its subjective nature and maybe that's why makes us think harder.

4 years ago, i got awarded "most friendliest" in high school and i said "just follow the 8 hugs a day rule". i should get credit for this... lol

Reducing morality to cooperation, survival or feeding some internal reward system can only explain some very basic human behaviour, but not our notions of what is right and wrong.

this is very likable, it's also crazy

This is extremly interesting. Soon enough we will be able to actually programm our moral behaviour! We are at a verge of a complete new level of evolutionary existence! And it's both astonishing and scary.

He said his nickname was "Dr. Love" I'm going to use that for my R&B name.

cool!

omg this explains SO much... especially why women tend to be more emphatic. Wow.

Hope the next stage of the research is to measure oxytocin level of people in various countries. Want to know the result so badly.