Oxytocin Is Not Always Kind: It Can Evoke Disgust
It worsens Us/Them dichotomies, human studies reveal.
Oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, mediates bonding such as during mother-infant or human-dog interactions. It turns the brain into a pro-social mode by tuning down the amygdala (fear and disgust centre) and exciting the dorsal striatum (trust and reward centre). “It makes people more trusting, forgiving, empathic and charitable,” Robert Sapolsky, a multi-award-winning author and professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and, by courtesy, neurosurgery, wrote in a 2018 review. “It improves the accuracy of reading people’s emotions.”
Probing further, scientists discovered the pro-social effects of oxytocin only apply if the person is one of us — or an in-group member. If the person is one of them — or an out-group member — oxytocin becomes anti-social. “In such settings, the [oxytocin] hormone decreases trust, and enhances envy and gloating for the successes and failures, respectively, of the out-group member,” Professor Sapolsky continued. “Moreover, the hormone makes people more pre-emptively aggressive to out-group members, and enhances unconscious biases toward them.”
Oxytocin has a binary role in pro- and anti-social.
