Oxytocin infusion increases generosity in unilateral monetary transfers by 80 percent [and] increases donations to charity by 50 percent.
Oxytocin is the hormone of love. We share it when we have a good conversation, we share it when we make love, and when we hug, and BIRTH is the biggest brightest time of rich oxytocin-sharing.
Naturally, things are more complicated - those groovy, pro-social effects of oxytocin apply to how we interact with in-group members.
In fact if you're a mother or a father, you're filled with oxytocin when you have a child. It makes you love the baby, even though they look like a lizard. You'll think it's the beautiful thing in the world.
Showing kindness causes oxytocin release in the recipient that motives him or her to be kind to others. You can start this virtuous cycle in the simplest ways, for example, by giving someone a hug. I send you a hug!
That's what falling in love really amounted to, your brain on drugs. Adrenaline and dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Chemical insanity, celebrated by poets.
Oxytocin rocks the world.
When you massage someone, the levels of oxytocin go up in the brain, and oxytocin is one of the chemicals that drives attachment.
To out-group-members, oxytocin makes you crappier - less cooperative and more preemptively aggressive. It's not the luv hormone. It's the in-group parochialismxenophobia hormone.
Oxytocin is lauded for how it promotes warmth, generosity, social bonding, cooperation, trust, and compassion.
As a midwife, I am immersed in Oxytocin day and night.
Give lab rats oxytocin and, according to that meme, they get better at talking about their feelings and sing like Joan Baez.
Oxytocin connects us to other people; oxytocin makes us feel what other people feel. And it's easy to cause people's brains to release oxytocin. Let me show you. Come here. Give me a hug.
It turns out that we literally don't empathize unless we're physically present - that the oxytocin, the famous "tend and befriend" hormone is not produced unless we're present with all five senses.
When dogs and humans make eye contact, that actually releases what's known as the love hormone, oxytocin, in both the dog and the human.
It is important to understand that while oxytocin may be the hub of the evolution of the social brain in mammals, it is part of a very complex system. Part of what it does is act in opposition to stress hormones, and in that sense release of oxytocin feels good - as stress hormones and anxiety do not feel good.
Of course, if 40% of women need oxytocin to progress normally, then something is wrong with the definition of normal.
Oxytocin is a Teflon hormone - bad news rolls off it.
