Why are some people reliable and trustworthy while others are predisposed to lying, cheating, and stealing? Paul J. Zak, an American economist and mathematician who has pioneered a new discipline called neuroeconomics, has done research demonstrating that a hormone called oxytocin has got a lot to do with an individual’s virtue and sense of morality.
In his book
The Moral Molecule (Dutton Adult, 256 pages), Zak reports that when people receive a positive social signal, they normally release varying amounts of oxytocin—the same pituitary hormone that stimulates the contraction of uterine muscle and the secretion of mother’s milk—into their bloodstream. The more oxytocin released, the more the individual can create bonds of trust in intimate relationships as well as in business dealings.
“Oxytocin-releasers include having someone trust you with their money, being touched, and even watching an emotional movie,” Zak says. “Five percent of those I have tested do not release oxytocin after such stimuli. These individuals have many of the traits of psychopaths: they are charming, deceptive, and even self-deceptive. And, when there is money that can be shared with others, they unabashedly keep it all for themselves.”
Says Dr. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist and author of
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, in her review of
The Moral Molecule: “This is an important book. Empathy, cooperation, trusting, heroism, stinginess, skepticism, anger, tough mindedness: Paul Zak unpacks these and other deeply human feelings with his pioneering research into brain chemistry and his keen journalist eye—exposing the dignity (and treachery) within our common human nature.”
Read an excerpt from Paul J. Zak’s The Moral Molecule in the Wall Street Journal now! Read Paul J. Zak’s “Why Some People are Evil” in Psychology Today now!ABOUT THE AUTHOR:Paul J. Zak, PhD, is professor of economic psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University. As the founding director of Claremont’s Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, he is at the vanguard of neuroeconomics, a new discipline that integrates neuroscience and economics. He has a popular
Pyschology Today blog called “The Moral Molecule.” His research has been featured in
The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal,
USA Today, and
Scientific American.
OTHER INTERESTING READINGS:Debunking the lonely inventor myth. In “Forget Edison: This is How History’s Greatest Inventions Really Happened,” an article in the June 15, 2012 issue of
The Atlantic, senior editor Derek Thompson says that the lonely inventor and the eureka moment are largely myths—such as Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell inventing the phone, and Eli Whitney inventing the cotton gin. “The ideas didn’t spring, Athena-like, fully formed from their brains. In fact, they didn’t spring fully formed from anybody’s brains,” Thompson says in his summary of Mark A. Lemley’s study, “The Myth of the Sole Inventor,” which chronicles the history of the 19th and 20th century’s most famous inventors with emphasis on how their inventions were really neither theirs, nor inventions.
Read Derek Thompson’s “Forget Edison: This is How History’s Greatest Inventions Really Happened” in The Atlantic now!Darwin must be twisting in his grave. In “What’s the Matter With Creationism?”, an article that came out in the July 2-9, 2012 edition of
The Nation, Katha Pollitt bewails the findings of a recent Gallup poll on the Theory of Evolution. The worst finding, she says, it that the proportion of college graduates who are creationists is exactly the same as for the general public: “That’s right: 46 percent of Americans with sixteen long years of education under their belt believe the story of Adam and Eve is literally true. Even 25 percent of Americans with graduate degrees believe dinosaurs and humans romped together before Noah’s flood. Needless to say, this remarkable demonstration of educational failure attracts little attention from those who call for improving our schools.”
Read Katha Pollitt’s “What’s the Matter With Creationism?” in The Nation now!
