Trust can be bottled: study

People who sniff a certain hormone become more trusting and willing to give away their money, a Swiss study suggests.

The researchers gave a nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin to volunteers who were playing an investment game with real cash.

Those volunteers were twice as likely to hand all their money over to a trustee than players who hadn't inhaled the hormone, the study found.

"Oxytocin causes a substantial increase in trusting behaviour," says the study, published in the June 2 edition of the journal Nature.

The hormone may be useful to treat people with autism or social phobias, says the lead researcher, Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich.

Oxytocin, sometimes dubbed the "love hormone," is secreted in the brain. Its production is spurred by childbirth, breast-feeding and sex. It's also been shown to play a role in the formation of social bonds.

Fehr and his team tested 178 male university students in their 20s.

In one experiment, researchers gave "investors" 12 monetary credits, each equal to about 40 cents Cdn.

The researchers asked participants how much they wanted to give to a trustee. The trustee would dramatically increase each investment but could choose to keep all the cash, the volunteers were told.

Thirteen of the 29 volunteers who were given oxytocin handed over all their cash, Fehr's team reports.

Only six of the 29 investors who were given a placebo to sniff gave the trustee all their credits.

In a second test, the trustee was replaced by a computer program. Volunteers from both groups invested about the same amount this time, an average of 7.5 of their 12 credits.

The results show that oxytocin specifically boosts trust in people and not just the urge to take risks, the researchers said.