Want people to trust you? Then get some oxytocin and spray it in their noses.
Apparently a single dose of oxytocin, will have the effect of roughly doubling the level of trust that people display. This result was originally reported by the magazine Nature in an article entitled “Oxytocin increases trust in humans“, published 2 June 2005. It’s re-reported in the New York Times today, along with the humorous graphic shown above which shows a car salesman employing this new sales technique.
Sales augmentation aside, the process holds hope for treatment of social phobias and the like.
Trust Spray – NYT, December 11, 2005
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s scary to think of something like trust, which many of us consider a deep moral issue, can be easily affected by a chemical.
I don’t know if I’d trust someone who walked up to me and sprayed something in my nose.