Oxytocin is lauded for how it promotes warmth, generosity, social bonding, cooperation, trust, and compassion. — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
Give lab rats oxytocin and, according to that meme, they get better at talking about their feelings and sing like Joan Baez. — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
Naturally, things are more complicated - those groovy, pro-social effects of oxytocin apply to how we interact with in-group members. — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
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 parochialism/xenophobia… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“women with variants of genes that produce higher levels of oxytocin or oxytocin receptors average higher levels of touching their infants and… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“So oxytocin is central to female mammals nursing, wanting to nurse their child, and remembering which one is their child.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Infuse oxytocin into the brain of a virgin rat, and she’ll act maternally—retrieving, grooming, and licking pups. Block the actions of oxytocin… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Infuse oxytocin into the brain of a virgin rat, and she’ll act maternally—retrieving, grooming, and licking pups. Block the actions of oxytocin… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“For starters, circulating oxytocin levels are elevated in couples when they’ve first hooked up. Furthermore, the higher the levels, the more physical… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Oxytocin, the luv hormone, makes us more prosocial to Us and worse to everyone else. That’s not generic prosociality. That’s ethnocentrism and… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“there are studies showing that one oxytocin receptor gene variant is associated with extreme aggression in kids, as well as a callous,… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Thus, oxytocin and vasopressin facilitate bonding between parent and child and between couples.fn10 Now for something truly charming that evolution has cooked… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Obviously, oxytocin and vasopressin are the grooviest hormones in the universe. Pour them into the water supply, and people will be more… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share Image
“Secure-attachment 7Rs show more generosity than average. Thus 7R has something to do with generosity—but its effect is entirely context dependent.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
But if you get chronically, psychosocially stressed, you're going to compromise your health. So, essentially, we've evolved to be smart enough to make ourselves… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“Finally, for the same criminal conviction, the more stereotypically Af-rican a black individual’s facial features, the longer the sentence.15 In contrast, juries view black… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“So testosterone does subtle things to behavior. Nonetheless, this doesn’t tell us much because everything can be interpreted every which way. Testosterone increases anxiety—you… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“pain makes aggressive people more aggressive, while doing the opposite to unaggressive individuals.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“Thus, for our purposes, genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities. All embedded in the fabric of the… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“If we accept that there will always be sides, it’s a nontrivial to-do list item to always be on the side of angels. Distrust… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“In other words, the more genomically complex the organism, the larger the percentage of the genome devoted to gene regulation by the environment.” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“The subject of one experiment is a rat that receives mild electric shocks (roughly equivalent to the static shock you might get from scuffing… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“No brain region is an island, and the formation of circuits connecting far-flung brain regions is crucial—how else can the frontal cortex use its… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“We process emotionally salient information more rapidly and automatically, but with less accuracy. Frontal function—working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“Most broadly, the PFC chooses between conflicting options—Coke or Pepsi; blurting out what you really think or restraining yourself; pulling the trigger or not.… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“One stretch of the gene is repeated a variable number of times, and the version with seven repeats (the “7R” form) produces a receptor… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
“some people always get more than their share of equality than others” — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
It's probably even the case that if you stoked up some Buddhist monks with tons of testosterone, they'd become wildly competitive as to who… — Robert M. Sapolsky Copy Share
