CNN HEALTH EXPLAINS EVERYTHING ABOUT ME

[pocochina]

"Love hormone" has a dark side

This brain-altering substance [oxytocin] apparently amplifies whatever social proclivities a person already possesses, whether positive or negative, says psychologist Jennifer Bartz of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Previous work has shown that a nasal blast of the hormone encourages a usually

Comments

[ceciliaj]

LOL SO MUCH LOVE FOR THE FIRST HALF OF THIS POST.

ALSO YOU SRSLY DONT WANT TO REMEMBER MIDDLE SCHOOL. IT WAS PRETTY EFFING TRAUMATIC.

[pocochina]

IT IS SO EXCITING TO HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR MY MISANTHROPY.

heh. Yeah, I don't, you know, PINE FOR SPECIFICS or anything, but it is so weird. Also it was a lot less fun when I got to law school and had to learn how to remember things.

[ceciliaj]

I make memory lists for practice. My friend A is amazing, she can remember her schedule, period by period, for all of high school, and she is turning 30 this year. I am like THAT MUST BE THE BENEFIT OF NOT DRINKING :). (which is the root of my memory problems, I know it is not yours heh)

[pocochina]

hee! Drinking probably doesn't help, but obviously the college-uptick coincides with sleep and drinking. BASICALLY, VICES = BETTER BRAIN FUNCTION, which is probably not the lesson intended here.

[angearia]

"Love hormone" has a dark side

GLOWHYPNOL????

[pocochina]

HAHAHAHAHA.

[local_max]

So this probably marks me even more definitely as a nerd, but the first thing I thought of I read the oxytocin thing is that this means that it trust is an absolute. I mean, I would have assumed that you couldn't have a positive or negative amount of trust--maybe you could rank people on their amount of trust, but there would be no way to say that a person is neither trusting nor distrusting without doing so in an arbitrary manner, or assigning the median person with a score of zero. But now all you have to do is give someone oxytocin and the person whose trusting behaviour doesn't change is exactly zero trustingness! And whoever becomes less trusting is negative and whoever becomes more trusting is positive!

I mean, I'm sure in reality it doesn't work like this--i.e. that one person could be more trusting than another person, but then become less trusting than the other person after both have oxytocin in their system. But statistically this should make it possible to identify a zero point for trustiness!

[pocochina]

haha, this is my journal where I talk about my MULTIPLE mental health issues in the context of Dollhouse so I think the nerd is out of the bag around here.

I wonder if sociopaths have zero capacity to trust? Obviously if brain chemistry were a story it be fantastic, but that means nothing in real life.

[bluemage55]

I wonder if sociopaths have zero capacity to trust? Obviously if brain chemistry were a story it be fantastic, but that means nothing in real life.

I believe it would depend on how you would define trust.

If we are talking about trust on a rational level, that is, that you expect someone to behave a certain way based on your understanding of their motivations and tendencies, then sure, those of us diagnosed with some degree of sociopathy have no problem "trusting" at all.

If, on the other hand, we are talking about irrational trust, the kind of trust that comes from emotional attachment and empathy, the kind where you think people are more trustworthy because you like or love them, then no, on that level we're going to have a hard time trusting you. That said, sociopathy does cover a range, so I would imagine that you're only going into zero trust territory with more extreme cases.

[pocochina]

That makes sense, rational predictors versus emotional/instinctive trust. I would imagine for whatever the one study is worth, it's the second one, but I don't know.