Is there anything unique about human beings? There is.

We're the only

creatures with fully developed moral sentiments. We're obsessed with morality
as social creatures. We need to know why people are doing what they're
doing. And I personally am obsessed with morality. It was all due to this
woman,Sister Mary Marastela, also known as my mom. As an altar boy, I
breathed in a lot of incense, and I learned to say phrases in Latin, but I also had
time to think about whether my mother's top-down moralityapplied to
everybody. I saw that people who were religious and non-religious were equally
obsessed with morality. I thought, maybe there's some earthly basis for moral
decisions. But I wanted to go further than to say our brains make us moral. I
want to know if there's a chemistry of morality. I want to know if there was a
moral molecule.
01:08After 10 years of experiments, I found it. Would you like to see it? I brought
some with me. This little syringe contains the moral molecule. (Laughter) It's
called oxytocin. So oxytocin is a simple and ancient molecule found only in
mammals. In rodents, it was known to make mothers care for their offspring, and
in some creatures, allowed for toleration of burrowmates. But in humans, it was
only known to facilitate birth and breastfeeding in women, and is released by
both sexes during sex.
01:53So I had this idea that oxytocin might be the moral molecule. I did what
most of us do -- I tried it on some colleagues. One of them told me, "Paul, that is
the world's stupidist idea. It is," he said, "only a female molecule. It can't be that
important." But I countered, "Well men's brains make this too. There must be a
reason why." But he was right, it was a stupid idea. But it was testably stupid. In
other words, I thought I could design an experiment to see if oxytocin made
people moral.
02:25Turns out it wasn't so easy. First of all, oxytocin is a shy molecule. Baseline
levels are near zero, without some stimulus to cause its release. And when it's
produced, it has a three-minute half-life, and degrades rapidly at room
temperature. So this experiment would have to cause a surge of oxytocin, have
to grab it fast and keep it cold. I think I can do that. Now luckily, oxytocin is
produced both in the brain and in the blood, so I could do this experiment
without learning neurosurgery. Then I had to measure morality.
02:58So taking on Morality with a capital M is a huge project. So I started
smaller. I studied one single virtue:trustworthiness. Why? I had shown in the
early 2000s that countries with a higher proportion of trustworthy people are
more prosperous. So in these countries, more economic transactions occur and
more wealth is created, alleviating poverty. So poor countries are by and large
low trust countries. So if I understood the chemistry of trustworthiness, I might
help alleviate poverty.
03:31But I'm also a skeptic. I don't want to just ask people, "Are you
trustworthy?" So instead I use the Jerry Maguire approach to research. If you're
so virtuous, show me the money. So what we do in my lab is we tempt people
with virtue and vice by using money. Let me show you how we do that. So we

recruit some people for an experiment. They all get $10 if they agree to show
up. We give them lots of instruction, and we never ever deceive them. Then we
match them in pairs by computer. And in that pair, one person gets a message
saying, "Do you want to give up some of your $10 you earned for being here and
ship it to someone else in the lab?" The trick is you can't see them, you can't talk
to them. You only do it one time.Now whatever you give up gets tripled in the
other person's account. You're going to make them a lot wealthier. And they get
a message by computer saying person one sent you this amount of money. Do
you want to keep it all, or do you want to send some amount back?
04:30So think about this experiment for minute. You're going to sit on these hard
chairs for an hour and a half.Some mad scientist is going to jab your arm with a
needle and take four tubes of blood. And now you want me to give up this money
and ship it to a stranger? So this was the birth of vampire economics.Make a
decision and give me some blood.
04:48So in fact, experimental economists had run this test around the world, and
for much higher stakes, and the consensus view was that the measure from the
first person to the second was a measure of trust,and the transfer from the
second person back to the first measured trustworthiness. But in fact,
economists were flummoxed on why the second person would ever return any
money. They assumed money is good, why not keep it all?
05:13That's not what we found. We found 90 percent of the first decision-makers
sent money, and of those who received money, 95 percent returned some of
it. But why? Well by measuring oxytocin we found that the more money the
second person received, the more their brain produced oxytocin, and the more
oxytocin on board, the more money they returned. So we have a biology of
trustworthiness.
05:38But wait. What's wrong with this experiment? Two things. One is that
nothing in the body happens in isolation. So we measured nine other molecules
that interact with oxytocin, but they didn't have any effect. But the second is that
I still only had this indirect relationship between oxytocin and trustworthiness. I
didn't know for sure oxytocin caused trustworthiness. So to make the
experiment, I knew I'd have to go into the brain and manipulate oxytocin
directly. I used everything short of a drill to get oxytocin into my own brain. And I
found I could do it with a nasal inhaler. So along with colleagues in Zurich, we put
200 men on oxytocin or placebo, had that same trust test with money, and we
found that those on oxytocin not only showed more trust, we can more than
double the number of people who sent all their money to a stranger -- all without
altering mood or cognition.
06:34So oxytocin is the trust molecule, but is it the moral molecule? Using the
oxytocin
inhaler, we
ran
more
studies. We
showed
that
oxytocin
infusion increases generosity in unilateral monetary transfers by 80 percent. We
showed it increases donations to charity by 50 percent. We've also
investigated non-pharmacologic ways to raise oxytocin. These include
massage, dancing and praying. Yes, my mom was happy about that last one. And

whenever we raise oxytocin, people willingly open up their wallets and share
money with strangers.
07:14But why do they do this? What does it feel like when your brain is flooded
with oxytocin? To investigate this question, we ran an experiment where we had
people watch a video of a father and his four year-old son, and his son has
terminal brain cancer. After they watched the video, we had them rate their
feelingsand took blood before and after to measure oxytocin. The change in
oxytocin predicted their feelings of empathy. So it's empathy that makes us
connect to other people. It's empathy that makes us help other people. It's
empathy that makes us moral.
07:52Now this idea is not new. A then unknown philosopher named Adam
Smith wrote a book in 1759 called "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." In this
book, Smith argued that we are moral creatures, not because of a top-down
reason, but for a bottom-up reason. He said we're social creatures, so we share
the emotions of others. So if I do something that hurts you, I feel that pain. So I
tend to avoid that. If I do something that makes you happy, I get to share your
joy. So I tend to do those things. Now this is the same Adam Smith who, 17 years
later, would write a little book called "The Wealth of Nations" -- the founding
document of economics. But he was, in fact, a moral philosopher, and he was
right on why we're moral. I just found the molecule behind it. But knowing that
molecule is valuable, because it tells us how to turn up this behavior and what
turns it off. In particular, it tells us why we see immorality.
08:50So to investigate immorality, let me bring you back now to 1980. I'm
working at a gas station on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, California. You sit in a
gas station all day, you see lots of morality and immorality, let me tell you. So
one Sunday afternoon, a man walks into my cashier's booth with this beautiful
jewelry box. Opens it up and there's a pearl necklace inside. And he said, "Hey, I
was in the men's room. I just found this. What do you think we should do with
it?" "I don't know, put it in the lost and found." "Well this is very valuable. We
have to find the owner for this." I said, "Yea."
09:21So we're trying to decide what to do with this, and the phone rings. And a
man says very excitedly, "I was in your gas station a while ago, and I bought this
jewelry for my wife, and I can't find it." I said, "Pearl necklace?" "Yeah." "Hey, a
guy just found it." "Oh, you're saving my life. Here's my phone number. Tell that
guy to wait half an hour. I'll be there and I'll give him a $200 reward." Great, so I
tell the guy, "Look, relax. Get yourself a fat reward. Life's good." He said, "I can't
do it. I have this job interview in Galena in 15 minutes, and I need this job, I've
got to go." Again he asked me, "What do you think we should do?"I'm in high
school. I have no idea. So I said, "I'll hold it for you." He said, "You know, you've
been so nice, let's split the reward." I'll give you the jewelry, you give me a
hundred dollars, and when the guy comes ... "
10:07You see it. I was conned. So this is a classic con called the pigeon drop, and
I was the pigeon. So the way many cons work is not that the conman gets the
victim to trust him, it's that he shows he trusts the victim. Now we know what

happens. The victim's brain releases oxytocin, and you're opening up your wallet
or purse, giving away the money.
10:29So who are these people who manipulate our oxytocin systems? We found,
testing thousands of individuals, that five percent of the population don't release
oxytocin on stimulus. So if you trust them, their brains don't release oxytocin. If
there's money on the table, they keep it all. So there's a technical word for these
people in my lab. We call them bastards. (Laughter) These are not people you
want to have a beer with. They have many of the attributes of psychopaths.
11:02Now there are other ways the system can be inhibited. One is through
improper nurturing. So we've studied sexually abused women, and about half
those don't release oxytocin on stimulus. You need enough nurturing for this
system to develop properly. Also, high stress inhibits oxytocin. So we all know
this, when we're really stressed out, we're not acting our best.
11:25There's another way oxytocin is inhibited, which is interesting -- through
the action of testosterone. So we, in experiments, have administered
testosterone to men. And instead of sharing money, they become selfish. But
interestingly, high testosterone males are also more likely to use their own
money to punish others for being selfish. (Laughter) Now think about this. It
means, within our own biology, we have the yin and yang of morality. We have
oxytocin that connects us to others, makes us feel what they feel. And we have
testosterone. And men have 10 times the testosterone as women, so men do this
more than women -- we have testosterone that makes us want to punish people
who behave immorally. We don't need God or government telling us what to
do. It's all inside of us.
12:14So you may be wondering: these are beautiful laboratory experiments, do
they really apply to real life?Yeah, I've been worrying about that too. So I've gone
out of the lab to see if this really holds in our daily lives. So last summer, I
attended a wedding in Southern England. 200 people in this beautiful Victorian
mansion. I didn't know a single person. And I drove up in my rented
Vauxhall. And I took out a centrifuge and dry ice and needles and tubes. And I
took blood from the bride and the groom and the wedding party and the family
and the friends before and immediately after the vows.
12:46(Laughter)
12:48And guess what? Weddings cause a release of oxytocin, but they do so in a
very particular way. Who is the center of the wedding solar system? The
bride. She had the biggest increase in oxytocin. Who loves the wedding almost
as much as the bride? Her mother, that's right. Her mother was number
two. Then the groom's father, then the groom, then the family, then the friends
-- arrayed around the bride like planets around the Sun. So I think it tells us that
we've designed this ritual to connect us to this new couple, connect us
emotionally. Why? Because we need them to be successful at reproducing to
perpetuate the species.

13:29I also worried that my trust experiments with small amounts of

money didn't really capture how often we actually trust our lives to strangers. So
even though I have a fear of heights, I recently strapped myself to another
human being and stepped out of an airplane at 12,000 ft. I took my blood before
and after, and I had a huge spike of oxytocin. And there are so many ways we
can connect to people. For example, through social media. Many people are
Tweeting right now. So we investigated the role of social mediaand found the
using social media produced a solid double-digit increase in oxytocin.
14:02So I ran this experiment recently for the Korean Broadcasting System. And
they had the reporters and their producers participate. And one of these guys, he
must have been 22, he had 150 percent spike in oxytocin. I mean, astounding;
no one has this. So he was using social media in private. When I wrote my report
to the Koreans, I said, "Look, I don't know what this guy was doing," but my
guess was interacting with his mother or his girlfriend. They checked. He was
interacting on his girlfriend's Facebook page.There you go. That's connection. So
there's tons of ways that we can connect to other people, and it seems to be
universal.
14:37Two weeks ago, I just got back from Papua New Guinea where I went up to
the highlands -- very isolated tribes of subsistence farmers living as they have
lived for millenia. There are 800 different languages in the highlands. These are
the most primitive people in the world. And they indeed also release oxytocin.
14:58So oxytocin connects us to other people. Oxytocin makes us feel what
other people feel. And it's so easy to cause people's brains to release oxytocin. I
know how to do it, and my favorite way to do it is, in fact, the easiest. Let me
show it to you. Come here. Give me a hug. (Laughter) There you go.
15:35So my penchant for hugging other people has earned me the nickname Dr.
Love. I'm happy to share a little more love in the world, it's great, but here's your
prescription from Dr. Love: eight hugs a day. We have found that people who
release more oxytocin are happier. And they're happier because they have better
relationships of all types. Dr. Love says eight hugs a day. Eight hugs a day -you'll be happier and the world will be a better place. Of course, if you don't like
to touch people, I can always shove this up your nose.