Oxytocin increases trust in humans

Nature volume 435, pages673–676(2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Trust pervades human societies1,2. Trust is indispensable in friendship, love, families and organizations, and plays a key role in economic exchange and politics3. In the absence of trust among trading partners, market transactions break down. In the absence of trust in a country's institutions and leaders, political legitimacy breaks down. Much recent evidence indicates that trust contributes to economic, political and social success4,5. Little is known, however, about the biological basis of trust among humans. Here we show that intranasal administration of oxytocin, a neuropeptide that plays a key role in social attachment and affiliation in non-human mammals6,7,8, causes a substantial increase in trust among humans, thereby greatly increasing the benefits from social interactions. We also show that the effect of oxytocin on trust is not due to a general increase in the readiness to bear risks. On the contrary, oxytocin specifically affects an individual's willingness to accept social risks arising through interpersonal interactions. These results concur with animal research suggesting an essential role for oxytocin as a biological basis of prosocial approach behaviour.

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Figure 1: The trust game.
Figure 2: Transfers in the trust and the risk experiment.
Figure 3: Average back transfer of trustees to their investors.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is part of the Research Priority Program ‘Foundations of Human Social Behaviour—Altruism versus Egoism’ at the University of Zurich. Financial support from the MacArthur Foundation (Network on Economic Environments and the Evolution of Individual Preferences and Social Norms) and the Cogito Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. M.H. also acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation. We thank F. Heusi, A. Enzler, S. Gilomen, E. Götz, M. Koenigsberg, K. Korsunsky, S. Krammer, S. Lauber, P. Obrist-Rybar, M. Schellhammer, B. Studer, R. Stünzi and M. Trottmann for research assistance.

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Author notes

  1. Michael Kosfeld and Markus Heinrichs: *These authors contributed equally to this work

Affiliations

  1. University of Zurich, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, Blumlisalpstrasse 10, CH-8006, Zurich, Switzerland

    Michael Kosfeld, Urs Fischbacher & Ernst Fehr

  2. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Zurich, Zurichbergstrasse 43, CH-8044, Zurich, Switzerland

    Markus Heinrichs

  3. Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, 91711-6165, USA

    Paul J. Zak

  4. Collegium Helveticum, Schmelzbergstrasse 25, CH-8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Ernst Fehr

Authors
  1. Michael Kosfeld
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  2. Markus Heinrichs
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  3. Paul J. Zak
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  4. Urs Fischbacher
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  5. Ernst Fehr
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Correspondence to Markus Heinrichs or Ernst Fehr.

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Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Kosfeld, M., Heinrichs, M., Zak, P. et al. Oxytocin increases trust in humans. Nature 435, 673–676 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03701

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