When The 'Trust Hormone' Is Out Of Balance : NPR

When The 'Trust Hormone' Is Out Of Balance : NPR: "in 2001, Zak began spraying oxytocin up the noses of college students to see if the hormone would change the way they interacted with strangers.

It did. Squirt oxytocin up the nose of a college kid, and he's 80 percent more likely to distribute his own money to perfect strangers.

This gave Zak an idea. Like some comic-book villain concocting a plan to take over the world by dumping happy pills in the water supply, he wondered if it might be possible to use this molecule -- oxytocin -- to change the way people felt about the government."