Trusting Research on Trust

In an editorial in the current issue of the American Journal of Bioethics (posted free on the AJOB Editors Blog here), Glenn McGee and Darby Penny raise research ethics concerns with a study on the effects of oxytocin on trust that I reported on here.  The study found that inhaled oxytocin made subjects substantially more likely to engage in behaviors that seem to demonstrate trust.  They write:

In what is becoming an increasingly tantalizing form of neuroscience, researchers in this study obtained consent not to study the phenomenon about which they were interested, trust, but rather the effect of a hormone more generally. The seemingly subtle shift in language, with its attendant deception, was obviously necessary for the researchers to conduct their study. But did they, and do researchers who would study phenomena of character more generally, have a special responsibility to inform subjects about the risks of “shifts in subject consciousness?” It is more than a question of informed consent that is at hand. For just as there is an obvious irony in manipulating subjects’ inclination to trust in order to study the biochemical basis of that trust, there is a broader safety—and indeed human—concern about whether trust should be scientifically manipulated in clinical studies in this way at all.

They then offer this parade of evils concerning possible future uses of oxytocin:

It doesn’t take a cynic to envision some of the predatory or nefarious purposes to which the findings of this study might be put in social and interpersonal interactions. The possibility that this substance could become a new date rape drug is chilling. Governments might use chemical means to enhance citizens’ trust in its policies and actions; one can only imagine how this might be used to sway public opinion or stifle dissent. Political candidates could use it to reap the benefits of unearned trust at the polls. Schools, employers and the military might use the drug to increase control over and enhance the compliance of students, workers, and soldiers. Powerful commercial interests could have a field day with oxytocin: retailers could better manipulate customers, corporations could overcome skepticism about their environmental practices or the value of their stock, and used car salesman would have an advantage that went beyond the “new car smell” aerosols they currently spray in vehicles. The number of ways in which the unscrupulous could use such a substance for harm is probably endless.

Of course, the researchers see the matter quite differently and find that the research may have “positive clinical implications for patients with mental disorders that are associated with social dysfunction (for example, social phobia or autism).”  See the text of the editorial for more.

Comments

[kuchinskas]

I think it should be noted that the oxytocin response is manipulated by others all the time -- they simply do it the old-fashioned way. A great sales rep builds rapport with a prospect by playing with the same social responses that are hard-wired into us. So do preachers. Political candidates already use loaded words, gestures and ideas to manipulate our biochemical responses, for example.

If they do start seeping oxytocin into the air conditioning, it will be part of the trend of mechanizing physical responses: Pharms are developing a "viagra for women" to take the place of foreplay and intimate connection; antidepressants (which I'm in favor of!) provide a way to control serotonin levels.

This horse is already running down the road.