Trust in a bottle?

Redshift

Nasal spray makes people more likely to place faith in another person.

Can you bottle trust? The answer, it seems, is yes. Researchers have produced a potion that, when sniffed, makes people more likely to give their cash to someone to look after.

A Swiss-led research team tested their creation on volunteers playing an investment game for real money. When they inhaled the nasal spray, investors were more likely to hand over money to a trustee, knowing that, although they could make a hefty profit, they could also lose everything if the trustee decided not to give any of the money back.

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dudara

I just finished a book, The Wisdom of Crowds, which dealt with the mechanics of group decisions and how people interacted. The book contained descriptions of such games as mentioned above, but obviously without the hormone spray.

The hormone is primarily used in our bodies to create social bonds, ie mates or offspring, interesting that it can be extended to commercial interactions, or is this due to the fact that the commerical transaction is the most pressing relationship at the time of inhalation?