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Sorry Jos, somehow I was editing my comment about this video and I deleted the entire topic:
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin.html
Please, anyone who commented, please post again. And Jos, please add your words about how you found this video and your thoughts about the possible connection between a lack of oxytocin and Sex Addiction.
I tried to recover your original post in my database, but no luck. Once it’s deleted, it’s GONE!
Even I goof up on here!
My comment is below (I do know enough to type my comments in Notepad, then copy them here because the cyberkins steal them on a regular basis).
Again, I do apologize.
My opinion on this video is that he took a tiny bit of information and turned it into a simplistic, fanciful mountain.
One issue with this ‘experiment’ is that his subjects were all ‘normal’ people.
It has been known for decades that personality disordered people have traits (symptoms) of compulsive behaviors, poor judgement, lousy (my word) problem solving skills, lack of empathy and compulsive lying. Thus, they are ‘immoral’.
So, does this mean that they also have a low oxytocin level? If so, will raising that level change their disordered way of thinking, coping and acting?
Now, we don’t really know if personality disordered people (sex addicts) have low oxytocin levels. But, even if they do; could it be caused by an oxytocin receptor deficiency? If so, then shooting them up with a boatload of oxytocin would have no effect.
Also, oxytocin is very short acting. To have any long term effect it would have to be administered frequently or constantly. What kind of horrible side effects would a constant high level of this hormone have on a body?
And finally, the correlation between hormones (science) and morality (social mores) just does not make any sense to me at all.
Interesting, but too many connections and too few dots.
But, I would like to hear what everyone else thinks.
Thanks Jos for showing us an interesting viewpoint. We never know where the answers may reveal themselves.
I said something similar to that idea that I didn’t see how it could change the personality disorder and make him all of a sudden want to empathize and make passionate love to his wife instead of whatever else he’d rather be doing.
In fact, if it makes him more empathetic, maybe it would make him more empathetic with his paramour instead? I could really see it backfiring.
I wasnt suggesting a panacea for all our problems – I just found it interesting to consider that maybe this is another part of the problem?
SRRI antidepressants are working on hormones and receptors to great effect in many cases for depressed people and we must have discovered this by comparing “normal” with depressed…
so why not look at sex addicts and oxytocin?
If the brain has somehow learned to release the hormone when it shouldnt, is there a way to relearn that? I dont know, just a thought.
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