What drew you to choose the talk you did?
The talk I chose was Trust, morality–and oxytocin? The title interested me because I’ve always had a fascination with why people display moral/immoral behavior, and why we ponder it so much. I have read too many books symbolically discussing the subject, but I have encountered very few true scientific talks embracing why humanity acts like we do.
Briefly summarize the talk.
Basically, Paul Zak, or “Dr. Love”, experimented with oxytocin levels in people’s brains and found out our morality chemical in our brain that makes us feel good when we connect with people, donate to charity, receive hugs, and do other moral deeds.
What did you find most interesting about the talk?
Frankly, I did not find the talk as interesting as I thought I would. Another man’s own interpretation of morality kept periodically popping up into my head as I watched Dr. Love’s video. The man was George Price, one of the most brilliant minds of all time in my opinion. He expanded upon one biologist’s evolutionary equation to basically create a mathematical formula explaining how humans developed altruism–selfishness. The altruistic gene is passed on simply because the people who have the gene are more likely to have surviving offspring which is the goal of every natural creature. Basically, altruistic, moral behavior can be inherited and is passed on down through a family tree. I thought something along these lines of inheritance of oxytocin and how we’re not altruistic or moral because we choose to be would have been addressed, but barely a snippet of it was offered. I guess if I absolutely had to answer this question, Zak tested oxytocin levels at weddings, and the bride’s levels will sharply increase as well as her mother’s.
How trustworthy did you find the presenter and the information she or he presented? Explain why.
To be completely honest, this guy seems kind of…weird. First off, he describes himself as a neuroeconomist, and he’s apparently a pioneer in this field. I guess congratulations are in order for this achievement, but it seems like that field has already taken off (without the cool title unfortunately). Tons of stores and corporations already use psychology and neuroscience to persuade consumers to buy their products. So I’d like more information and details on that occupation. Second, I didn’t like how he didn’t provide concrete proof of studies and findings, but that’s mainly because it was a video and not an article I could easily look up. Third, if you go to page 128 in our psychology book, it implies that oxytocin is already being studied to influence social behavior in 2008 by two scientists named Donaldson and Young. This Ted Talk was released in 2011, and the presenter’s name is Paul Zak. Interpret all of this as you will, but Dr. Love was not the most compelling speaker, and I believe him on his research, but he still seems a little hokey.
Come up with a research idea of your own based on the information presented in the talk and briefly outline how you would conduct it.
Referring back to Price’s equation, I’d like to experiment on people’s inheritance of oxytocin levels. I’d also like to explore if there is a correlation between the evolution of altruism and oxytocin. This would be a long, drawn out experiment, and I honestly have no idea how to even go about conducting it, but I really would like to tie these two ideas together somehow because I think they can be.
Sources:
Psychology around Us. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013. Print.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/altruistic-equations-that-killed-a-good-man-1358399.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/george-price-altruism