Trust Me - Sure I Sprayed Myself So That You Would

The story below is fascinating - I can hardly believe that there is a spray that creates trust. There is potential for including this discovery as a feature in experimental economics work, and thats even more intriguing...

Trust me, I'm oxytocin

"Two years ago New Scientist reported Swiss research showing that a sniff of the hormone oxytocin caused people to be more trusting (4 June 2005, p 7). It made male Swiss students give money to strangers in the belief they would give it back, even though the strangers had every reason not to.

Unsurprisingly, this provoked shock-horror media speculation that politicians and others might spray people with oxytocin to engender trust for nefarious purposes. So what are we to make of the New York-based firm Vero Labs which is marketing oxytocin as a spray called Liquid Trust? "Just one or two sprays in the morning after showering, or in the evening before going out, is guaranteed to produce a more trusting atmosphere," the company claims".