Oxytocin has been getting way too much press lately. Everyone is talking about it. Everyone wants to get all touchy feely and have great orgasms. But enough of that I say. Its overrated. You know that a recreational chemical has jumped the proverbial "shark" when they pass it out at a party and you get these types of reactions:
http://www.dosenation.com/listing.php?id=6472
Look, it doesn't matter that Oxytocin helps a mother bond with a baby. Too much of that goes on already. I mean really folks. Those babies need to learn that mommy isn't always going to be there to help them. And the earlier they learn this lesson in tough love the better. I think that by the end of the babies' second week of existence mommy should be taken away and replaced by giant robots. Robots are going to take over the world anyway. So the babies might as well get used to it.
But I digress. What I want to say is that there is now scientific proof that oxytocin isn't all the panacea that all those tree huggers claim it to be. In fact, oxytocin also increases the natural propensity to enjoy seeing other people suffer. Thats right, that good old fashioned word that only the German's could invent: Schandenfrude. Or at least that's what these scientists think:
Shamay-Tsoory SG, Fischer M, Dvash J, Harari H, Perach-Bloom N, Levkovitz Y.
Department of Psychology,
University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Biol Psychiatry. 2009 Jul 27. ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Humans have a strong social tendency to compare themselves with others. We tend to feel envious when we receive less valuable rewards and may rejoice when our payoffs are more advantageous. Envy and schadenfreude (gloating over the other's misfortune) are social emotions widely agreed to be a symptom of the human social tendency to compare one's payoffs with those of others. Given the important social components of envy and gloating, we speculated that oxytocin may have a modulating effect on the intensity of these emotions. METHODS: Fifty-six participants participated in this double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject study. Following the administration of oxytocin or a placebo, participants played a game of chance with another (fake) participant who either won more money (envy manipulation), lost more money (schadenfreude manipulation), or won/lost equal amounts of money. RESULTS: In comparison with the placebo, oxytocin increased the envy ratings during unequal monetary gain conditions involving relative loss (when the participant gained less money than another player). Oxytocin also increased the ratings of gloating during relative gain conditions (when the participant gained more money than the other player). By contrast, oxytocin had no effect on the emotional ratings following equal monetary gains nor did it affect general mood ratings. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the oxytocinergic system is involved in modulating envy and gloating. Thus, contrary to the prevailing belief that this system is involved solely in positive prosocial behaviors, it probably plays a key role in a wider range of social emotion-related behaviors.
Frankly, I don't care a dram about what a bunch of stuck up scientists think about oxytocin or anything for that matter. Education, like oxytocin is overrated. I think that what we need is some good old fashioned common sense. The stuff you don't have to read in a book. The stuff that isn't peer reviewed. The stuff that any idiot can write in a blog. In fact, the more people who write in blogs can only have the beneficial effect of drowning out all that so called serious research that scientists undertake.
But enough of all that. What we need is some good old fashioned testosterone to get us out of this oxytocin rut. And I know just where to get it. I'll feel so much better after I take some:
http://www.boost-your-low-testosterone.com/shy-men-testosterone-oxytocin-self-confidence.html
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