Ted Talk: Trust, morality -- and oxytocin

"What drives our desire to behave morally? Neuroeconomist Paul Zak shows why he believes oxytocin (he calls it "the moral molecule") is responsible for trust, empathy and other feelings that help build a stable society."



For more read our previous blog post "Liquid Trust and Artificial Love" here.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Misophonia: Personality Quirk, Symptom, or Neurological Disorder?

Image
When I first learned about misophonia , it was described as a severe annoyance by certain specific sounds, most commonly bodily sounds such as chewing, breathing and slurping, or repetitive sounds such as ceiling fans, beeping, etc.  A quick Wikipedia search described it as, “a form of decreased sound tolerance… believed to be a neurological disorder characterized by negative experiences resulting only from specific sounds, whether loud or soft.” Immediately, I had a number of questions: if misophonia is just a hatred of certain sounds that leads to annoyance or anger, how is this classified as a neurological disorder?  Wouldn’t everyone have this disorder to some degree?  Everyone has their pet peeves as far as sound goes; I cannot stand the sound of people chewing, and while it is sometimes very irritating, I would by no means say that I have a neurological disorder. The Wikipedia entry stated, “Intense anxiety and avoidant behavior may develop, which can lead to decre...
Read more

Announcing the Neuroethics Scholars Program @ Emory University

Image
Are you interested in the ethical and social implications of neuroscience and neurotechnology? The Neuroethics Program of the Emory Center for Ethics is proud to announce the Neuroethics Scholars Program. The program is open to graduate students in any discipline who want to develop their interes ts at the intersection of neuroscience and ethics. Deadline for applications: October 15, 2011 Sponsored by the Emory Center for Ethics and its Neuroethics Program , and funded by the Emory Neurosciences Initiative, the Neuroethics Scholars Program is an unprecedented opportunity for Emory graduate students to become active in the national Neuroethics community. Graduate students are invited to propose collaborative or independent projects of interest to them, which could include areas such as: Developing Neuroethics curricula and co-teaching Neuroethics topics in both academic and public arenas Developing and executing interdisciplinary empiric...
Read more

Nobody Ever Believes This Story: Slam Poetry as a Palimpsestic Space for Mental Illness Identity

Image
By Chandler Batchelor Chandler Batchelor is a graduate student in the Literature, Medicine, and Culture MA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She is interested in alternative and holistic approaches to mental healthcare, doctor-patient relationships in mental healthcare, and mental health advocacy. Typically, descriptions of mental illness provided by medical professionals are often taken more seriously than descriptions given by the diagnosed themselves. Biomedicine has a particular way of talking about mental abnormalities, describing mental experiences with symptoms. It uses words like “depression,” “flat affect,” and “grandiose sense of self” to depict concrete outward signs of internal dysfunction. In our culture, this biomedical rhetoric is upheld as the definitive, most correct and objective way of describing mental illness. But while biomedicine is an excellent tool for describing diseases, it often fails to capture the subjective nuances of th...
Read more