What is it about handshaking that seems to engage the emotions of the two participants? Neuroscientist and oxytocin guru Paul Zak, officially Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California and Professor of Economics and Neurology, writes with author Susan Kuchinskas:
“Touch primes the brain to release oxytocin. In Zak’s experiment, half the participants received a 15-minute massage and then played an economic game in which they exchanged real money. After being trusted by a stranger with money in the hope that they’d reciprocate, the brains of participants who got a massage released much more oxytocin than those who simply rested alone. Amazingly, those who received massages returned 243 percent more money to the stranger who showed them trust than those who rested.”
The article explains how oxytocin constitutes a sort of social glue and economic lubricant:
Recent research from Zak’s neuroeconomics lab has shown that the human brain uses oxytocin to unconsciously assess if a person is trustworthy using our memory of past encounters and all of our senses, including touch. If the stranger is a good match for other trustworthy people, the brain releases oxytocin, telling us it is safe to trust.
At the same time, oxytocin causes the release of another brain chemical, dopamine, in the brain’s reward center. This little charge helps us associate a trustworthy person with pleasure. The next time we meet this person, the trust assessment happens more quickly. This is how oxytocin encourages what’s called “pro-social behavior.” That’s all the positive behaviors and feelings we share with others: love, trustworthiness, generosity, and compassion.
Zak’s research seems to suggest that if a firm handshake is good, a massage might be even better.
Future Vision by Erwin Van Lun on this article
People remain people. However real we make the virtual world, however much robots will resemble humans, the people we trust the most will be the people we’ve had physical contact with, which we’ve touched. And the most we touch them (with intensive sex as zenith), the bigger the trust. In Pamper Planet, in the spiritual world of 2050 (after we’ve automated and robotised everything) touch, the we-feeling, will be central (again).