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Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy
Showing posts with label Neurotransmitters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neurotransmitters. Show all posts

Thursday, October 26, 2023

The Neuroscience of Trust

Paul J. Zak
Harvard Business Review
Originally posted January-February 2017

Here is an excerpt:

The Return on Trust

After identifying and measuring the managerial behaviors that sustain trust in organizations, my team and I tested the impact of trust on business performance. We did this in several ways. First, we gathered evidence from a dozen companies that have launched policy changes to raise trust (most were motivated by a slump in their profits or market share). Second, we conducted the field experiments mentioned earlier: In two businesses where trust varies by department, my team gave groups of employees specific tasks, gauged their productivity and innovation in those tasks, and gathered very detailed data—including direct measures of brain activity—showing that trust improves performance. And third, with the help of an independent survey firm, we collected data in February 2016 from a nationally representative sample of 1,095 working adults in the U.S. The findings from all three sources were similar, but I will focus on what we learned from the national data since itʼs generalizable.

By surveying the employees about the extent to which firms practiced the eight behaviors, we were able to calculate the level of trust for each organization. (To avoid priming respondents, we never used the word “trust” in surveys.) The U.S. average for organizational trust was 70% (out of a possible 100%). Fully 47% of respondents worked in organizations where trust was below the average, with one firm scoring an abysmally low 15%. Overall, companies scored lowest on recognizing excellence and sharing information (67% and 68%, respectively). So the data suggests that the average U.S. company could enhance trust by
improving in these two areas—even if it didnʼt improve in the other six.

The effect of trust on self-reported work performance was powerful.  Respondents whose companies were in the top quartile indicated they had 106% more energy and were 76% more engaged at work than respondents whose firms were in the bottom quartile. They also reported being 50% more productive
—which is consistent with our objective measures of productivity from studies we have done with employees at work. Trust had a major impact on employee loyalty as well: Compared with employees at low-trust companies, 50% more of those working at high-trust organizations planned to stay with their employer over the next year, and 88% more said they would recommend their company to family and friends as a place to work.


Here is a summary of the key points from the article:
  • Trust is crucial for social interactions and has implications for economic, political, and healthcare outcomes. There are two main types of trust - emotional trust and cognitive trust.
  • Emotional trust develops early in life through attachments and is more implicit, while cognitive trust relies on reasoning and develops later. Both rely on brain regions involved in reward, emotion regulation, understanding others' mental states, and decision making.
  • Oxytocin and vasopressin play key roles in emotional trust by facilitating social bonding and attachment. Disruptions to these systems are linked to social disorders like autism.
  • The prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and striatum are involved in cognitive trust judgments and updating trustworthiness based on new evidence. Damage to prefrontal regions impairs updating of trustworthiness.
  • Trust engages the brain's reward circuitry. Betrayals of trust activate pain and emotion regulation circuits. Trustworthiness cues engage the mentalizing network for inferring others' intentions.
  • Neuroimaging studies show trust engage brain regions involved in reward, emotion regulation, understanding mental states, and decision making. Oxytocin administration increases trusting behavior.
  • Understanding the neuroscience of trust can inform efforts to build trust in healthcare, economic, political, and other social domains. More research is needed on how trust develops over the lifespan.

Thursday, December 30, 2021

When Helping Is Risky: The Behavioral and Neurobiological Trade-off of Social and Risk Preferences

Gross, J., Faber, N. S., et al.  (2021).
Psychological Science, 32(11), 1842–1855.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211015942

Abstract

Helping other people can entail risks for the helper. For example, when treating infectious patients, medical volunteers risk their own health. In such situations, decisions to help should depend on the individual’s valuation of others’ well-being (social preferences) and the degree of personal risk the individual finds acceptable (risk preferences). We investigated how these distinct preferences are psychologically and neurobiologically integrated when helping is risky. We used incentivized decision-making tasks (Study 1; N = 292 adults) and manipulated dopamine and norepinephrine levels in the brain by administering methylphenidate, atomoxetine, or a placebo (Study 2; N = 154 adults). We found that social and risk preferences are independent drivers of risky helping. Methylphenidate increased risky helping by selectively altering risk preferences rather than social preferences. Atomoxetine influenced neither risk preferences nor social preferences and did not affect risky helping. This suggests that methylphenidate-altered dopamine concentrations affect helping decisions that entail a risk to the helper.

From the Discussion

From a practical perspective, both methylphenidate (sold under the trade name Ritalin) and atomoxetine (sold under the trade name Strattera) are prescription drugs used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and are regularly used off-label by people who aim to enhance their cognitive performance (Maier et al., 2018). Thus, our results have implications for the ethics of and policy for the use of psychostimulants. Indeed, the Global Drug Survey taken in 2015 and 2017 revealed that 3.2% and 6.6% of respondents, respectively, reported using psychostimulants such as methylphenidate for cognitive enhancement (Maier et al., 2018). Both in the professional ethical debate as well as in the general public, concerns about the medical safety and the fairness of such cognitive enhancements are discussed (Faber et al., 2016). However, our finding that methylphenidate alters helping behavior through increased risk seeking demonstrates that substances aimed at changing cognitive functioning can also influence social behavior. Such “social” side effects of cognitive enhancement (whether deemed positive or negative) are currently unknown to both users and administrators and thus do not receive much attention in the societal debate about psychostimulant use (Faulmüller et al., 2013).

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Why our brains see the world as ‘us’ versus ‘them’

Leslie Henderson
The Conversation
Originally posted June 2018

Here is an excerpt:

As opposed to fear, distrust and anxiety, circuits of neurons in brain regions called the mesolimbic system are critical mediators of our sense of “reward.” These neurons control the release of the transmitter dopamine, which is associated with an enhanced sense of pleasure. The addictive nature of some drugs, as well as pathological gaming and gambling, are correlated with increased dopamine in mesolimbic circuits.

In addition to dopamine itself, neurochemicals such as oxytocin can significantly alter the sense of reward and pleasure, especially in relationship to social interactions, by modulating these mesolimbic circuits.

Methodological variations indicate further study is needed to fully understand the roles of these signaling pathways in people. That caveat acknowledged, there is much we can learn from the complex social interactions of other mammals.

The neural circuits that govern social behavior and reward arose early in vertebrate evolution and are present in birds, reptiles, bony fishes and amphibians, as well as mammals. So while there is not a lot of information on reward pathway activity in people during in-group versus out-group social situations, there are some tantalizing results from  studies on other mammals.

The article is here.

Monday, October 6, 2014

How neuroscience is being used to spread quackery in business and education

By Matt Wall
The Conversation
Originally published August 26, 2014

Here is an excerpt:

Recent years have seen a huge growth in the public awareness of neuroscience. People have become more interested in new findings about the brain, and also find brain-based explanations quite compelling. This public interest has led enterprising individuals to try to apply neuroscientific ideas to more everyday situations.

This trend first began back in the late 1990s with “neuromarketing”. More recent developments involve the use neuroscience in the business world and in education. But, like homeopathy and phrenology many of these applications can be regarded as “cargo-cult neuroscience”.

The entire article is here.

Friday, July 25, 2014

The Trouble With Brain Science

By Gary Marcus
The New York Times
Originally published July 11, 2014

Are we ever going to figure out how the brain works?

After decades of research, diseases like schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s still resist treatment. Despite countless investigations into serotonin and other neurotransmitters, there is still no method to cure clinical depression. And for all the excitement about brain-imaging techniques, the limitations of fMRI studies are, as evidenced by popular books like “Brainwashed” and “Neuromania,” by now well known. In spite of the many remarkable advances in neuroscience, you might get the sinking feeling that we are not always going about brain science in the best possible way.

The entire article is here.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Creating a 'morality pill' more a question of ethics than science

By Katie Collins
Wired
Originally posted May 16, 2014

Is there any way that we could create a drug that would make us moral? This is the question Molly Crockett, neuroscientist at Oxford University, posed to the crowd at a Brain Boosters event organised as part of the NERRI Project in London this week.

Crockett was tackling the subject of neuro-enhancement -- the idea that we could potentially use science to make our brains in some way better. Much of the discussion at the event revolved around intelligence, but Crockett instead chose to tackle the subject of personality -- and more specifically, morality.

The entire article is here.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Mental illness: is chemical imbalance theory a myth?

Torstar News Service
Originally published on October 19, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Now, neuroscience would attribute such things as depression and psychosis to “chemical imbalances” — specifically to disruptions in the neurotransmitters that allow the brain’s billions upon billions of grey matter cells to speak to one another.

And so mental illnesses became normalized and destigmatized.

And so their treatments, to a huge extent, came off of the couch, out of the asylums and onto pharmacy counters.

And so a $70-billion drug market grew to feed tens of millions worldwide with daily doses of magic bullets — pills that could bring their brain chemistry back into balance.

Trouble is, in the minds of many neuroscientists today, that chemical imbalance theory has turned out to be a myth, with little more scientific or medicinal substance than poetry or song.

The entire article is here.

Thanks to Ned Jenny for this information.