The Moral Molecule
Claremont Graduate University
Monday, March 15, 2010
6:30 pm
Pearl Stable Auditorium
What makes people trust one another? What is the basis for the human urge to care, to share, and to form meaningful relationships? Paul Zak is a scientist and pioneer in neuroeconomics, a new and emerging field that combines methods from neuroscience and economics to study how people make decisions involving risk, as well as strategic decisions involving trust and relationships with others. Research from Dr. Zak's laboratory shows that a naturally occurring hormone, oxytocin, makes people more likely to give money to strangers. Oxytocin is released in many human social experiences, including human touch, and giving birth in women. Oxytocin, according to Dr. Zak, functions in human brains as “the moral molecule.” Oxytocin is the molecule of social adhesion, the “glue” that promotes the bonding and empathy that holds families, communities, and societies together. Trust, according to Dr. Zak, is the basis of our social capital. Research by Zak and his colleagues has shown that a 15 percent boost in the proportion of people who think their fellow citizens are trustworthy results in an increase in per capita output growth by 1 percent a year for every year thereafter. In his Mind Science Foundation public lecture, Dr. Zak will discuss the implications of his research in the neuroeconomics of trust for law and public policy.
Paul J. Zak is Professor of Economics and founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University. He also serves as Professor of Neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center, and is a Senior Researcher at UCLA. He has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard. He is the author of Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy. Professor Zak is credited with the first published use of the term "neuroeconomics" and has been in the vanguard of this new discipline that integrates neuroscience and economics.