Oxytocin—not always a moral molecule

A study by Ernst Fehr and colleagues (Kosfeld et al., 2005), in which the intranasal administration of oxytocin increased the trusting behavior of investors toward strangers in an economic trust game, triggered a growing body of studies demonstrating a plethora of positive effects of oxytocin on social behaviors. The gist of the media coverage of oxytocin is that the molecular substrate of good and evil has finally been discovered and that a sniff of this substance might be sufficient to restore love, understanding, and peace in the world. [...]oxytocin leads to in-group favoritism and results in non-cooperative, defective and even aggressive behavior toward out-group members (De Dreu, 2012).