Hug the Monkey

Love Styles and Oxytocin

I use the phrase "love styles" to refer to the concept of attachment styles put forth by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Ainsworth developed a test, the Strange Situation, to see what kind of relationship babies had with their mothers. They came up with three: Secure, anxious or avoidant attachment. Some psychologists have create subcategories or changed these a bit. But the basic theory is, you can be securely attached to your mother, you maybe anxious that she's not going to be there for you, or you can be so scared or hurt that you withdraw into yourself and try not to need anyone else.

I believe that you can also look at these as oxytocin styles. Because the way our brains release and react to oxytocin is shaped by our earliest experiences,  these love styles are likely the result of the way that the  oxytocin response developed.

I'm fascinated by this kind of thing, because understanding it helps me understand myself and my relationships.

This is a long-way-round introduction to my interview with Deb Harper  of Psychjourney. Deb creates podcasts with authors, psychologists and thinkers on psychological topics. We talked about attachment styles and oxytocin in the wide-ranging interview. The conversation was very interesting for me, and I hope you'll think so, too.

CORRECTED: You can download the Chemistry of Connection podcast here.

Oxytocin Better than Beer for Hooking Up?

Okay, I am being facetious. But a new study found that inhaling oxytocin made study subjects feel more positively about strangers.

ABC News reported on the study by Angeliki Theodoridou, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK. This makes sense, because oxytocin has previously been shown to reduce activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain that makes pre-conscious, friend-or-foe decisions. Oxytocin seems to act as a trust signal, letting us gradually approach other people.

Theodoridou was on the team led by Eric Hollander that found oxytocin reduced symptoms of autism and increased adult autistics' ability to detect emotional meaning in speech.

Oxytocin Cools Marital Spats

Inhaling oxytocin helps couples fight fair, a new study shows.

When couples sniffed oxytocin and then engaged in a mock argument, those who'd inhaled the good stuff showed more positive communication and engaged in less negative behaviors. They also had lower levels of cortisol, indicating they didn't get as stressed out by the fight. The study was led by Beate Ditzen under the aegis of Markus Heinrichs, the University of Zurich scientist who did the original human oxytocin studies.

I reported on an earlier study by Bitzen that showed the same results: Oxytocin Keeps the Lid on Spats. Also, Adam Guastella in Australia, is studying the use of oxytocin inhalants as an aid to couples therapy.

The article is "Intranasal Oxytocin Increases Positive Communication and Reduces Cortisol Levels During Couple Conflict" by Beate Ditzen, Marcel Schaer, Barbara Gabriel, Guy Bodenmann, Ulrike Ehlert, and Markus Heinrichs. Authors Ditzen and Ehlert are affiliated with the Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. Ditzen is also with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia. Schaer, Gabriel, and Bodenmann are from the Department of Psychology, Institute for Family Research and Counseling, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland. Heinrichs is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. The article appears in Biological Psychiatry, Volume 65, Issue 9 (May 1, 2009), published by Elsevier.

Luckily, Elsevier's PR person gave this a better title: Love Potion #1?

Take the Passion Poll

Passion coach Eryn-Faye has posted three polls on her blog.

How often do you go on a date with your spouse?

How often do you and your SO talk about sex?

Who initiates sex more often?

All good questions anyone in a relationship should be thinking about. Go to Eryn-Faye's blog and take the passion poll, then see how other people answered.

I think my basic answer is "not often enough."

I Heart Pepsi

I have a theory that advertising and brand messages can evoke the oxytocin response in us humans. This hasn't been validated by science yet, but it makes sense. Sociologists talk about parasocial relationships, that is, relationships with people we haven't actually met, such as celebrities or fictional characters.

Fans express their desire and love for characters in TV shows in the same way as they might talk about a real person, and they sometimes cry real tears over fictional events. So why would their love be less real -- or less oxytocin-producing?

I ran across this December 2008 article in Science Daily that provides another piece of evidence. Vanitha Swaminathan, Karen M. Stilley (University of Pittsburgh), and Rohini Ahluwalia (University of Minnesota) found that someone's attachment style influenced their reactions to brands.

The kind of bond we have with our mother -- the way our oxytocin response forms -- depends on how she treats us. We then tend to apply the mode of loving we learned from her to our future relationships. Psychologists group them into three or four "attachment styles."

From the article:

According to the authors, anxiously attached individuals are more influenced by "brand personalities," the idea that a brand possesses humanlike traits, such as sincerity or excitement. "Because of a low view of self, anxious individuals use brands to signal their ideal self-concept to future relationship partners and therefore focus more on the personality of the brand," the authors write.

What this says to me indirectly is that our attachment to a brand uses the same brain circuits and neurochemistry as our attachment to another human. So brand loyalty is a kind of love that's as real as any other.

Serotonin Makes a Happy Crowd

Swarming locusts are famous for devouring everything in their path. Looking for the trigger that makes billions of locusts form one of these devastating hordes, scientists discovered that serotonin turns the usually solitary grasshoppers into highly social -- and highly mobile -- insects.

When there's plenty of forage, locusts are solitary, happily going about their business eating and pooping. As resources dwindle during dry periods, the locusts get more and more crowded and come into physical contact with each other. However, instead of this crowding triggering fighting and increased competition, it instead causes them to be more social. They actively seek each other out, according to this article from ScienceDaily.

The research team found that they could easily make solitary locusts gregarious simply by tickling their hind legs, which simulates the jostling they'd get in the wild. This tickling caused a jump in serotonin in the locusts' brains, which happen to be located in their thoraxes.

According to the story:

Dr Swidbert Ott, from Cambridge University, one of the co-authors of the article, said: "Serotonin profoundly influences how we humans behave and interact, so to find that the same chemical in the brain is what causes a normally shy antisocial insect to gang up in huge groups is amazing."

Professor Malcolm Burrows, also from Cambridge University: "We hope that this greater understanding of the mechanisms causing such a big change in behaviour will help in the control of this pest, and more broadly help in understanding the widespread changes in behavioural traits of animals."

Animals like people? Okay, and why am I covering this in a blog about oxytocin?

The oxytocin and serotonin systems are closely related, and both neurochemicals seem to influence social behavior. Low-serotonin monkey mothers aren't as nice to their babies, and lower levels of mothering behavior in mice create fewer oxytocin receptors in the brains of their pups -- even when they grow up.

It's likely that both of these hold true for humans; and evidently these researchers think their locust research could apply to mammals.  Connecting the dots:

Could we be an under-nurtured, low-serotonin, low-oxytocin society? Could this by why we can no longer come together as a unified society, but instead get more stressed out and angry, the closer we get?

University of Cambridge (2009, January 29). How A Brain Chemical Changes Locusts From Harmless Grasshoppers To Swarming Pests.

See also: Oxytocin Deficit Disorder

The Monogamy Gene

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute found that variations in a gene for vasopressin correlate with monogamous tendencies. Vasopressin seems to influence some bonding behaviors in males; it's  influenced by testosterone; and it's also responsible for defensive and aggressive behaviors, often in defense of the mate and family.
According to Bloomberg Muse:

The researchers ran genetic tests on 2,186 participants in the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden and had them fill out a survey about the quality of their marriage. Men with a genetic variation scored significantly lower on a scale of partner bonding. One in three reported a crisis in their marriage within the past year, twice the number as those without the variation.

... Those whose husbands had one or two copies of the gene variation scored significantly lower on tests asking about their marriage quality than those without it.

Larry Young and Elizbeth Hammock of Emory University had found that variations in parts of the vasopressin gene, formerly considered "junk DNA", seemed to influence monogamy in the prairie vole. While this rodent is socially monogam0us, some individuals never mate. Hammock was able to breed non-monogamous prairie voles by selecting for this variation.

I heard Young present about this at a conference, and he was very cautious about extrapolating his vole work to humans. Paul Lichtenstein, a professor of genetic epidemiology at Karolinska, has kindly connected the dots for us humans.

True Love and Business

I've written several times about the interesting and revolutionary work Paul Zak is doing on oxytocin and its relationship to business and economic exchange. In short, Paul is in the process of proving that the virtues of generosity and trust are crucial for a thriving economy.

Earlier this morning, I had on my other hat: technology journalist. Researching Lotame, a company I'll include in a story about targeting online advertising, I came across this in a great blog post from the company's founder, Andy Monfried (right). He's talking about what companies can do to survive during these .. um .. difficult economic times:

9) rely less on email, and more on good old fashion people skills.  email is NOT people skills.

10) give way more love and good vibes than EVER. passion goes a long way in any business, and it's often under utilized - and, overlooked.

That's good advice for anyone in business at any time -- and maybe should go at the top of the list. Meeting face-to-face, looking into another person's eyes, shaking hands and sharing a beverage or a meal provide an opportunity to build trust, based on spurts of oxytocin from the hypothalamus combined with dopamine tickling the brain's reward centers. Trust and love are different points on the same neurochemical spectrum. When you love someone, you want good for them. And Andy is right, that kind of love impels each of you to help the other succeed.

I like the name of his blog, too: You Ain' Gonna Learn What You Don't Want to Know. So true.

Science vs. Religion (When It Comes to Love)

Some very heated discussion on the Ave Maria Gratia Plena blog following author Michelle's comments about oxytocin, bonding and premarital sex. It shows how attempts to understand how our biology affects our emotions gets mired in emotion.

In Why I disagree with promiscuity and fear for the FLDS kids that will be taught modern sex ed, she writes that she's worried that the children removed from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints camp will be taught modern society's ways, including acceptance of premarital sex. She goes on to make some statements about how the bonding effects of oxytocin following sex and orgasm can cloud a woman's judgment about a man.

I think she makes some very valid points; I do agree with this:

Ever wonder why so many women are "in love" with total losers and won't end the relationship? O-x-y-t-o-c-i-n...
~ This is why so many marriages fail when the couples have slept together before being wed: a woman that is chemically bonded to a man is in danger of settling for a husband that is totally not compatible with herself. She can't see this because she is trapped in a bond she probably knows nothing about. (When do they teach girls about oxytocin in sex ed classes??)

However, framing these ideas with this really tragic situation makes it a lot harder to examine what she says. As commenters rightly point out, surely the situation these women, and especially the very young girls who were married to older men who had multiple wives, were in a worse situation than someone who finds herself "bonded to a total loser."

Still, many comments accuse her of ranting and twisting science. One wrote,

You made the claim that a woman is bonded to her sexual partner against her will by oxytocin. That a woman falls in love with a "loser" because of oxytocin. You cannot ask me to offer counterproof until you offer some credible evidence - other than a reference to Wikipedia - to support your statements. Then you'll get your "argument".

I really wish it weren't so, but there is plenty of credible evidence that both men and women become bonded to their sex partners -- and women more so than men. I wish we humans were able to create new forms of relationships and new societies based on our ideals, not our biology. But we remain deeply influenced by our animal natures.

It's completely proven that men and women release oxytocin during  orgasm. Following are some studies that, taken together, make a very strong case that oxytocin creates the bond of human love, and that estrogen increases oxytocin's effects:

Bale, Tracy L.; Davis, Aline M.; Auger, Anthony P.; Dorsa, Daniel M.; and McCarthy, Margaret M. 2001. CNS Region-Specific Oxytocin Receptor Expression: Importance in Regulation of Anxiety and Sex Behavior. The Journal of Neuroscience 21(7):2546-2552.

Bales, Karen; Lewis-Reese, Antoniah; Pfeifer, Lisa; and Kramer, Kristin; and Carter, C. Sue. 2007. Early Experience Affects the Traits of Monogamy in a Sexually Dimorphic Manner. Developmental Psychobiology 49:335-342

Carter, C. Sue; DeVries, A.C.; and Getz, L.L. 1995. Physiological substrates of mammalian monogamy: the prairie vole model. Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews 19(2): 303-14.

Carter, C. Sue. 2007. Sex differences in oxytocin and vasopressin: Implications for autism spectrum disorders? Behavioural Brain Research 176(1):170-86.

Chung, Wilson C. J.; De Vries, Geert J.; and Swaab, Dick F. 2002. Sexual Differentiation of the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis in Humans May Extend into Adulthood, The Journal of Neuroscience 22(3):1027–1033.

Cushing, B.S. and Carter, C.S. 1999. Prior Exposure To Oxytocin Mimics the Effects Of Social Contact and Facilitates Sexual Behaviour In Females. Journal of Neuroendocrinology 11(10):765–769.

Georgiadis, Janniko R.; Reinders, Simone A.A.T.; Van der Graaf, Ferdinand H.C.E.; Paans, Anne M.J.; Kortekaas, Rudie. 2007. Brain activation during human male ejaculation revisited. Neuroreport 18(6):553-557.

 

Young, Larry J. and Wang, Zuoxin, The neurobiology of pair bonding (Nature Neuroscience Vo. 7. No. 10, October 2004)

Zak, Paul J.; Kurzband, Robert; and Matzner, William T., Oxytocin is associated with human trustworthiness (Hormones and Behavior 48 (2005) 522 – 527)

 

Mommy Your Man or Have a Grown-Up Relationship

There used to be a popular T-shirt that read, "I wanted to have a baby, not marry one!"

In fact, women can easily fall into the trap of mothering their mates. First, women's higher levels of oxytocin make them prone to mothering behaviors. And, let's face it, men who grew up with mommies who took care of them sometimes have a difficult time transitioning to independent adulthood. Finally, many men seem to not care as much as the women in their lives about things like neatness and nutrition.

These factors make it all too easy to fall into mommying him: Picking up after him, reminding him to take care of himself, making doctors appointments for him, etc. According to this article on CNN Living, it's a really bad idea.

Babying the man in your life can mean two things, Tessina says: A. You've been spending too much time being mommy and may need a break from the kids, or B. You need more adult contact, whether it be a weekend away with the girls or a few hours at the mall while the kids are with a sitter.

Tessina says that normal nurturing -- cooking for him, massaging him, tending to him when he's sick -- can feel motherly if you're too controlling about it. "Instead, tell him what you'd like to do to help him, and ask him if he wants that kind of help. This evens the field and makes you equals," she says.

I would add that it can ruin your sex life and your whole relationship. All that oxytocin a woman generates can make sex with him seem unconsciously weird, and oxytocin is not the hormone of desire, it's the hormone of fulfilled desire, aka orgasm. An excess of oxytocin also can damp down the effects of his testosterone -- not a problem when he's a young bull, but increasingly an issue as he -- and the marriage -- ages.

Besides, who wants to make love to a baby?

Read the article for amazing stories of how far some women go.

Do You Mommy Your Husband?