SCIENTISTS have created a “trust” serum that could help in the treatment of autism or phobias but could also be a dangerous weapon in the hands of confidence tricksters.

Research in Switzerland has revealed that sniffing a hormone called oxytocin makes people more likely to trust others, raising alarming implications for the manipulation of an emotion critical to social and economic relationships.

Oxytocin might be abused as a “trust serum” that could be sprayed over crowds at political rallies, piped into a casino or business meeting, or exploited as an aphrodisiac to persuade a romantic target to drop his, or her, guard.

Oxytocin even has been nicknamed the “elixir of love”, because levels rise after sex and in the first flush of a romance. It also plays a part in inducing lactation and labour.

The new study, led by Michael Kosfeld and Ernst Fehr, of the University of Zurich, has suggested that it is also fundamental to trust.

The scientists devised a game in which volunteers were split into two groups of “investors” and “trustees”. The investors were given money with which to speculate and could spend it or by pass it to a trustee. If they gave it to a trustee, the rewards would be greater, but only if the trustee agreed to hand back a share of the proceeds.

When the investors were given oxytocin to sniff, they were significantly more trusting than when given a placebo. Forty-five per cent of the oxytocin group showed maximum trust levels, compared with just 21 per cent of those who sniffed the placebo.

Oxytocin did not have any effect on the behaviour of the trustees — their decision about whether to hand back any money is not based on trust.

To rule out the possibility that oxytocin merely made investors more optimistic, rather than more trusting, the experiment was repeated with money being invested via a random computer game, rather than with a real person. In these circumstances, oxytocin inhalation had no effect.

Dr Fehr, whose results are published today in the journal Nature, said: “It is clear that oxytocin changes behaviour, causing a substantial increase in trust. I believe that in the medium to long term this could have clinical applications.

“The main hope is that one can help people with pathologically low trust levels, such as autistic children or adults, or people with social phobia.”

He accepted, however, that there was potential for abuse, but said that oxytocin would be very difficult to deliver surrepticiously in useful doses.

“It has a half-life of just two to three minutes, so you would have to spray it permanently like a fog to have an effect,” he said. “The peak effect is after fifteen minutes, and after two hours it is over.”

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