Past studies on the role that oxytocin plays in complex emotional and social behaviors, such as attachment, empathy and generosity, conducted particularly by Swiss scientists, already revealed it also as a factor in aggression.
Psychologist Carsten de Dreu of the University of Amsterdam, recently conducted several experiments with over 200 volunteers to determine the importance of oxytocin as a factor towards the increase of our prejudices and ethinocentrism.
The volunteers were given a spray containing either oxytocin or a placebo and shown national and foreign references in a series of different rounds to which they had to press a button linking the reference with positive or negative words.
Dr de Dreu's net results throw that those volunteers that inhaled oxytocin showed a clear preference of their own group over other groups, which, in his own words "sets the stage for
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