Hey champ! Remember how our brains love shortcuts and groups? Well, we've got a fascinating twist for you today. Let's dive deep into how the "love hormone" plays a part in this.

• Known as: “the love hormone”, “the bonding hormone”, “the cuddle chemical”.
• Surprise, Surprise: It might also promote ethnocentrism, where you think your ethnic group is the best.

Setup

• Participants: Dutch dudes (you know, from the Netherlands).
• What they did: Sniffed either oxytocin or a placebo (kind of like a fake treatment).
• The Test: They were shown pictures of:
  • Their mates (Dutch guys) 🚶‍♂️
  • Folks from the Middle East and Germany 🌍

The Twist

• Remember the trolley problem? 🚋💥
  • Imagine a runaway trolley. If you pull a lever, it switches tracks and kills one person, but saves five others. Do you pull it?
• Participants had to decide who to "sacrifice":
  • Their Dutch mate (Dirk, Peter 🇳🇱)
  • An Arab guy (Ahmed, Youssef 🌍)
  • A German (Markus, Helmut 🇩🇪)
  • Five other unnamed folks (who knows where they're from 🤷‍♂️).

What's the Catch?
Would a Dutch person, under the influence of oxytocin, rather toss a non-Dutch person in front of the trolley?