Feel Our Pain: Empathy and Moral Behavior

“It’s empathy that makes us help other people. It’s empathy that makes us moral.” The economist Paul Zak casually makes this comment in his widely watched TED talk about the hormone oxytocin, which he dubs the “moral molecule.” Zak quotes a number of behavioral studies to support his claim that oxytocin increases empathy and trust, which in turn increases moral behavior. If all humans regularly inhaled a few puffs of oxytocin through a nasal spray, we could become more compassionate and caring, he explains. It sounds too good to be true. And recent research now suggests that this overly simplistic view of oxytocin, empathy, and morality is indeed too good to be true.