The coin toss results reported by participants who had taken oxytocin and those who had received the placebo were very different. Among the control subjects, 23% claimed to have guessed the results of nine or 10 of the coin tosses.
But in the oxytocin group, 53% of the participants claimed to have correctly guessed this many coin tosses.
"The statistical probability of someone correctly guessing the results of nine or 10 coin tosses is about 1%," says Dr. Shaul Shalvi, director of BGU's Center for Decision Making and Economic Psychology. "Yet, 53% of those who were given oxytocin claimed to have correctly predicted that many coin tosses, which is extremely unlikely."
So it seems fair to assume that the majority of the subjects who claimed 90% or 100% success rates were lying, but it shows that the oxytocin group were more than twice as likely to lie than the placebo group.
Oxytocin promotes group bonding, so were the subjects who received the oxytocin lying in order to benefit their group?
"Our results suggest people are willing to bend ethical rules to help the people close to us, like our team or family," says Dr. Shalvi. "This raises an interesting, although perhaps more philosophical, question: are all lies immoral?"
Dr. Shalvi considers the experiment to provide "insight into when and why collaboration turns into corruption." He goes on to describe how the results highlight the role of bonding and cooperation in shaping dishonesty: