Robert Sapolsky on Oxytocin and Bonding - The Joe Rogan Experience

Hello, freak bitches. You know, just to flip to the other end of the spectrum in terms of what, like, coevolution between two different species to be like, over the last 20,000 years, look at what we've done. We've taken wolves and we've turned them into these creatures we put Halloween costumes on. And, like, a finding a couple of years ago, which, like, floored me, is hormone oxytocin, which is totally trendy. Oxytocin is completely cool. Mother-infant bonding is mediated by oxytocin, pair bonding in monogamous species. Oxytocin makes you more trusting and expressive and generous and economic games. And oxytocin has all these pro-social effects within a species. But then it turns out that this hormone that has spent the last, I don't know, 100 million years having mothers and infants connect to each other emotionally. When you and your beloved dog sit there and stare into each other's eyes, you both secrete oxytocin. And if you pump up oxytocin levels in your dog, it will stare at you longer and you will stare longer back and secrete more oxytocin. This is like an ancient, ancient hormone having to do with mother-infant bonding. And in 20,000 years, which is like a blink of an eye evolutionarily, suddenly we're doing this weird oxytocin tango thing with another species. Another species who we feed and take care of and they manipulate us wildly into getting good dessert treat bones and stuff like that. And they in turn do all sorts of wondrous stuff for our self-esteem because they lick us unconditionally. Where'd that come from? Just 20,000 years and you've like hijacked this ancient neuroendocrinology about parental behavior. And now it's got to do with this weird symbiotic thing we and wolves worked out somewhere back when. Does it have any effect on friendship? Like human beings staring at each other? Does anybody ever test that? I would assume people have looked at that. For example, it strengthens monogamous bonds and there's a literature by now looking at oxytocin has its effects by binding to an oxytocin receptor. There's a gene for the oxytocin receptor. It comes at a number of variants. And if you have one particular variant that's associated with oxytocin having less effective of an oomph in your nervous system, that's associated with less stable relationships. So, you know, none of this stuff is deterministic. Your sex life and your romantic life is not being determined by this one gene. Nothing remotely resembling that. But that's just part of the mix in there. I was just wondering if that mix applies to like platonic friendships, like male bonding and stuff. I wonder if there's like when guys are having a good time, if they're also getting a good juice of oxytocin. My guess is when you have your basic like pathetic male sociality, which is like you like talk about sports for five minutes with some guy and as a result, you're willing to give up your life for him because like, you know, this is male male body. I bet that's got something to do with oxytocin.