Peoples' niceness may reside in their genes: study

It turns out that the milk of human kindness is evoked by something besides mom's good example. Research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Irvine, has found that at least part of the reason some people are kind and generous is because their genes nudge them toward it.

Michel Poulin, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at UB, is the principal author of the study The Neurogenics of Niceness, published in this month in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study, co-authored by Anneke Buffone of UB and E. Alison Holman of the University of California, Irvine, looked at the behaviour of study subjects who have versions of receptor genes for two hormones that, in laboratory and close relationship research, are associated with niceness. Previous laboratory studies have linked the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin to the way we treat one another, Poulin says.

In fact, they are known to make us nicer people, at least in close relationships. Oxytocin promotes maternal behaviour, for example, and in the lab, subjects exposed to the hormone demonstrate greater sociability. An article in the usually staid Science magazine even used the terms "love drug" and "cuddle chemical" to describe oxytocin, Poulin points out.

Poulin says this study was an attempt to apply previous findings to social behaviors on a larger scale; to learn if these chemicals provoke in us other forms of pro-social behavior: urge to give to charity, for instance, or to more readily participate in such civic endeavors as paying taxes, reporting crime, giving blood or sitting on juries.

He explains that hormones work by binding to our cells through receptors that come in different forms. There are several genes that control the function of oxytocin and vasopressin receptors.