Women are friendly. They often share with others. But men are more competitive. They are trying to improve their social status. Why? Researchers have found it's all due to the hormone oxytocin (荷尔蒙催生素). Although known as the love hormone, it affects the sexes differently.
Generally, people believe that the hormone oxytocin is let out in our body in various social situations and our body creates a large amount of it when falling in love or giving birth.
But in a former experiment Professor Ryan found that the hormone is also let out in our body during a negative situation such as envy (嫉妒).
Further researches showed that in men the hormone oxytocin improves the ability to recognize competitive relations, but in women it raises the ability to recognize friendship.
Professor Ryan's recent experiment used 62 men and women aged 20 to 37.
Half of the participants (参与者) received oxytocin. The other half received placebo (安慰剂).
After a week, the two groups switched with participants. They went through the same steps with the other material.
Following each treatment, they were shown some video pictures with different social behavior. Then they were asked to analyze the relations by answering some questions. The questions were about telling friendship from competition. And their answers should be based on gestures, body language and facial expressions.
The results showed that, after treatment with oxytocin, men's ability to correctly recognize competitive relations improved, but in women it was the ability to correctly recognize friendship that got better.
Professor Ryan thus concluded, “Our experiment proves that the hormone oxytocin can raise people's abilities to better tell apart different social behaviors.”
