Is Racism Caused by Your Hormones?
A researcher and professor out of the University of Amsterdam, Carsten de Dreu, is exploring whether the hormone oxytocin, also known as the ‘love’ hormone, causes you to be racist.
The oxytocin hormone helps people bond, newborn mothers have high levels after giving birth and production of the hormone goes up when we have physical contact with people we like. Overall the hormone makes people more generous and trusting.
Dreu is studying whether oxytocin levels influence our views on ‘out-groups’, i.e. ethnic groups that we don’t like, which are different for everyone depending
