Open Heart, Open Wallet

Bonding chemical gets customers to empathize more, spend more.

Warm and fuzzy feelings may make people more likely to spend, say researchers from CA-based Claremont Graduate University. Gauging participants’ reactions to an assortment of public service announcements, researchers found that those who had sniffed a spray of oxytocin, the bonding chemical sometimes referred to as the “love hormone,” donated more money to causes presented in the PSAs.

Those who had received the dose of oxytocin donated 56 percent more money to the causes discussed in the PSAs than those who had received the placebo. Study participants who received the oxytocin, also reported feeling greater levels of empathy.   

Paul Zak, PhD, who led the study, says that the team was inspired to research the effects of oxytocin on consumer behavior following previous research that examined its effects on generosity.   

“We showed in 2009 that oxytocin (OT) spiked when people watched a short emotional video and this made them more generous towards another person in the lab,” he tells demodirt.com. “We wondered if this effect would hold for people viewing ads.”

Most surprisingly, this research revealed two things: that the balance between concern for self versus others skyrocketed with the dose of oxytocin, and that personality traits had little to do with the results.

“Personality traits had no effect on the results—the impact of OT was across the board, and was actionable,” Zak says. “Not only were people on OT more engaged in the ads, but they donated more money to the causes advertised.”

No sex differences were measured as only men could be participate in the study, Zak adds, because the effect of oxytocin varies according to the menstrual cycle. The sample, because it consisted of college students, also presented little variation in terms of race, SES, age, or educational level. However, Zak notes, what variation there was did not affect the persuasiveness of the public service announcements.

Zak, who has stated that puppies and babies have been effective images in ads for toilet paper, for example, says that there are other ways advertisers can evoke that special bonding feeling in consumers. Any message that cultivates trust, he advises, is helpful.

“We showed in 2004 that being trusted evokes OT release,” he explains. “So, companies and nonprofits should actively cultivate trust. They can do this by being transparent, by responding promptly to inquires, by giving people gifts, by humanizing interactions, and many other ways.”

Many non-profit organizations employ methods to encourage trust in their target audience, Zak says, and use some familiar and effective tactics to do so.

“Many charities send a small gift such as return address labels with requests for donations. They do this because it works—now we know why—it causes OT release,” he says.

There are barriers to these and other methods of effective advertising, Zak notes. When stress is high, when testosterone is high, and when the ad has been seen many times before, oxytocin release will be inhibited and empathy-evoking ads will fail, he maintains.

Why people give more—or don’t give at all—doesn’t just boil down to question of blind obedience to the effects of oxytocin. Previous research that Zak and his team conducted indicated that the hormone increased donations to specific and known charities, not all charities, he adds.   

“Similarly, in our advertising study, there is no sense in which people do not know what they are doing,” he concludes. “Many people suppressed the desire to donate money and many people directed their giving to causes they cared about, not all causes.  So, OT increases our empathy and care for others, but does so selectively, and is modulated by cognitive areas in the brain.”