Digital Oxytocin: How Trust Keeps Facebook, Twitter Humming
BY Adam PenenbergMon Jul 18, 2011
Internet users--Facebookers most of all--are a trusting bunch. Why? Because we are wired to build relationships around trust.
....I found this interesting sidenote as well:
There's a good reason for this. We humans are hard-wired to commingle with one another offline and on-, and the web and its platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it more efficient than ever. That's because virtual relationships can be as real as actual relationships. The truth is we're all one step removed from reality, living life through the prism of our own minds. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found when they scanned the brains of fiction readers that they reacted as if they were actually living the events in the story.
Zak has traced much of our behavior to oxytocin, a single neuropeptide he's dubbed "the moral molecule" because it appears to shape much of our better nature.
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http://www.fastcompany.com/1767125/digital-oxytocin