Neurochemical Hormone Makes Pensioners more Generous, New Study Finds

Elderly women sit at a park in downtown Shanghai March 16, 2012. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
Elderly women sit at a park in downtown Shanghai March 16, 2012. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
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Neurochemical Hormone Makes Pensioners more Generous, New Study Finds

Elderly women sit at a park in downtown Shanghai March 16, 2012. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
Elderly women sit at a park in downtown Shanghai March 16, 2012. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

People who release more of the neurochemical oxytocin are kinder to others and tend to be more satisfied with their lives, said researchers from the US Claremont University in a new study published April 20, in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

They also discovered that oxytocin release increases with age, showing why people are more satisfied as they get older.

Seniors spend more time volunteering and donate a larger proportion of their income to charity than do younger people, so the researchers wanted to see if there was a neurochemical basis for these behaviors.

The researchers studied this hormone for years. In a past study, they found that watching a video about a little boy with cancer induces oxytocin release in the brain. In the new study, the team recruited more than 100 people ranging between the ages of 18 and 99. They were each shown the same video, and blood was taken before and after the video to measure the change in oxytocin.

Participants had the option to donate some of their earnings from the study to a childhood cancer charity, and this was used to measure their immediate prosocial behavior. We also collected data on their emotional states, to provide information on their overall satisfaction with life.

“People who released the most oxytocin in the experiment were not only more generous to charity, but also performed many other helping behaviors,” said senior author Paul Zak of Claremont’s Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, in a report.

“We also found that the release of oxytocin increased with age and was positively associated with life satisfaction,” he added.

Zak would like to repeat this study in a more ethnically and geographically diverse sample of people to see if the findings hold for different cultures.

“We would also like to conduct a longer-term measurement of neurophysiology using noninvasive wearable technologies to see what specific activities raise people's satisfaction with life,” he concluded.



Google-Backed Coalition to Help Scale Ocean, Rock Carbon Removals

A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
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Google-Backed Coalition to Help Scale Ocean, Rock Carbon Removals

A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)
A Google logo is seen at a company research facility in Mountain View, California, US, May 13, 2025. (Reuters)

A coalition backed by Google, Stripe and Shopify will spend $1.7 million to buy carbon removal credits from three early stage firms on behalf of the tech giants to help scale up the nascent markets, an executive told Reuters.

The world is expected to need to suck between five and 10 billion tons a year of carbon emissions out of the atmosphere by mid-century to reach its climate goals, yet at the moment most technologies are small scale.

The coalition, called Frontier, is also backed by H&M Group, JPMorgan Chase and Salesforce, among others.

The group, which aggregates demand from its members, will spend $1.7 million to buy credits from US-firm Karbonetiq, Italy-based Limenet and Canadian firm pHathom.

By contracting to buy early, the firms are better able to hire, raise finance and get the technologies off the ground, said Hannah Bebbington, head of deployment at Frontier.

"It allows companies to demonstrate commercial viability," she said.

Frontier's support for these early stage firms, which aim to lock emissions away in the ocean or in rocks and industrial waste, marks its fifth series of commitments.

Frontier, which was set up in 2022, aims to invest at least $1 billion in carbon removal credits between 2022 and 2030. It has already committed $600 million, some on the series of pre-purchases and the bulk on a series of off-take agreements with larger firms. Last week, it agreed to pay $41 million for 116,000 tons from waste biomass firm Arbor.

For oceans, the aim is to increase the alkalinity of the water, helping it to lock away more carbon emissions. This is often done by adding "quicklime", made from limestone.

For the mineralization technologies, meanwhile, projects attempt to speed up the process whereby rocks and industrial waste naturally absorb carbon dioxide, for example by crushing up the material to create a larger surface area.

Bebbington said both technologies had the potential to be impactful because they could be scaled quickly and cheaply.

"We think (they) are extremely compelling from that really cheap at really large scale perspective."