Hormone helps build trusting bonds

Another Nature article, this time with a biological angle to trust. When we trust someone, the level of the hormone oxytoxin in the trustee rises. And those with the highest hormone levels seem to be more trusting in return.

Article: Trust begets hormone: Oxytocin may help humans bond.

Experiment proves trusting increases trustworthiness

Interesting article which supports a theory in sociology which says that if we acted "as if" we trusted someone, then chances are that person (the trustee) will reciprocate by acting in a trustworthy manner.

The article below is from Nature and describes this outcome from an experiment carried out by a Swiss behavioural scientist (Ernst Fehr):

Article: Students prove trust begets trust: We reward those who have faith in us and punish those who don't .

Quote: ".. we reward those who seem to trust us but think nothing of swindling those who doubt our honour - even when we stand to gain nothing by doing so."

Yet another business angle to social technology. This time, Business 2.0 magazine votes "Social Networking Applications" as Technology of the Year. The bulk of the short article concerns technology that lets users discover new relationships from exisitng ones - useful for building new business contacts, as the main example highlights.

Current systems are simply huge data mining systems that archives everything about everyone and tries to make connections based on what it finds. In short, it does the spy-work for you and this has privacy implications.

And that's another argument for a decentralised approach to what is becoming a useful and commercially viable technology.

Article: Business 2.0 full article: Best New Technology 2003