Does the fountain of youth and happiness flow with charitable giving and doing for others?
A newly published scientific study hints that it might.
The study, published in the journalFrontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, reports that people who donate to charity and do for others see an increase in their production of oxytocin, a mood-enhancing hormone connected to things such as reproduction that was long thought to decrease as a person ages.
The study involved about 100 people ages 18 to 99 who shared a video about a little boy with cancer. Researchers then compared the oxytocin level in the participants’ blood before and after seeing the film.
The participants were then given the option to donate to the cancer charity in the film. The results found that those who released the most of the hormone were most likely to give. Many of those study participants were older.
Paul J Zak, Ph.D., a study author and the director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, told Healthline that the study is the first time the connection and increase in oxytocin have been shown in older adults.
“What was surprising… was the strength of the relationship [between doing good acts and releasing more oxytocin],” Zak said. “It is so strong in older people, it’s really one of the most ‘wow’ and bullet-proof [results] I’ve seen in 20 years of being in the lab.”
Zak said he was drawn to do the study after years of looking at the impact of oxytocin in younger people. The hormone has long been known to show increased production in “pro-social” behavior in a younger age. Zak wanted to see if that could be the case as well with older adults.
What researchers found, he said, is “consistent with our intuition as well,” since it is often suggested that those who do and give stay happy longer.
“By the way,” he added, “People who are happiest live the longest too.”
“This is a bookend result for me,” said Jorge Barraza, Ph.D., a professor of consumer behavior in the online Master of Science in Applied Psychology program at the University of Southern California and a co-author of the study.
“Very little is known about the role of oxytocin as we age,” he told Healthline.
Because oxytocin is associated with reproduction, he said, the assumption has long been that as we age, production of it declines.
“Now we indeed see [production] appears to be impacted outside of reproduction,” he said. “It makes you wonder.”
This content was originally published here.