The love hormone oxytocin, which is said to promote trust as well as bonding, may actually be promoting dishonesty and lying so that people can benefit their group. Researchers doing the study found that this love hormone made participants to lie more so as to benefit their groups. It also made the participants to lie quickly without the expectation of a reciprocal dishonesty from their group. 
The reason why oxytocin is referred to as the love hormone is because it is known to be naturally produced in the body so as to stimulate bonding among two people. The results suggested that people tend to be willing to bend their ethical rules just to help those people who they are close to such as friends or family. Dr. Shaul Shalvi from the Ben-Gurion University said the research focused on ethical decision-making as well as the justifications people use to do wrong and still think they did not step out of their moral boundaries.
For the study, 60 male participants were given intranasal dose of either oxytocin or placebo after which they were split into teams of three and asked to predict results of 10 coin tosses. The participants were asked to toss the coin, see the outcome and report if their prediction was correct or not. The participants were aware that for each correct prediction, they could lie and earn more money which they can split between the group members, who were participating in the task.
Article source: Financialexpress
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