My Big Fat Greek Wedding - Tears, Joy, and Oxytocin

WE\'D booked the venue, chosen the bridesmaids\' dresses and even decided on the colours of the table decorations. But finding a refrigerated centrifuge and a ready supply of dry ice in rural south-west England was proving tricky. Then there were the worries about getting blood on my silk wedding dress, and what to do if someone fainted.



Organising a wedding can be stressful enough, but we had a whole extra dimension to consider. We were turning it into a science experiment to probe what happens in our bodies when we say the words \"I do\".



Our focus was the hormone oxytocin, sometimes dubbed the \"cuddle chemical\" for its role in promoting bonding, trust and generosity. The usual setting for investigating its effects is a lab where volunteers may be asked to play games that involve trust and generosity, for example. But how well do these contrived tests reflect what happens in real life?



I had written several articles about this hormone before, so my wedding last July seemed the perfect chance to see if it would surge in the ultimate public display of affection. I contacted leading oxytocin researcher Paul Zak, head of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies in Claremont, California, and he leapt at the opportunity to translate his lab studies into real life.



The plan was to measure blood levels of oxytocin in the bride, groom, three close members of our families and eight friends both before and after the ceremony. OK, it was a small sample size, but Zak (pictured above) saw this as a pilot study that might point the way for future research, and perhaps even shed some light on why people stage public weddings in the first place.



Oxytocin is released from the pituitary gland in the brain, on the command of specialised nerve cells. It has long been known to help trigger childbirth as well as the release of milk during breastfeeding. And in the 1980s it transpired that, in American prairie voles at least, the hormone promotes pair-bonding between mates. Zak and other research groups have since found oxytocin at work in a range of human social interactions, including strengthening the bond between mother and child and fostering closeness after sex. How the brain translates mental processes into signals to release oxytocin, however, remains mysterious.



Last year, Zak suggested a new role for oxytocin. The hormone rises in people watching a sad film clip; those who reported the greatest emotion experienced the biggest spike (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol 1167, p 182). What if oxytocin is the empathy chemical as well as the cuddle chemical? My wedding would be the perfect place to find out, I thought. If oxytocin really is the empathy chemical, those close to us might have a hormone surge as they witness our public pair-bonding.



Oxytocin may have a dark side, however. Work published last year hinted that oxytocin may also promote envy and the desire to gloat. Volunteers were asked to play a game of chance, in which people could win various sums of money. Those who inhaled a dose of oxytocin before playing the game felt more like gloating when they won the most money, and more envy when their opponent was ahead Biological Psychiatry, vol 66, p 864).



One possibility is that oxytocin makes people more sensitive to social cues, says Salomon Israel, who studies decision-making at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. \"If you get a social cue to be more trusting, you\'re more trusting. But if you get a social cue that\'s threatening, you feel more threatened.\"



Whatever the answer, it is clearly difficult to measure complex emotions with simple games in the lab. For one thing, volunteers know their actions are being recorded, which may alter their behaviour. For example, people who share more money with other players are usually seen as more altruistic, but maybe they just care more about what people think of them. In reality, they might be quite selfish.



\"We\'re not sure of the motivation that drives behaviour,\" says Richard Ebstein, also at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who studies the genetics of human behaviour. That is why scientists need to start looking at hormones such as oxytocin in real-life situations, he says. Like weddings.



That\'s where I came in. Once Nic, my husband-to-be, had resigned himself to turning the most romantic day of our lives into a science experiment, I realised there were several additional hormones we could check at the same time (see \"Hormones gathered here today\"). The obvious first choice was vasopressin, a hormone structurally related to oxytocin, which has been implicated in mate-guarding and jealousy in animals. You could say it\'s oxytocin\'s ugly cousin.



As the stress hormones cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) can affect the release of oxytocin, they went on the list, as did testosterone. A study in 2004 by neuroscientist Donatella Marazziti at the University of Pisa in Italy, and colleagues, had shown that levels of the male sex hormone dipped in men who have recently fallen in love, possibly to ensure they devote their energies to their partner, rather than looking for other women. Would a public exchange of vows have the same effect on testosterone? There was only one way to find out.



In the run-up to the wedding, several people said we were mad to run an experiment on our big day. For one thing, I\'m not very keen on needles. I hoped I\'d be too excited on the day to remember that. I waited till the day itself to confess my phobia to Zak, but he took it in his stride. An hour before the vows, the 13 volunteers were whisked into a dining room at the wedding venue, which had been temporarily converted into a lab. Amid a clacking centrifuge, needles and a tray of champagne cocktails for afterwards, two medically trained wedding guests removed 20 millilitres of blood. I survived the ordeal by looking away and chatting to my bridesmaids.

I hoped I\'d be too excited on the day to remember that I\'m not very keen on needles



Straight after the vows we did it all again. This time the first attempt to draw my blood failed and I had to be stuck twice. Zak later told me I looked about to pass out. \"I\'ve caught many a fainter,\" he says. \"I was fiddling with the smelling salts in my pocket and was ready to catch you at the same time.\"



I managed to stay upright, however, and at last it was over. Zak spun the blood samples in the centrifuge (kindly loaned to us by the University of Exeter, UK) to separate the blood cells from the hormone-containing fluid, and then froze the fluid ready for shipping back to the US. Nic and I could forget about the experiment and enjoy the rest of our day.



A month later and the results were in. To my delight - OK, relief - in terms of oxytocin, our hypothesis proved correct. Both Nic and I experienced a rise in the hormone during the ceremony, as did the mother of the bride, the father of the groom and Nic\'s brother - all the relatives tested.



The results from our friends were mixed: two did and five didn\'t (see graph). One bridesmaid was excluded from the analysis because her readings were so high they were off the scale. This could have been the result of a faulty test, or perhaps she naturally has very high levels.

Group hug



Zak thinks the group oxytocin surge supports the theory that public weddings evolved as a way of binding couples to their friends and family, perhaps to help out with future child-rearing. This may explain why weddings are more common than eloping. It might also be why some people cry at weddings. \"Maybe we cry for the same reason we cry at movies,\" he says. \"We see ourselves in the couple.\"



Although the small sample size means the results are not statistically significant, we can still speculate about the trends seen. For example, I had the biggest spike in oxytocin, followed by my mother. \"For every scenario we\'ve looked at, women get the biggest rise,\" says Zak. \"We know women are more empathic.\" It\'s also likely that women get more benefits from a marriage than men do and so may have more invested in it, adds Marazziti.



The other satisfying result was that we saw bigger spikes in family members than in friends. \"It\'s what we would expect,\" says Ebstein. \"Those who are genetically closest to you have a bigger investment in your wedding, and their oxytocin goes up more.\"



Not all the results fitted our predictions, however. Take vasopressin, the mate-guarding hormone. Zak thought we would see a spike in Nic\'s levels during the wedding ceremony - but instead we saw a fall. \"Perhaps Nic didn\'t need to aggressively defend you as you have publicly committed to him,\" says Zak.



Nic\'s testosterone levels didn\'t behave either. Contrary to our hypothesis, it almost doubled during the wedding vows, with one male guest also experiencing a rise. Marazzeti has a possible answer: since testosterone is linked to libido, the sight of lots of women dressed up for the wedding may have been arousing.



As for the stress hormones, I didn\'t need the test results to know that mine were up. Although very high stress shuts down oxytocin release, moderate stress seems to promote it, which may be another reason why my oxytocin levels were boosted.



So do our results take us any closer to understanding why people choose to get married? Zak thinks so. \"Maybe the reason we have these weddings is not just because of the emotional contagion - the empathy, the love - but because these emotions are linked to helping maintain the human race,\" he says.



By bringing our friends and relatives closer to us, we now have a host of people to mediate if we fight, or - should our oxytocin take us to the point of having children - to babysit. And I might just have cured my needle phobia.



Zak is already dreaming up larger field studies to see if he can replicate the results. \"I\'m convinced now that our studies in the lab have direct implications for the world outside,\" he says. \"This was one of the highlights of my research career.\"