Does the Biological Source of Lying Affect Its Morality?

Oxytocin

Oxytocin is a natural hormone that promotes bonding, e.g., mother-baby bonding, and pro-social behavior by humans. A series of research papers have also described the hormone as a biological source that correlates with lying. The hormone correlates with lying to both help group members and self-serving lying. 

A 2014 paper that found oxytocin-associated lying for group benefit raised the question of the morality of lies arising from a biological source. In an interview, the authors commented: "Our results suggest people are willing to bend ethical rules to help the people close to us, like our team or family. This raises an interesting, although perhaps more philosophical, question: Are all lies immoral? Together, these findings fit a functional perspective on morality revealing dishonesty to be plastic and rooted in evolved neurobiological circuitries, and align with work showing that oxytocin shifts the decision-maker's focus from self to group interests. The results highlight the role of bonding and cooperation in shaping dishonesty, providing insight into when and why collaboration turns into corruption." 

A 2020 research paper indicated that oxytocin also correlates with self-serving lying, thus apparently disconnecting the bonding-social component of oxytocin from a tendency to lie for the group. That research found that administering oxytocin to subjects correlates with increased self-serving lying when repeated opportunities to lie are presented. That paper also generated preliminary results suggesting that the effects of oxytocin administration could be influenced by oxytocin receptor gene differences. That affords a possible basis to argue that lying is influenced to some detectable extent by one or more genes.

Other research indicates that the hormone testosterone appears to exert opposite effects compared to oxytocin. For example, testosterone administration correlated with reduced self-serving lying in males in the absence of a social justification (social group). Administration of testosterone has also been found to have opposing effects on social cognitive functions compared to oxytocin.

Testosterone

This kind of research into the biological basis of arguably immoral behavior will continue to increase in sophistication. Confounding factors such as social vs individual contexts and numbers of opportunities to lie will be identified. It is thus possible that in the next 15-20 years or so, important biological and cognitive sources of immoral behavior will be identified and characterized to some socially useful extent. 

But what then? It is unlikely that society will treat immoral behavior much differently, unless society itself changes. If cause and effect relationships can convincingly be shown, does knowledge of what causes immoral behavior justify it? At present, most experts seem to believe that human have little or no conscious free will. Whatever free will we have arises unconsciously. If so, then people arguably cannot help but do immoral things.