With the help of 80 men and 80 women in the Belleville area this spring and summer, Citizen Science Belleville plans to test the replicability of an experiment published by Jennifer Merolla and her colleagues under the title “Oxytocin and the Biological Basis for Interpersonal and Political Trust”.

“Our scope is health, relationships, and well-being, and we chose a relationships experiment this time,” says founding member Betsy Blum. “Merolla is a political scientist, but don’t get distracted by that—the biological mechanisms behind trust aren’t specific to politics.”

Merolla reported evidence that a hormone called “oxytocin” plays a role in trust formation by some people and not by others. Much as horror movies and sports trigger the release of adrenaline, other engineered situations, such as heart-wrenching movies and singing in a choir, trigger the release of oxytocin. By advancing world-wide understanding of the impact that such situations have on human relationships, Citizen Science Belleville hopes to help future generations in Belleville and everywhere better manage conflict in their families, neighborhoods and workplaces.

“We aren’t expecting a magic bullet,” says Blum. “Difference in oxytocin-sensitivity is only one of many potential threats to relationships, but it could be surprisingly significant. Recent studies show that over 70% of us discriminate instinctively, significantly and inappropriately against others for thinking differently from ourselves, and having different sensitivity to oxytocin would amount to thinking differently.”

The mission of Citizen Science Belleville is to conduct replication studies so that professional scientists can focus on other priorities. A study published in Science by the Open Science Collaboration on August 28, 2015, found that replicability tests would raise doubts about 61% of original results published in high-ranking psychology journals. The tests conducted in Belleville might raise doubts about Merolla’s result…or they might confirm it…either way, understanding would be advanced. The Belleville study could also refine the original result. For example, the original study found that Republicans are insensitive to oxytocin, but the Belleville study might find that sensitivity is more directly related to a personality factor, which happened to correlate with political affiliation among the participants in the original experiment.

Participants in the Belleville study would answer survey questions while using a nasal spray to control their own oxytocin levels. The members of Citizen Science Belleville have already developed a detailed plan, tested it on themselves, and shared it with Merolla. Before running the full test they would need to get their plan approved by a local ethics board chaired by Sandy Bubenzer, and including Rick Francois, Jennifer Lochner, Ruth McNair, Pete Shively, and John Stremikis. They would also need to raise funds for supplies, and get their plan approved by scientific reviewers at a journal like Royal Society Open Science, which would publish their results.

Citizen Science Belleville is considered a pioneer in a larger citizen science movement which includes over a million people in over 30 countries, not least of which are those who monitor our Sugar River Watershed. That movement gained official status on January 6, 2017, when the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act of 2015 passed into law.

About Citizen Science Belleville

Citizen Science Belleville is an open group of volunteers who meet from 7:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m., on 1st and 3rd Mondays at Grace United Methodist Church, 246 W. Pearl Street, Belleville, WI, to conduct replication studies advancing health, relationships, and/or well-being.  Their work is made fully accessible to everyone through the Open Science Framework and Facebook. Inquiries and concerns may be directed to Chris Santos-Lang, (920) 747-0335, langchri@ gmail.com; Betsy Blum, (608) 239-5249, gumcadmn@gmail.com; Paul Driftmier, (608) 338-5635, pdriftmier@mac.com; Mary Fritz, (920) 424-6077; or George Kaminski, (608) 424-3859.