WESTERN people become more charitable to migrants when fed the "love hormone" oxytocin and exposing them to peer pressure, German scientists have claimed.

Researchers from the University of Bonn said that humans tend to be generally kinder to friends and family than strangers.

Overloaded boats crossing the Mediterranean have become a symbol of the migrant crisis Credit: Getty Images

But this natural tendency can be overridden by getting humans to take oxytocin and then setting up a "social norm" which pushes people into accepting migrants.

"The combined enhancement of oxytocin and peer influence could diminish selfish motives," said Professor Rene Hurlemann from the department of psychiatry.

"Given the right circumstances, oxytocin may help promote the acceptance and integration of migrants into Western cultures."

The suggestion that Westerners should be given drugs to make them more welcoming to foreigners is likely to be hugely controversial.

Millions of migrants and "refugees" have poured into Europe in recent years, with people now attempting to cross the Mediterranean on jetskis after paying up to £3,000 per person.

Angela Merkel recently told Donald Trump she "wishes" she hadn’t opened Germany’s borders to refugees, while the billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates said Europe was at "breaking point".

From left: Professor René Hurlemann, Dr Holger Gerhardt, Nina Marsh and Dr Dirk Scheele

The crisis claimed more than 5,000 lives last year and the death toll for 2017 passed 1,000 by April.

So could oxytocin be used to change some European's attitudes and encourage them to accept their new neighbours?

Yes, Hurlemann said.

His team assessed 100 people's attitudes to migrants and gave them 50 euros which could be donated to locals or refugees.

In the first control experiment, experts found that Germans were more generous to migrants than locals.

"We were surprised that the participants in the first experiment donated around 20 per cent more to refugees than to local people in need," said Nina Marsh from Professor Hurlemann's team.

Half of the participants were then given oxytocin, which made people who already had a favourable attitude to migrants give more money - but did not change the attitude of people who had a negative outlook on migration and did not make them hand over more cash.

But when people who hed anti-immigration views were given the love hormone and shown how much cash others had given, they become significantly more generous.

"Now, even people with negative attitudes towards migrants donated up to 74 per cent more to refugees," Nina Marsh added.

The research suggests that people could be made to be more generous to migrants through a combination of oxytocin and peer pressure.

However, it is not clear that the population of a European country would accept being drugged in a bid to help them accept massive social change.

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