Neuroscience and intimate relationships

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Throughout history, predominately, philosophy and religion have speculated the most into the phenomena of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. Recently, however, the sciences of evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have begun to take center stage in discussion as to the nature and function of love. The general consensus supposes that the phenomenon and process of love is subject to the laws of science just as is anything in the universe. Recent writings have focused on making a connection between love and evolution.

File:SwansHeart.jpg

Swans forming a heart, a common symbol for love, together.

Overview

Biological models of sex tend to see it as a mammalian drive, just like hunger or thirst. Current psychological theories view love from a more social and cultural perspective. There are probably elements of truth in both views — certainly love is influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin) and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by one’s conceptions of love. Hence, from time immemorial, science, from naturalistic poetry to MRI neurochemistry, has since debated over the nature of love.

Love heart uidaodjsdsew — The heart, a frequent modern symbol of love

Biological theories

Chemical love: attraction and attachment

see main: Neurochemistry of bonding

Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that a consistent number of chemicals are present in the brain when people testify to feeling love. These chemicals include; Testosterone, Oestrogen, Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Serotonin, Oxytocin, and Vasopressin. More specifically, higher levels of Testosterone and Oestrogen are present during the lustful phase of a relationship. Dopamine, Norepinephrine, and Seretonin are more commonly found during the attraction phase of a relationship. Oxytocin, and Vasopressin seemed to be more closely linked to long term bonding and relationships characterized by strong attachments.

In the February 2006 issue of National Geographic, Lauren Slater's cover page article "Love: The Chemical Reaction" discusses love and the chemicals responsible. In it Slater explains some of the research in the area. The conventional view in biology is that there are two major drives in love — sexual attraction and attachment. Attachment between adults is presumed to work on the same principles that lead an infant to become attached to his or her mother or father.

According to Slater's research, the chemicals triggered responsible for passionate love and long-term attachment love seem to be more particular to the activities in which both participate rather than to the nature of the specific people involved. Chemically, the serotonin effects of being in love have a similar chemical appearance to obsessive-compulsive disorder; which could explain why a person in love cannot think of anyone else. For this reason some assert that being on a SSRI and other antidepressants, which treat OCD, impede one's ability to fall in love. One particular case:

"I know of one couple on the edge of divorce. The wife was on an antidepressant. Then she went off it, started having orgasms once more, felt the renewal of sexual attraction for her husband, and they're now in love all over again." (38)

The long-term attachment felt after the initial "in love" passionate phase of the relationship ends is a result of chemicals such as oxytocin. Things like massaging and "making love" can help trigger oxytocin. Moreover, novelty triggers attraction. Thus, nerve-racking activities like riding a roller coaster are good on dates. Even a person working out for ten minutes can make that person more attracted to other people on account of increased heart rate and other physiological responses.

Psychological theories

Platonic love

Main article: platonic love

In the fourth century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato [428-347BC], disciple of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, positioned the view that one would never love a person in that person’s totality, because no person represents goodness or beauty in totality. At a certain level, one does not even love the person at all. Rather, one loves an abstraction or image of the person’s best qualities. Plato never considered that one would love a person for his or her unique qualities, because the ideas are abstractions that do not vary. In love, we thus look for the best embodiment of a universal truth in a person rather than that of an idiosyncratic truth.^[1]

The hunt for love

At the turn of the first millennium, the Roman writer Ovid [43BC – 17AD], whose narrative poems recount legends of miraculous transformation of forms from the time of creation, published a number of works on love including the Amores (the Loves), his first work, followed by Ars amatoria (the Art of Love) and Remedia amoris (Remedies for Love). Each, in theme, reflected a brilliant, sophisticated, pleasure-seeking society in which love is a transformative process driven by amorous intrigue. In the Art of Love, Ovid argues that "love" is a hunt: the lover and beloved are “shy predator and wily prey” and the nature of their love is “conquest”.

Crystallization

Main article: crystallization (love)

In the 1822 classic On Love French writer Stendhal describes or compares the “birth of love”, in which the love object is crystallized in the mind, as being a process similar or analogous to a trip to Rome. In the analogy, the city of Bologna represents indifference and Rome represents perfect love:

When we are in Bologna, we are entirely indifferent; we are not concerned to admire in any particular way the person with whom we shall perhaps one day be madly in love with; even less is our imagination inclined to overrate their worth. In a word, in Bologna “crystallization” has not yet begun. When the journey begins, love departs. One leaves Bologna, climbs the Apennines, and takes the road to Rome. The departure, according to Stendhal, has nothing to do with one’s will; it is an instinctive moment. This transformative process actuates in terms of four steps along a journey:

Admiration – one marvels at the qualities of the loved one.
Acknowledgement – one notices the return affection of the charming person.
Hope – one envisions gaining the love of the loved one.
Delight – one exults in overrating the beauty and merit of the person he or she loves.

First, one admires the other person. Second, one acknowledges the pleasantness in having acquired the interest of a charming person. Third, hope emerges. In the fourth stage, one delights in overrating the beauty and the merit of the person whose love one hopes to win. This journey or crystallization process (shown above) was detailed by Stendhal on the back of a playing card, while speaking to Madame Gherardi, during his trip to Salzburg salt mine.

Formulaic models

Throughout history, various researchers from time to time have come forward with hypothetical formulas of love. One famous formula, from the early 20th century, was provided by the pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis who postulated the following mathematical equality:

Love = Sex + Friendship

Although many do not find perfect agreement with this formula, it is one of the most referenced.^[2]^[3]

Limerence

Main article: limerence

Limerence is a term, coined in 1977 by psychologist Dorothy Tennov, which characterizes a "state of love" personified by a blending of passion, intrusive thinking, longing, uncertainty, and hope. The concept of limerence stems from Tennov’s research, beginning in the mid 60s, in which she interviewed, questioned, and surveyed over 500 people on the topic of romantic love. In doing so, she set out to understand and to quantify that variety of “passionate love” as described in Stendhal’s 1822 classic On Love wherein the concept of crystallization was developed.

Lovemaps

Main article: lovemap

In 1980, abnormal sexology researcher John Money developed the concept of lovemaps, defined as a set of love attachment predispositions, i.e. neurological love templates, developed or acquired through association in early youth. Lovemaps help to explain why people like what they like sexuoerotically, such as necrophilia, coprophilia, or masochism, etc. According to Money, a lovemap is "a developmental representation or template in the mind and in the brain depicting the idealized lover and the idealized program of sexuoerotic activity projected in imagery or actually engaged in with that lover." Although the concept of "lovemaps" originally focused on atypical love, it has since been referenced in discussions on typical love.

Triangular theory of love

Main article: triangular theory of love

In 1986 psychologist Robert Sternberg published his famous triangular theory of love in Psychological Review, which postulated a geometric interpretation of love. According to the triangular theory, love has three components:^[4]

Intimacy – which encompasses the feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness.
Passion – which encompasses the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation.
Decision/Commitment – which encompasses, in the short term, the decision that one loves another, and in the long term, the commitment to maintain that love.

The “amount” of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components; the “kind” of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other. The three components, pictorially labeled on the vertices of a triangle, interact with each other and with the actions they produce and with the actions that produce them so as to form seven different kinds of love experiences:

	intimacy	passion	commitment
Liking or friendship	x
Infatuation or limerence		x
Empty love			x
Romantic love	x	x
Companionate love	x		x
Fatuous love		x	x
Consummate love	x	x	x

The size of the triangle functions to represent the amount of love - the bigger the triangle the greater the love. The shape of the triangle functions to represent the kind of love, which typically varies over the course of the relationship: passion-stage (right-shifted triangle), intimacy-stage (apex-triangle), commitment-stage (left-shifted triangle), typically. Of the seven varieties of love, consummate love is theorized to be that love associated with the “perfect couple”. Typically, couples will continue to have great sex fifteen years or more into the relationship, they can not imagine themselves happy over the long term with anyone else, they weather their few storms gracefully, and each delight in the relationship with each other.^[5]

Love styles

Susan Hendrick and Clyde Hendrick developed a Loves Attitude Scale based on John Alan Lee's theory called Love styles. Lee identified six basic theories that people use in their interpersonal relationships:

Eros (romantic love) — a passionate physical love based on physical appearance and beauty.
Ludus (game playing)— love is played as a game; love is playful; often involves little or no commitment and thrives on "conquests".
Storge (companionate love) — an affectionate love that slowly develops, based on similarity and friendship.
Pragma (pragmatic love) — inclination to select a partner based on practical and rational criteria where both will benefit from the partnership.
Mania (possessive love) — highly emotional love; unstable; the stereotype of romantic love; its characteristics include jealousy and conflict.
Agapē (altruistic love) — selfless altruistic love; spiritual

The Hendricks found men tend to be more ludic and manic, whereas women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Relationships based on similar love styles were found to last longer.

Phases

In 1992, anthropologist Helen Fisher, in her ground-breaking book the Anatomy of Love, postulated three main phases of love:

lust - an intense longing.
attraction - an action that tends to draw people together.
attachment - a bonding progression.

Generally love will start off in the lust phase, strong in passion but weak in the other elements. The primary motivator at this stage is the basic sexual instinct. Appearance, smells, and other similar factors play a decisive role in screening potential mates. However, as time passes, the other elements may grow and passion may shrink — this depends upon the individual. So what starts as infatuation or empty love may well develop into one of the fuller types of love. At the attraction stage the person concentrates their affection on a single mate and fidelity becomes important.

Likewise, when a person has known a loved one for a long time, they develop a deeper attachment to their partner. According to current scientific understanding of love, this transition from the attraction to the attachment phase usually happens in about 30 months. After that time, the passion fades, changing love from consummate to companionate, or from romantic love to liking.

Similarly, according to psychologist many see love as being a combination of companionate love and passionate love. Passionate love is intense longing, and is often accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness of breath, rapid heart rate). Companionate love is affection and a feeling of intimacy not accompanied by physiological arousal.

References

^ Tennov, Dorothy (1979). Love and Limerence, Maryland: Scarborough House. ISBN 082862864.
^ Article: "On Being Limerent" [Source: flatrock.org]
Shadi Bartsch and Thomas Bartscherer, eds. Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Helen Fisher. Why We Love: the Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love. New York, Vintage Books, 2000.
Thomas Jay Oord, Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2004.
^ R. J. Sternberg. A triangular theory of love. 1986. Psychological Review, 93, 119–135
R. J. Sternberg. Liking versus loving: A comparative evaluation of theories. 1987. Psychological Bulletin, 102, 331–345
^ Sternberg, Robert (1998). Cupid's Arrow - the Course of Love through Time, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-47893-6.
Dorothy Tennov. Love and Limerence: the Experience of Being in Love. New York: Stein and Day, 1979. ISBN 0-8128-6134-5
Dorothy Tennov. A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It "Limerence": The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov. Greenwich, CT: The Great American Publishing Society (GRAMPS), [6]
Wood, Wood and Boyd. The World of Psychology. 5th edition. 2005. Pearson Education, 402–403

External links

Harry Harlow

Harlow: Monkey Love Experiments - Adoption History
The Nature of Love (1958) - Harry Harlow, American Psychologist, 13, 573-685
Harry Harlow - A Science Odyssey: People and Experiments

{{enWP|Love (scientific views)}