- reference to Plato's Symposium
- reference to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
- people still write letters to Juliet for advice and there are people who respond to these letters
- reference to romantic novels and in 2009, 13.2% of novels were in this genre
- Watson: love is an innate emotion elicited by cutaneous stimulation
- Swenson: love is behaviour such as giving gifts, sharing activities, and disclosing intimate information
- Rubin: love is an attitude held towards another, which predisposes on to think, fell and act in certain ways towards that person
... there were many theologians, historians, writers, etc.. that have tried to explain love but they don't really coincide with each other
- according to Gonzaga (eHarmony?) states love is a commitment device (more socio and psyhco), human survival depends on the formation of cooperative alliances, long-term mate-ships, successful reproduction, emotions help individuals form and maintain reproductive relations, commitment problem - staying with one person in the face of alternatives, love promotes commitment in two ways 1) outward expression of love in one word, deed, and gesture communicates commitment to an intimate partner, 2) experience of love motivates
- Gonzaga's study: a sample of women asked to relive experiences of love with their partners, videotaped them head-shoulders and regarded facial expressions and non-verbal behaviours, self-reports of love correlated with expressive behaviour, expressive behaviours also correlated with oxycotin release
- Oxytocin is a mammalian hormone that acts primarily as a neurotransmitter in the brain and when released Oxytocin evokes feelings of contentment, reductions of anxiety, and feelings of calmness and security
- Pair-bonding: in every known culture, formal marriage arrangements between men and women exist, Jankowiak and Fisher found that romantic love is found worldwide and over 90% of people in the world will marry at least once
- Different faces of love: Helen Fisher says there is a model of mating, reproduction and parenting, mating behaviours guided by three different emotion systems; lust, attraction and attachment
Lust - motivate individuals to locate sexual opportunities, mainly associated with estrogens and androgens in the brain
Attraction - directs individuals attention towards specific mates, makes people crave emotional union with this person, associated with high levels of dopamine and norepinephrine and low levels of seretonin in the brain
Attachment: focused on maintenance of close proximity, linked with feelings of comfort and security, and feelings of emotional dependency, associated with oxytocin (mostly for women), and vasopressin (mostly for men) - it is thought that vasopressin is linked to long-term commitment for men
- Pair-bonding and Health: broken social ties or poor relationships is correlated with increased invulnerability to disease, heart attack victims are more likely to have a recurring attack if they live alone, the happiest university students are those that feel happiest with their love lives, those with better relationships cope better with general stress (including job loss, health crises, etc), married individuals are less likely to suffer from depression than unhappily or unmarried individuals, humans may therefore be designed to respond positively when a long-term mate is secured
- How long is long?: Fisher suggests that although long-term relationships have obvious reproductive and health benefits, the desire to stay in one relationship wanes as a function of the amount of time it takes and infant to become less dependent on parental investment (appox 4 years)
- Problem of Commitment - Alternatives: the more opportunites or alternatives that are available may undermine the feelings of love or commitment to your current partner, eg Charlie's Angels studies
- Derogation of alternative: derogate the attractiveness of an alternate partner - study (by Simpson, Gangestad, and Lerma) people who are in relationships rated alternatives lower than those who were not in a relationship with both men and women - they may or may not have done this by derogating the attractiveness of the alternatives in a way to protect their commitment to their partner ... to see if this was the case, a study by Lydon et al. manipulated the interest ("Hey this person thinks you're attractive") of the people and those who were in committed relationships rated alternative partners still as less appealing, while those who were not in a very committed relationship thought them even more attractive knowing they thought they were attractive
- if you spend less time looking at attractive, appealing people you are more likely to stay in a relationship, while if you spend more time looking at appealing alternatives you are less likely to stay in a relationship with that current partner (study done by Miller, 1997)
- Maner, Gailliot, and Miller (2009) found that
- define a "(control) prime" in a study
- ovulating women pose a threat to committed men, (Miller and Maner, 2010), female confederate; tracked her menstrual cycle, interacted with male participants, men rated her attractiveness throughout her menstrual cycle, they looked at the difference between single and committed men and while single men weren't really affected by the change in the menstrual cycle, men in relationships found the women confederate much less attractive when she was ovulating - this is due to derogation of alternatives mentioned above
- The Triangular Theory of Love (Sternberg, 1986), states that love has three fundamental components; Intimacy, Passion, and Commitment
Intimacy: emotional component, feelings of closeness or boundedness
Passion: motivational component, physical attraction and drive for sexual expression
Commitment: cognitive component, do I feel like I could stay with this person?
These three components can be put into a triangle and various combinations of various components of love can form different kinds of love (eg. nonlove is the absence of all three components,empty is only high commitment, romantic is intimacy and passion, companionment is high intimacy and commitment, fatuous is alot of passion and commitment, consummate love is high levels of all three components
- while Sternberg says that commitment is a part of love, Fehr (1988) says that commitment and love are related but independent so it isn't an actual component of love
- Love vs In Love: Meyers and Berscheid (1997) looked at the social categories that people naturally use to communicate with each other, we can experience love for a number of targets (parents, siblings, spouse, dog, children, car, xbox, etc..) and made the subjects categorize the different subjects into love, in love, and sexual attraction/desire and found that if you are in love with someone then there is a 23% chance that you love them, and then if you are in love with someone then you are 87% chance likely to be sexually attracted to them or desire them or so on
- Berscheid: "How many meanings does the word love have? Legion. (legion = many)
- culmination of 30 yrs of research found that there are two types of love:
1) Passionate Love:
-heightened energy
-restlessness
-loss of appetite
-inability to sleep
-associated with cocaine use
2) Companionate Love
-intimacy
-friendship
-commitment
-attachment
- Baumeister and Bratslavsky (1999) links between intimacy and passion: passion is the first derivative of intimacy, when intimacy shows relatively large and rapid increases, levels of passion will be high
- Self-Expansion Theory: we are motivated to seek new knowledge and experiences to grow, relationship partners help us do this, rate of growth slows over time (slowdown in intimacy) and this can lead to boredom in a relationship
- Do increases of intimacy spark passion?: study done by Rubin and Campbell (prof) in 2011, diary study of 67 romantically involved couples where the couples asked day to day questions about emotional and sexual contact and intimacy between couple
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