The Psychology of Love and Studies on Love You Should Know About
The concept of love has fascinated authors, poets, and researchers alike. Learn more about this from the perspective of psychology.
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom."- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Romeo and Juliet. Heer Ranjha. Laila Majnu. Despite their tragic endings, the names continue to capture our hearts due to the incessant amount of love shared between the titular characters. Love is one of the most powerful emotions universally experienced at least once in our lifetimes.
Not only has it served as a muse for creative masterminds, but it has also worked like a miracle drug providing people with physical and mental health benefits including reduced stress levels and increased happiness. Despite there being countless research out there about love, it also happens to be misunderstood quite often.
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, this article delves into exploring the complexities of falling in love and being in love. We will explore theories on the different types of love, its neurochemistry and landmark psychological studies that have researched this nuanced emotion.
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What Are the Types of Love?
Love is complicated. No I mean it literally. We know that there are several types of love; but to date, only a few researchers and theories have been able to explain its various manifestations. One such researcher is Robert Sternberg.
Stenberg who has been researching the idea of love since the 1980s proposed the triangular theory of love. As the name suggests, he suggested that love primarily has three components and can be perceived to be the three vertices of a triangle (see image). The components are intimacy, passion and commitment.
Intimacy refers to the connectedness and closeness we feel in relationships. Passion refers to the motivations that lead to physical attraction, romantic attraction, and other elements of loving relationships. Commitment refers to one's decision to love someone and their long-term commitment to upholding that love.
When these three components interact to various degrees, they result in the eight types of love which we will now explore.
Non-love: None of these three elements is present in this kind of relationship, and we witness it in the course of our numerous daily interactions with other people.
Liking: In this kind of love we experience a close and warm bond with another individual and its most common manifestation is in our friendships.
Infatuation: This is commonly noticed in individuals where individuals report the phenomenon of “love at first sight”. One may develop feelings very quickly without a commitment being made or time being given for feelings to grow.
Empty Love: We observe this kind of love among couples who have been in a stagnant relationship for a while and are no longer emotionally or physically attracted to one another.
Romantic Love: This type of love describes relationships in which people feel an emotional connection to one another as well as physical attraction, but there is no shared commitment. Romeo and Juliet, according to Sternberg, are a prime example of this kind of love.
Companionate Love: This form of love is essentially a committed, long-term friendship. We often notice this in marriages where the physical attraction between partners has faded.
Fatuous Love: We commonly see this form of love in whirlwind romances where individuals make a commitment based on passion.
Consummate Love: It is also referred to as "complete love" and consists of commitment, passion, and intimacy. Many of us seek to experience this type of love in our romantic relationships, according to Sternberg. However, this kind of love is seen outside of romantic relationships in parents' love for their children, and in this context, it is referred to as "unconditional love".
Sternberg suggests that while the examples above aid in identifying the different kinds of love, changes brought on by intimacy, passion, and commitment may be frequently seen throughout our relationships. For example, the presence of passion can transform liking into romantic love.
Regardless of the kind of love we experience or the changes in our relationships, love tends to elicit significant neurological responses such as a rise in dopamine and oxytocin levels. The next section explores further the effects love or being in love has on our neurochemistry.
Love and Our Brain
Have you come across the phrases “butterflies in your stomach” and “racing heart” in the context of falling in love?
Despite literary nuances, experts and research suggest that these feelings and sensations associated with love are due to the activation of neurotransmitters in our brains. For example, when we are in love, our dopamine levels are said to increase triggering our brain’s reward system, resulting in us viewing love to be a pleasurable experience. This when combined with the hormone norepinephrine makes us feel those euphoric, giddy and energetic emotions along with reducing our appetite and sleep as well.
According to Dr Helen Fischer, an anthropologist and expert in the science of love, romantic love can be addictive as well. She says that brain imaging studies show that when in love the areas of our brain that demonstrate activity are those that are active when one is addicted to gambling or substances.
Furthermore, this period also notices a drop in serotonin levels which contributes to those feelings of craziness and obsession for your partner. This drop in serotonin levels is also observed among those with obsessive-compulsive disorder, leading experts to speculate that this might explain the infatuation we experience in the early stages of love.
Despite these findings coming across as troublesome, there is nothing to worry about according to Dr Richard Schwartz, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He states that over one year of being in love, the serotonin levels a restored back to normal which helps moderate these obsessive aspects.
During this period, there is a surge of two more neurotransmitters, namely oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin, regarded as the “love hormone”, strengthens the bond and attachment between individuals while also promoting feelings of security, contentment and calmness. Vasopressin on the other hand has been associated with one’s ability to create monogamous relationships.
4 Psychological Studies That Examined Love
Now that we have looked at the underlying theory surrounding the types of love along with its effect on our brain, it is now time to examine some noteworthy studies that shed light on love and romantic relationships.
a. Do Couples Look Alike Over Time?
In 1987, Robert Zajonc and his colleagues carried out a study investigating if prolonged cohabitation could result in individuals developing similarities when it comes to physical facial features. For this purpose, two separate portraits of 12 married couples were looked at, with one male and female portrait being taken in the first year of the couple's marriage and the other in the 25th year.
These portraits were examined by over 110 participants who found that after 25 years of marriage, couples tend to look like each other. The study also revealed that this similarity contributed to higher marital satisfaction.
But why do couples have similar physical characteristics?
The authors suggest that this could be due to empathic mimicry. When they encounter positive or negative life events, such as winning the lottery or losing a loved one, couples show empathy for each other's emotions and also frequently adopt similar facial expressions. Similar facial musculatures, such as wrinkle patterns near the mouth and eyes, can result from this prolonged mimicking of emotions.
The study's findings have been contested ever since it was published. Nevertheless, this research helps us understand the underlying mechanisms that may explain why couples end up looking alike over time.
b. How Painful Are Breakups?
The purpose of this 2011 study, conducted by psychology professor Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan, was to comprehend how people respond to painful events by using MRIs. For this, he recruited 40 individuals who had recently gone through a breakup and reported feeling rejected.
He chose physical pain for the first painful event, and the participants felt stimulations in one hand that felt like hot coffee had burned their skin. The second painful activity involved asking the participants to recall their feelings during their breakup while displaying images of their ex-partner to them.
They discovered that the neural processes that were active during a heartbreak were very similar to those that are active during physical pain (i.e. secondary somatosensory cortex and dorsal posterior insula). Although the concepts of physical and emotional pain are distinct, this study clarifies how the two processes often overlap.
c. Can Love Impact Your Productivity?
Now if you are a hardcore romantic, these research findings might sound like a bummer to you. According to a study conducted in 2013, being passionately in love with someone can make you a less productive person. Henk van Steenbergen and his colleagues recruited 43 individuals who had recently fallen in love (within the last 6 months) and evaluated their cognitive abilities using the Flanker and Stroop tests (click the link to try them out).
The findings of the study indicated that those who recently fell in love performed poorly on the aforementioned cognitive tasks thereby demonstrating poor cognitive control. The researchers suggest that in the initial stages of falling in love, our brain might allocate a greater amount of resources towards thinking about our beloved, which thereby reduced the resources left to focus on other tasks.
d. Does Love Fade Away?
There is a prevailing notion that love declines or fades away over time. However, a 2011 study challenged this common wisdom. The study, conducted by Bianca Acevedo and colleagues and using MRI scans examined the brain activity of couples who had been together for 10-29 years.
The findings showed that the intensity of activity in dopamine-dense areas of the brain, such as the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and dorsal striatum was similar to that of people who were newly in love. The findings help dispel the belief that romance can fade away, demonstrating that it can indeed persist.
Love may seem straightforward, but it is a multifaceted emotion that shapes our lives. This article aimed to look at the underlying psychological and physiological aspects that drive love. By exploring the depths of this emotion, we hope to have provided a deeper understanding and appreciation for its role in our lives.
References Acevedo, B. P., Aron, A., Fisher, H. E., & Brown, L. L. (2011). Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(2), 145–159. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsq092 Esch , T., & Stefano, G. B. (2005). The Neurobiology of Love. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, 26(3), 175–192. Kross, E., Berman, M. G., Mischel, W., Smith, E. E., & Wager, T. D. (2011). Social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(15), 6270–6275. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1102693108 Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93(2), 119–135. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.93.2.119 van Steenbergen, H., Langeslag, S. J., Band, G. P., & Hommel, B. (2013). Reduced cognitive control in passionate lovers. Motivation and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-013-9380-3 Zajonc, R. B., Adelmann, P. K., Murphy, S. T., & Niedenthal, P. M. (1987). Convergence in the physical appearance of spouses. Motivation and Emotion, 11(4), 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00992848 |