week 8: love

love = psychological and physiological state involving the desire to be with another person

• universal human experience leading to a variety of cognitive affective responses

• romantic partners/spouse/children/pets etc

• correlated with happiness

• helps people thrive and buffers against adversity

• health benefits

  • protective against illness

  • helps recovery

  • reduces mental illness

  • live longer

neurochemical model

• love and lust are neurobiologically complimentary

• three neuromodulators

  • dopamine

  • oxytocin

  • vasopressin

• reward circuit flooded with dopamine

love = feelings of attachment/affection/fulfillment of psychological needs/interdependence

= constellations of behaviours/cognitions/emotions associated with desire to enter/maintain a close relationship with a specific other person

• carlsson & carlsson - love is metaphysical and can’t be approached in an intellectual/rationalist way

two main categories of love

• passionate/romantic love - strong intense scramble of feelings

  • cup of tea phase - everything about them is absolutely fascinated

• companionate love - strong affection and attachment

  • close friendship/sexual attraction/care and respect

rubin’s 13 item love scale:

• attachment - needing to be cared for/be with other person/physical contact/approval

• caring - valuing other person’s happiness/needs as much as your own

• intimacy - sharing your private thoughts/feelings/desires with the other person

  • found that liking/loving are on the same dimension

hartfield & walster’s 3 factor theory

• cultural determinant - belief about love

  • relevant schema - this person is the one, they are my soulmate

  • beliefs about love are not universal but a western luxury (levine)

    • women moreso than men reported that romantic love was not necessarily a precondition of marriage in 1967

    • in 1977 it was found that men and women both considered romantic love important for establishing and maintaining a marital relationship

    • dramatic social change in america - feminism, women’s rights - marriage isn’t a contract, it’s entered into equally, rise in contraception availability

• appropriate love object as determined by family/friendship/wider society/the law etc

  • what are they doing with them, they don’t seem to fit together etc

• physiological arousal - butterflies, lust etc

sternberg - triangular theory of love

3 components

• passion - sexual attraction

• intimacy - closeness and sharing

• commitment - resolve to maintain the relationship

which combine to form the 7 types of relationship (see slides)

psychodynamic theories of love:

• loving/responsive caregiving leads infant to feel loved/lovable and believe that others can be trusted to provide love

• intimate partner = secure base

• emotional deprivation in infancy has a long term effect on ability to form loving relationships

• child’s relationship with parents shapes adult relationships - provides an internal working model

adult attachment styles - hazan and shafer

• secure - able to form close/intimate/committed relationships

• avoidant - suppress relationship - uncomfortable with intimacy, hard to depend on others

• anxious - fall in love easily, need frequent reassurance, more clingy

how to find love: five factors

• proximity and familiarity

  • most significant factor - motivated to like those we see all the time

  • online dating sites - wider range of people are now in your zone

  • valuable for geographically/sexually/culturally marginalised

  • frequent contact increases likelihood we find out something we don’t like

  • social networking sites have changed the notion of proximity/familiarity

• similarity - we like people who are like us

  • assortative mating - more attracted to someone the more you have in common

  • used by dating sites - match you up on key criteria

  • social hierarchy - more likely to go out with someone who is similarly attractive to you

  • significant role of social reinforcement

  • more likely to end up with people with names similar to our own

  • partners become more similar over time due to social/environmental influences

  • limitations

    • opposites attract - complimentarity

    • often enough shared ground that the similarity outweighs the opposites

    • opposites seem attractive and exciting at first but you’re more likely to split up long term

• positive affect

  • we like people who we associate with positive emotions

  • interactive process between attraction, decision making, perceptions and emotional state

  • importance of humour - signals interest

• physical attractiveness

  • we tend to like conventionally attractive people

  • halo effect

  • attractive adults - more popular, more successful in their careers, healthier

  • self fulfilling prophecy

• reciprocity

  • we like people who like us

  • mimicry - match body language and behaviours

  • mediated by self esteem

  • uncertainty can increase romantic attraction