mASF post by "Wild Bard"
posted on: mASF forum: Advanced Discussion, January 1, 2004Can science teach us about love?
Love is at the heart of our lives. We spend our time looking for it, dreaming
about it and waiting for it. We sometimes even die of it. Yet, for centuries,
the study of love has remained the exclusive domain of philosophers and poets.
Only in the past twenty years has love become the object of scientific
research. As researchers learn that love blossoms more readily from insecurity
than from confidence, from danger than from tranquility, and that men are more
likely to be swept away by love than women, the way in which we see one of our
society's most profound and mysterious forces is slowly beginning to change.
by Beth Livermore. Adapted from "The Lessons of Love," Psychology Today.
Elaine Hatfield, a researcher at the University of Minnesota, has been studying
love-or what she calls our "intense desire for a complete union with the
other"-for the past fifteen years. In 1986 she developed a questionnaire called
The Passionate Love Scale (PLS) that measures the feelings and emotions linked
to this "extreme psychological state": obsession for the other, desire to know
everything about his past and present, idealization, the need to please, to
help or to protect the other in any circumstance... In other words, everything
(both positive and negative) that gives life to a passionate relationship.
"People who are madly in love travel on continuous roller coasters and
constantly pass from euphoria to anxiety, from calmness to panic, from
happiness to despair," Hatfield writes. "It's a combination of a bit of hope
with a lot of loneliness, sadness, jealousy and fear."
Psychologist Dorothy Tennov interviewed nearly five hundred people who
described themselves as being "in love." Almost all of them described an
experience that was, at best, bittersweet, while 10% were so scared off my love
that they said they never wanted to experience it again.
Contrary to popular belief, while men and women are equally capable of romantic
passion, it is usually the men who fall in love the fastest and the hardest.
They are the true romantics. Women, on the other hand, tend to treat their
affairs with at least a degree or pragmatism and common sense.
Finally, love can be found everywhere, regardless of age (even a four-year-old
child can fall passionately in love!), social background or race. Hatfield and
other researchers discovered that, far from being a characteristic unique to
Western society, the ideal of romantic love can be found everywhere on the
planet-in one-hundred and forty seven countries and 89% of human societies.
This is a fact that has long been ignored by American and European ethnologists
and sociologists who, conditioned by the Western view of romantic love that's
been developed in the past two hundred years, didn't know how to recognize its
exotic variants.
In our society, love at first sight is the ideal, romantic way to form a
couple, and love-at least in theory-is supposed to last forever. Elsewhere, the
flame of love isn't always the basis upon which marriage is built. Commonly,
social conventions (based on economic necessity) determine whether or not two
people will enter into a romantic relationship.
THE DANGER ZONE
Fear, worry and anxiety seem to play an important part in triggering passion.
They maintain it and whip it up to dizzying heights.
Arthur Aron, from Santa Cruz, devised an instructive experiment. He studied the
way that two groups of men reacted to the presence of a pretty woman. The first
group had to cross a narrow platform that was nearly 150 metres long, balancing
themselves in the wind, 70 metres above the ground. The other group only had to
cross a large and stable bridge before gaining access to the beautiful woman
who was standing on firm ground.
The young woman then explained to each participant that she was part of a
research experiment and asked them to fill out a questionnaire. When each
participant was finished with the questionnaire, the woman would give him her
phone number, explaining that, if he was interested, it would be her pleasure
to explain the project in detail.
Nine of the thirty-three men who endured the fearful experience of the platform
called her, while only two of the lucky ones who had the advantage of getting
to her via the stone bridge bothered to call her. Of course, nothing absolutely
proves that the first group didn't act out of scientific curiosity, but Aron is
convinced that the mixture of fear, excitement and anticipation was crucial in
determining their desire to better know the young woman.
With the help of other techniques that are more conventional, Aron identified
ten other factors that are likely to produce love or 'tender' feelings. At the
top of the list-as we might have expected-are good looks and a warm
personality. Not far behind are an openness to a relationship, sharing or
working in close quarters, and a bond that's forged during unusual or exciting
circumstances. Social status, the ability to satisfy needs and expectations,
and physical characteristics such as eye or hair colour round out the list.
The great surprise of the survey? The desire for reciprocity. The feeling of
being loved by the other is just as important as the person's potential for
physical or intellectual seduction. "It's the combination of both that is
decisive," says Aron. "It's the attraction we feel mixed with the attraction we
provoke."
Other researchers reproduced the same type of survey in three different
societies-in the United States, in Russia and in Japan-and obtained nearly
identical results in each case. There too, the big winners were reciprocal
attraction, a pleasant personality and good looks. Social status and the
family's opinion of a mate only came at the bottom of the list.
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
Beverly Fehr, of the University of Winnipeg, has studied the distinctions that
we make between love, friendship, and reciprocal commitment within the
relationship. Most people, she finds, associate confidence, caring for the
other, respect, loyalty, devotion, sacrifice and satisfaction to both love and
commitment. On the other hand, they attribute intimacy and happiness strictly
to love. Even more unexpected is the fact that most of the people Fehr
interviewed for her study consider the feeling of trust to be an essential
component of what they call love. As well, mutual respect, loyalty and
tenderness-over and above raw physical attraction-were identified as those
things likely to form the foundation for a loving relationship.
In other words, men and women consider friendship to be necessary for love and
inseparable from it. The former give more value to sexual satisfaction, but
both agree that, in the end, tenderness and psychological support are even more
important than the most romantic passion.
A little tenderness
Then how do human beings express this mixture of tenderness, friendship and
physical attraction that we call love? How do we recognize it?
More than anything else, lovers talk to each other! They talk about everything
and nothing, about ordinary things as well as secrets, about problems and joys,
about everything that draws them closer. At the same time, they touch each
other, they hold each other's hands and they embrace.
When asked to describe the most romantic thing a couple could do together,
one-hundred and forty-eight women, as well as forty-eight men, all put "taking
a walk together" at or near the top of the list. Women also listed "giving or
receiving flowers," "kissing each other", "candlelight dinners" and "hugs" as
other romantic expressions. Saying "I love you" placed sixth on the top ten
list.
Among men, kisses and candlelight dinners come second and third, respectively.
As for the big "I love yous", romantic slow dances and the giving or receiving
of surprise gifts-all of which were important to the women surveyed-none of
them appeared on the top ten lists of the men in the study. However, men did
consider "holding each other's hand", "making love" and "sitting near the
fireplace" among their favourite romantic moments.
As we can see, men and women, place much more importance on tenderness and
intimacy than we might have originally thought.
THE SIX TYPES OF LOVE
The fact remains that love occurs in different ways, from one couple to the
next, from one partner to the other. Canadian sociologist John Allen Lee has
distinguished six varieties of love. They can partly combine and often
alternate or follow one another during a person's life, but one element usually
dominates within a given relationship. The loved one also doesn't necessarily
react in the same way and it's through each person's ability to recognize the
other's characteristics and expectations that brings resolution to most
relationship problems.
First there are the "erotics," those for whom physical attraction and sexual
satisfaction are of primary importance. Then there are friends of the heart who
prefer a trusting and quiet relationship based on friendship with a partner who
shares their tastes and their values. Then there are the playful ones, charming
butterflies who often have several affairs at the same time and never stay very
long. There are also the pragmatics, who look for the ideal partner who will be
able to satisfy all their needs. Then there are the mad lovers, a group of
dependent, possessive and jealous people who constantly go from highs to lows;
Finally, there are the altruistic lovers, those who derive pleasure from giving
and for whom sex is only of secondary importance.
Statistically, men are more often playful and women are pragmatic, friendly or
dependent, but both genders show the same capacity for erotic or altruistic
love. Their differences are ultimately smaller than their similarities.
But where do these differences come from? According to many experts, the way in
which we approach relationships is determined in early childhood.
Those people whose mother (or the equivalent) was absent or indifferent during
their formative years will have difficulty forming loving bonds and friendships
with others. Those who have enjoyed a protected, serene and happy childhood
(approximately half of us) will find a continuation of this happiness when they
begin to look for a mate. Finally, those who alternated between tenderness and
rejection, presence and absence, will always try to alleviate their anxieties
by striving after the type of security that they never received as children.
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