Love Under a Microscope

smooth wombat writes "As today is one of the top five marketing-induced spending days, the obvious question is, what is love? Anthropologist Helen Fisher studied the brain's circuitry and found that the brain sees romantic love as a reward similar to chocolate, money or drugs. Does this mean that the mystery of love is less magical now that science has studied it under the microscope? According to Dr Fisher: 'You can know every ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and you still sit down and eat that chocolate cake and it's wonderful,' she said. 'In the same way, you can know all the ingredients of romantic love and still feel that passion.'"

Comments

Love is a survival trait.

[TripMaster Monkey]

What is love?
Baby don't hurt me
Don't hurt me, no more

Haddaway, What Is Love

Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug I'm thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug for me

Brian Ferry, Love Is The Drug

From TFA:

Romantic love is not only an emotion, it's a basic mating drive, and it's stronger than the sex drive.

Since the odds of survival for a human child with two parents is (or at least was) much higher than the odds of a single-parent child, it shouldn't be surprising that humans have a strong drive to forge lasting relationships. Natural selection in action, and all that.

Re:Love is a survival trait.

[lawpoop]

If you look at people around the world and throughout time, monogamy for life is the exception, rather than the rule. People have what anthropologists call "serial monogamy" -- they are monogamous for a time, and then break up and get new partners. They have sexual relationships with several people during their lifetime, but they are monogamous with each partner when they are with them.

I have a degree in anthropology and we spent a lot of time talking about the development of the state. Time was (about 6000 years ago), that there were no kings or any authority that could definitively tell another man what to do. Certainly, there were influential elders and other people who would make their voices heard, but ultimately men and women were free to do what they wanted. There was no judge or president that had ultimate authority to decide someone's fate. If someone wronged you, you could take revenge, and people might even agree with you, but it was ultimately your decision.

Then, at various times around the world, states develop, where there is someone who can ultimately force someone to do something -- on pain of imprisonment or death. It seems to be driven by the 'domestication' of a food crop as a farm staple (wheat, rice, corn), which can be stored, paid as tax, and then redistributed to men bulding pyramids.

I suspect that the ideal of a lifetime monogamous commitment was developed by the new State Authorities in order to get men working on pyramids instead of going hunting all the time and fighting over women. Remember, it's the state who marries people. In olden days, if someone slept with your wife, it was considered theft. So, the state was in charge of women and sexuality which freed up men's time and effort, so they could be sent off to construction camps or to fight in foreign lands.

So, the bottom line of this circular story is that Kings wanted as many young chlidren as possible so they could raise armies and conquer other kings, and have plenty of labor to build pyramids and other structures proclaiming their greatness. If you have farming and state intervention in re-production, this assists greatly in fertility.

If you look at hunter/gatherers, their reproduction patterns are like modern nuclear families. A woman might have 3-4 children. The 10-12 children was a part of the farming social structure.

Further developments

[Rob T Firefly]

When asked to confirm the above findings by Dr. Haddaway, a pair of scientists dressed in bright purple and blue labcoats nodded furiously, in rhythm.

Love is friendship set on fire

[jaymzter]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
All of my base
Are belong to you

Re:Love is friendship set on fire

[blue_adept]

roses are red,
violets are blue,
in soviet russia
the bases find you

Love is

[Dr. Eggman]

Love is like a box of chocolates. You sneak one or two before you decide to buy. Then eventually you do buy, take it home and eat them all in one sitting. Finally, your left with your body feeling sick, your wallet feeling light, and holding an empty box.

Re:Hmmm

[nizo]

What if the secret ingredient in that cake is "love"? How do they explain that?

Time to fire the chef and take the "love" in for DNA testing to prove it belongs to him?

Slashdot Love

[biocute]

It's like I knew I will get fired one day for reading Slashdot during office hours, I still read it.

It's like I knew the next story will only be out in 20 minutes, I still hit F5 every second.

It's like I knew a story is a dupe, I still "read more" and reply to it.

If this is not true love, what is?

So Food = Love?

[Assmasher]

We are a very loving nation apparently...

What is love?

[wrf3]

The Greeks had four words for love: agape, phileo, eros, and storge. We English speakers seem to conflate everything around eros and thereby miss the point. Love is the act of the will whereby another individual is placed ahead of yourself. That's why Christians are commanded to "love their enemies" and why the Apostle Paul wrote that the greatest act of love was when God gave His Son as the sacrifice for the sins of the world.

No naturalistic scientist could ever write:

    Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
    or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
    it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
    It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
    Love never ends.

there are two types of love

[circletimessquare]

1. the traditional romantic-type love, a crush. a person can't stop thinking about another person, many times a minute even, to the point of mental distress. this is very definitely like addiction

2. long-term love. this is when you operate on a day-to-day basis with the other person as if you were a unit, and you can finish each other's sentences and such. you don't think of the other person constantly, you just coexist with them fluidly (albeit with a certain level of conflict). if the person were to leave or die, you would experience great stress, as if you had lost a limb

i think evolution set this up pretty well. romantic love is the almost gravitational chemically-driven attachment you have with someone else that allows for the binding of two organisms together socially. then, as the chemicals subside, you are left with permanent neurogical patterns and structures in both organisms such that you function as a social unit

good design, i think, albeit with unavoidable failures such as:
1. chemically bonding with someone who does not like you (stalking, obsession), your classic unrequited love
2. ongoing long-term conflict that does not resolve, where you are bound to someone you have serious differences of opinion with. classic marriage counseling fodder and irreconiable differences divorce papers issues

Re:there are two types of love

[StikyPad]

You forgot Love #3: You can't stand each other, but you stay together for the kids, and/or the fact that you can't afford that much alimony and child support taken out of that thing your boss calls a check, but you call a nice down payment on the power bill, and still pay for something to eat once or twice a week. A good day is when you can get up and leave for work early enough that it doesn't have a chance to nag you, and a great day is when you can get home early enough to tie one on before it arrives with some new shoes and, surprise!, her mother. Your step kids call you by your first name, and they hate your real kid, who now also calls you by your first name, just because their dad was smart enough to run while he had the chance. You'd have an affair, but an affair won't have you, and that's probably for the best since you're pretty sure your wife is paying money you don't have for a PI to watch you do things you're not doing, and you can't help but wonder if it's tax deductable. Every second Thursday, on your way to the pharmacy, you hatch a plan to collect a tidy sum from a certain life insurance policy, but then you remember you can't afford life insurance, let alone health insurance, so you crumple up the prescription and decide to take an hour vacation by sitting on a park bench and pretending to be homeless. Ah, love.

Wikipedia has a good article...

[FooAtWFU]

Wikipedia has a good article, not on "love" per se, but on what psychologists apparently call Limerence, which is sort of the not-quite-really "infatuation" part of love. The part of love that drives you crazy, in short.

• intrusive thinking about the limerent object
• acute longing for reciprocation
• some fleeting and transient relief from unrequited limerence through vivid imagining of action by the limerent object that means reciprocation
• fear of rejection and unsettling shyness in the limerent object's presence
• intensification through adversity
• acute sensitivity to any act, thought, or condition that can be interpreted favorably, and an extraordinary ability to devise or invent "reasonable" explanations for why neutral actions are a sign of hidden passion in the limerent object
• an aching in the chest when uncertainty is strong
• buoyancy (a feeling of walking on air) when reciprocation seems evident
• a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background
• a remarkable ability to emphasize what is truly admirable in the limerent object and to avoid dwelling on the negative or render it into another positive attribute.

Wrong place

[Swamii]

Does this mean that the mystery of love is less magical now that science has studied it under the microscope?

Asking this question on Slashdot is like asking a group of chimpanzees whether they prefer Spanish Red or White Zin.

Re:In other words:

[Quiet_Desperation]

I keep a bowl of various (e.g. dark, 50% cocao, flavoured: raspberry, orange, &c.)chocolates in my living room. I serve wine with dinner (and I make that dinner high-quality, and a bit fancy). I'll often throw in a massage, with scented oils.

You are on the right track, young padiwan. Now you must get another person involved.

Love is...keeping your promises.

[fahrbot-bot]

My wife, Susan, and I were together for 20 years.
We were an unconventional, but very happy couple (I am 42, she was 61).

If romantic love is a reward, it's a reward for something deeper.

• Love is dropping everything when she's diagnosed with a brain tumor in November 2005.
• Love is being there for surgery, medication ... everything.
• Love is staying there 24/7 for the week she's in a coma.
• Love is making sure she's never in any pain and never alone.
• Love is holding her in your arms when she dies in January 2006.
• Love is keeping your promises.
• Love is missing her.

Re:Oxytocin junkies

[dgatwood]

I've eaten some pretty fucking good chocolate cake in my day. Ain't never wanted to die for the shit.

There are people who'd say things like that about their preferred batch of ingredients. We call them junkies, the chemical they use is called by many names -- not the least of which is junk. When a junkie is deprived of junk, they go through withdrawal. They experience physical pain, depression, and often behave irrationally or self-destructively in order to get their fix.

I think there's a very big difference between people who say they are willing to die for their partner and people who are willing to commit suicide as a result of rejection. Don't attempt to compare willing self-sacrifice to save another with irrational, self-destructive behavior. They aren't the same thing. One is driven out of care for another, the other out of care for oneself.

Dying for someone you care about is driven by of a sense of protection, and is a trait that has benefits for the survival of the species. Killing oneself because of being deprived of someone's love is driven by a selfish sense of want, and is a trait that just tends to Darwinianly reduce the gene pool..

Re:Drugs, yep. QWZX

[Adult film producer]

You might feel like you're correct but there is no absolute right or wrong when a person alters their brain chemistry. If you're judging me from a moral basis, then I have no argument. You will always be right and I will always be wrong. But why are you wanting to pick a fight with people that have no problem altering their own conciousness? It's theirs, not yours. Do you make the same arguments with your friends (if you have any) that consciously and willfully alter their brain chemistry/nervous system when it's caffiene? or chocolate? Or maybe they have passion for bubble baths. You're arguing against a completely natural and healthy need for human beings to transcend the daily reality they live out. What you're doing is completely unhealthy and probably causes more brain damage to yourself than cannabis will ever do.

Now I'm sure you live a very healthy and productive life. You probably don't smoke, don't drink coffee, will never sky dive or eat chocolate and live a perfectly celibate life. I respect that, I never attacked what you make of your life did I?

For the rest of humanity, for the people that have not graduated with honours from their local high school DARE program like you have, we will continue to enjoy what life has to offer us. I have no problem with your personal choice, but please don't be so quick to judge people based on what you personally believe is a moral failing. Your morals are not mine.