14-billion-years-later:

The Science of Love

There are many ways to look at this, to most of you examining such a personal emotion under the microscope of science may turn out to be a depressing venture, but I think that the process behind it is equally if not more fascinating.

From an evolutionary point of view the concept of love is an almost necessary mechanism. Most primates are not monogamists (The “mate for life” idea seen in such animals as swans), humans seem to have been pushed by selection pressures to be mostly monogamous but it will take a while to remove all that more primal ape hardwiring. The main benefit of love from an evolutionary sense is that it allows the offspring a greater chance of survival as both parents are “trapped” by a biochemical pathway into protecting the offspring and each other. The advantage of this may have come about from reduced reproductive capacity, perhaps in turn due to the adoption of bipedal locomotion.

The chemical aspect of love is a bit more complicated, it is at it’s truest form a type of subconscious positive reinforcement technique. You see someone attractive or do things that you associate with love and you are rewarded by a rush of dopamine and serotonin amongst other chemicals and hormones. In the long term one particular chemical comes into play: oxytocin. Oxytocin’s role is to form long lasting associations and it’s often been observed in relatively high doses in the system of mothers with children, couples in love and in fact even just people playing with their dogs. It’s also interesting to point out that in new lovers the serotonin levels present are comparable to that of OCD sufferers.

The following bit is more “psychological facts” and as such should definitely be taken with a grain of salt. Or a whole bucket. Apparently it takes around about 4 minutes for an individual to decide if they’re interested in someone. Another interesting experiment conducted was by Arthur Aron, a professor at York University. His experiment detailed people talking about intimate details of their lives and then simply staring into each others eyes for 4 minutes. This experiment showed that these two factors can be linked to level of attraction. It’s also worth noting that two of the people involved ended up getting married 6 months later.