By: Jenna Kilgore
“Love has to be unreal to be true” – Brown, 2012, pg. 52
We know love mostly through experience. Love is thought to be associated with feelings of elation, passion, jealousy, and desire. Another social conceptualization of love is to complete another person, serving as the key to their lock. Humans seek love with the idea of fulfillment, but what does research suggest truly comprises the experience of love?
Researchers have attempted to conceptualize love since the 1960’s and have suggested a multitude of explanations for and even various types of love. Graham (2011) suggests romantic obsession, love, and friendship are three distinct constructs, with “love” being of most interest to current scientists. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love (Sternburg, 1986) attempts to expand the construct of love, and divides it into three distinct components: passion, intimacy, and commitment. He further suggests that there are seven different forms of love involving differing interactions of these components: liking, infatuation, empty love, romantic love, companionate love, fatuous love, and consummate love. An explanation of these love types can be found here. Hendrick & Hendrick (1986) similarly conceptualize love as various “styles”: eros (passionate love); ludus (game-playing love); storge (friendship love); pragma (logical love); mania (possessive love); and agape (selfless love). For the purpose of this blog, I will focus on research related to love categorized as “romantic love” or eros, defined by Hatfield and Rapson (1987) as “a state of intense longing for union with another.”
Explanations for the experience of love vary, as discussed by Tomilson and authors (2018). Love is viewed by some researchers as developing from attachment, caregiving, and sexuality as a means for survival. By this standard, individual’s attachment styles (e.g., trait-anxious) impacts the intensity of the experience of love (Shaver, Hazan, & Bradshaw, 1988). Lamy (2015) suggests that love can be viewed more as a story, serving as narrative organization of an individual’s experience, heavily influenced by culture. Additionally, Lamy suggests that a hidden drive or motivation for love is necessary for one to truly experience all aspects of love. Fisher (1998) approaches love from an evolutionary perspective, suggesting that neural mechanisms for love developed to promote survival. For example, focused attention promotes commitment to one’s partner, which is important in rearing children. Aron & Aron (1986) suggest love is more of a mechanism that supports the human motivation to expand one’s resources in order to achieve desired goals. In this way, love is a result of the rapid self-expansion that occurs when an individual begins to include another person in their conceptualization of themselves. All of these potential explanations include a component of emotion. Previously, love has been conceptualized as a basic human emotion; however, although the experience of love is emotional, it may not be an emotion in an of itself. Rather, love carries with it a complex system of emotions, both positive and negative (Tomilson, et al., 2018).
Scientists have recently begun to examine to neural mechanisms involved with the experience of love. Cacioppo and authors (2012) discuss the varying neurotransmitters and brain regions associated with different types of love, focusing mainly on passionate love. Researchers have consistently found love to be correlated with dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and cortisol, accounting for the positive emotions, attachment, and stress associated with falling in love. Additionally, activity has been observed in the ventral tegmental area, caudate nucleus, and the putamen, which are subcortical areas associating love with reward and motivation. Activity was also observed in the insula and anterior cingulate cortex, related again to reward but also to emotion and sensory integration, potentially linking love to sexual arousal. Areas associated with social cognition, attention, memory, and self- representation have also been observed to activate when in love (occipitotemporal/fusiform region, angular gyrus, dorsolateral middle frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, occipital cortex, and precentral gyrus), which may explain the pre-occupation with your love interest, the increased memory function associated with one’s partner, and the self-expansion theory of love. Combined, these results suggest that romantic love is a complex system involving cognition, emotion, attention, arousal, and the self.
Given all of this information, I propose that each explanation discussed is incomplete. Rather, I suggest that a network approach to love may account more fully for the complexity of experience. By combining existing factors of arousal, cognition, attachment, motivation, culture, and the sense of self, a network model could potentially be a more complete model. With each individual experiencing different weights of each variable, individual differences of love could be assessed.
In sum, the topic of love is an age-old mystery that humans continue to attempt to understand. Previously, love was something only discussed anecdotally, relating to intense emotions, fulfillment, and myth. However, current research is attempting to explain the mystery of the phenomena of love. With various theories of what love is (i.e., attachment, emotion, motivation, self-expansion, organizational framework, evolution), it appears attempts to define love remain in vain. Neurological examination have held the most promising explanations for love to date, allowing us to understand the cortical and sub-cortical brain regions and neurotransmitters associated with the experience of love. These studies have provided insight into the biology of cognition, emotion, attention, arousal, and the self as they relate to love. Thus, I believe the next step is to examine the individual theories as a network model in attempt to bridge the gap between theory and biology of love.
- Aron, A., & Aron, E. N. (1986). Love and the expansion of self: Understanding attraction and satisfaction. Hemisphere Publishing Corp/Harper & Row Publishers.
- Brown, J. W. (2012). Love and other emotions: On the process of feeling. Karnac Books.
- Fisher, H. E. (1998). Lust, attraction, and attachment in mammalian reproduction. Human Nature, 9(1), 23-52.
- Graham, J. M. (2011). Measuring love in romantic relationships: A meta-analysis. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28(6), 748-771.
- Hatfield, E., & Rapson, R. L. (1987). Passionate love/sexual desire: Can the same paradigm explain both? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 16(3), 259-278.
- Hendrick, C., & Hendrick, S. (1986). A theory and method of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(2), 392–402.
- Lamy, L. (2016). Beyond emotion: Love as an encounter of myth and drive. Emotion Review, 8(2), 97-107.
- Shaver, P., Hazan, C., & Bradshaw, D. (1988). Love as attachment. In R. J. Sternberg & M. L. Barnes (Eds.), The psychology of love (pp. 68-99). New Haven, CT, US: Yale University Press.
- Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (Eds.). (2018). The new psychology of love. Cambridge University Press.