By: Nashedra Barry
Love is a complex concept with many interrelated parts. The following blog summarizes some of the current research regarding what love is and what its components are. There are also biological components of love. There have been extensive fMRI studies to determine what brain pathways are employed when we experience love. Findings from these studies are summarized and implications for a model of love are also discussed.
Intro
Romantic love can be wonderful, all consuming, devastating, and a host of other adjectives. While many of us describe love by how it makes us feel, a real definition of love is much more difficult to nail down. For this reason, and others, the scientific community has taken a considerable interest in the concept of love. Despite the increased interest from researchers, there is still conflict regarding what love is, how to differentiate between types of love, and how to categorize love. Let’s take a look at some of the arguments!
Is Love an Emotion?
What is love? A consensus on the definition of love appears to allude the scientific community. It is a complex concept with many interrelated parts including attraction, passion, and attachment. There is also conflict related to how to classify love. Some believe that love is a basic emotion, some believe that it is a complex emotion, and some believe that love is an attitude (Lamy, 2015). The most common belief among social science researchers is that love is an emotion. Additionally, several cross-cultural studies indicate that love is classified by most individuals as a basic emotion similar to joy, anger, sadness, or fear. There are, however, some issues with this idea. Basic emotions share three main characteristics. They are basic, universal, and short lasting. While love is most certainly universal, it is by no means basic or short lasting. Social neuroscientists have also provided evidence that may be characterized by a specific network in the brain.
The Biology of Love
Functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) studies indicate passionate love increased activity in the brain areas associated with euphoria, reward, and motivation (Cacioppo et al., 2012). This explains the expression, “Love is like a drug”! It is also in line with research that suggests love is a rewarding, positive, and motivating experience. Passionate love also employs brain regions involved in complex cognitive processing, such as social cognition, body image, self-representation and attention. Based on psychological and social neuroscience research, it appears that the most appropriate definition of love is “a rewarding emotional state that includes basic emotions and also complex emotions, goal-directed motivations, and cognition” (Ortigue et al. 2010).
A Deeper Look
There are also many different types of love. Fehr & Russell, 1991 asked participants to list as many types of love as they could. 216 kinds of love were named and, of those, 93 were mentioned by more than one person (Cacioppo et al., 2012). Companionate love, for example. is less intense than passionate love and is comprised of feelings of calm, social comfort, emotional union, and security. Unconditional and maternal love are additional types of love that have been studied (Cacioppo et al., 2012).
To date, measures of love have been largely global self-report measures. These measures have good individual results, however, there has been no shared method for measurement which reduces the generalizability of findings (Graham, 2011). Examples of such measurements include the Passionate Love Scale (PLS; Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986) and the Infatuation and Attachment Scales (IAS; Langeslag, Muris, & Franken, 2013). The PLS has been found to be a useful measure of passionate love for both men and women of all ages. It has also been validated for a variety of cultures and correlates well with certain well-defined patterns of neural activation (Cacioppo et al., 2012).
Conclusion
Sternberg’s (1986) triangular theory of love conceptualizes love as a combination of passion, intimacy, and commitment. Varying levels of each component results in different types of love. According to Sternberg, an equal combination of intimacy, passion, and commitment results in consummate love. Consummate love is what most people would refer to as “true love” (Sternberg, 1986). While social experiences may play a role in how we express love, scientific evidence does not seem to point to love as a social construct. Sternberg provides us with a way to distinguish between types of love and to help evaluate what each type of love is composed of. A working model of love would account for both the multitude of emotions that comprise love, the motivations behind love, and the complex cognitions involved.
- Fehr B, Russell JA. 1991. The concept of love viewed from a prototype perspective. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 60:425–38
- Hatfield, E., & Sprecher, S. (1986). Measuring passionate love in intimate relationships. Journal of adolescence, 9(4), 383-410.
- Lamy, L. (2016). Beyond emotion: Love as an encounter of myth and drive. Emotion Review, 8(2), 97-107.
- Langeslag, S. J., Muris, P., & Franken, I. H. (2013). Measuring romantic love: psychometric properties of the infatuation and attachment scales. Journal of sex research, 50(8), 739-747.
- Ortigue S, Bianchi-Demicheli F, Patel N, Frum C, Lewis J (2010). Neuroimaging of Love: fMRI meta-analysis evidence towards new perspectives in sexual medicine. Journal of Sexual Medicine 7, 3541-3552.
- Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93, 119-135.