Love Flashcards
What is love?
Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. Three components are essential (Sternberg, 1986)
For most people in Western society, love is what is most important in life
Consumated love
• Intimacy: feeling of closeness, connectedness and bonding
• Passion: drive that leads to romance , physical attraction and sex
• Commitment: the decision that one loves another and the commitment to maintain love
Romantic love
• Intimacy
• Passion
How relationships start – not committed to marry them at the start
A universal experience: present in 147/166 societies.
• Traits associated with romantic love:
o Special meaning
o Focused attention
o Heightened energy
o Euphoria
Not permanent: 1-3 years. it evolved for a very specific reason and it is adaptive to move to a state of more comfort: attachment
Why do we love who we love?
The big three (Initial attraction)
o Proximity
o Familiarity
o Similarity
We should love/should be attracted to those familiar to us, similar to us, close to us, but NOT kin.
Because if you inter-mate with your kin you have bad offspring and so animals should be wired up not to mate with their kin.
“how do you tell?”
♣ You don’t want to have sex with your kin but how do you tell your kin?
♣ You avoid sex with people you grew up with.
♣ Kibbutz studies - They know they’re not related, but still, the fact that they were raised together as kids suggests that there’s a cue at a gut level not to be attracted to one another
♣ MPA: maternal perinatal association; does not work for younger siblings
♣ We have a built-in repulsion towards other people that spent the first few years of our lives with us
Detection of kinship = Regulation of sexual attraction and altruism.
The more interesting four
Competence
If someone is Very competent it is not attractive – intimidating, you don’t want to say something wrong
♣ The Pratfall experiment
Volunteers listen to recording of interview for a quiz show
Women asked to rate attractiveness – Competent = more attractive
Second study – in both conditions, the tape continues “Oh, my goodness. I’ve spilled coffee all over my new suit”
Competent attractive rating increases and non-competent decrease
Physical attractiveness:
Elliot and Niesta 2008
• In many nonhuman primates, the colour red enhances males’ attraction to females. – Fertile = Show red genitals in primates
• There is a similar effect in humans
• Red, relative to other colours, leads men to view women as more attractive and more sexually desirable.
• Men seem unaware of this red effect.
• Red does not influence women’s perceptions of the attractiveness of other women, nor men’s perceptions of women’s overall likeability, kindness, or intelligence.
Feinberg et al, 2008; O’Connor et al 2012
• Study in Namibia:
• Women with higher voices had more children and grandchildren. The common factor between female vocal pitch and fertility is oestrogen.
• Hazda men (Tanzania) with lower-pitched voices have more living offspring.
• Women are more attracted to men with a low-pitched voice when it comes to short-term flings – Short term flings happen more when a woman is fertile – Good genes = more testosterone, which lowers voice.
• Women perceive men with deep voices as being more likely to cheat on them.
• Different voice pitches are found attractive because of the body size they signal.
Gain-loss
We are wired to be more sensitive to change. Change often signals danger or opportunity
Someone being consistent we like
♣ Horrible then do a little thing that is nice = enhanced attraction compared to if they were nice all the time
Misattribution of arousal:
♣ You feel physiologically aroused but not sure why and you have to make up an explanation for it
♣ Caffeine experience
• -“Huh. I feel a little funny.” - heart beating a faster, palms beginning to sweat, breath coming a little shorter –“I don’t think I’ve felt this way in a very long time. It couldn’t be the coffee. I ordered decaf. What could this be? - Attribute feelings to liking your friend
From initial attraction to consummated love!
Critical evolutionary move from promiscuity to pair bonding occurred when humans started walking upright (Lovejoy 1981) - Infants no longer could cling to their mothers, mothers must devote more resources to them and males started to make a contribution to the rearing of specific infants.
Advantages of pair bonding: In return for her exclusive sexual attention the female acquires from the male additional resources
1-Sex drive: Lust phase: For mating with any suitable mating partner: oestrogens and androgens (in humans mainly androgens). Evolved to search a whole range of partners
Men - Triggered by visual stimuli: men use of pornographic material, Constant
Women - Triggered by auditory stimuli (romantic words) and memories, Periodic
2- Attraction phase: For partner selection and reproduction, there is craving for emotional union: Evolved to focus attention to a particular individual. Romantic love
Dopamine and Norepinephrine increases, testosterone increases in women
Testosterone goes down in men – Make them more similar
Brain circuits show interspecies variation – Bats = minutes, Humans 1-2 Years before hormones levels return to normal
Same intensity in men and women, both attracted to reliable, mature, sociable and interested in family
Men: Physical attractiveness, signs of youth and beauty – Signs of fertility - Most women spend their lives trying to look nice
Women: More attracted to men with money, education and position – Provide resources for offspring
Meyer et al. 2011
Romantically involved participants implicitly derogate the attractiveness of alternative partners
Successful derogation of attractive others involves activation of PFC
Although derogation might implicit, it nonetheless requires cognitive resources.
PFC correlated with participants’ level of relationship investment.
PFC = important in regulating emotions that threaten stability of romantic relationship
3- Attachment phase: oxytocin and vasopressin. Evolved to tolerate this individual at least long enough to raise a child together o Fisher et al, 2002 ♣ Mutual feeling ♣ Grooming ♣ Nest building ♣ Shared parental chores ♣ Calm security social comfort emotional union ♣ Territory defence Attachment: same in both genders
Lust, romantic love and attachment can occur simultaneously
3 different brain systems, therefore men and women can:
Mate with someone that they are not in love with: chemistry
Be in love with someone whom they do not want a sexual relationship: platonic love
Feel deeply attached to a partner without feeling sexual attraction or romantic love: eternal love
If you want to sustain romantic love in long term attachment need to do novel things together to increase DA
Addiction
Burkett and Young (2012)
A preponderance of evidence from human studies and animal models demonstrates that there are overlaps in the neurobiology of addiction and romantic attachment, virtually every neurochemical system implicated in addiction also participates in social attachment processes (DA, opioids, and CRF). The neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin are hypothesized to integrate social information into attachment processes that are not present in drug addiction.
Aron et al, 2005
Early stage of romantic relationship = euphoria
fMRI - Pictures of beloved and familiar people whilst being distracted
Increased activity in VTA and caudate
Left VTA activation correlates with face beauty and right VTA with degree of passionate love
Romantic relationships used reward ad motivation systems - similar to cocaine - Brain is behaving like it is ann addiction
Tolerance: Always wants more.
Withdrawal: Do not see the loved one = despair.
Relapse: If after some time sees the person again it will feel the symptoms again. Even if you hear a song.
Rejection
Protest phase: protest, plead, seduce, frustration- attraction (like the person more), abandonment rage
Resignation/despair phase: depression
Increased activation in…
Nucleus accumbens/ventral putamen/pallidum - suggest romantic love continues
Anterior insula/operculum - Related to phisical pain of muscles and skin
Lateral orbitofrontal cortex - Theory of mind. Ruminate what somebody else is thinking
Rumination = more depressive episodes and negative moods (Davis, 1999; Siegle, 2000)
The more time that had passed since the breakup, the less activity there was in a brain region associated with attachment.
Brain areas involved in emotion regulation, decision making and evaluation were also active when participants viewed their rejecter. This suggests participants were learning from their past romantic experience, evaluating their gains and losses and figuring out how to deal with the situation,
Biological correlates of monogamy
Couples that establish long lasting emotional and social relationship are not common
Sexual monogamy - Sexual exclusivity
Social monogamy = Social living arrangments
Theoretically (and just theoretically!), for humans, social and sexual monogamy usually go together
What is the chemistry behind this complex behaviour?
Social monogamy depends on oxytocin and vasopressin. All individuals have enough of these peptides. Why just a few display long lasting attachment?
Prairie and Montane Voles are used to study the neural substrates of monogamy
They display amazing differences in social behaviour and have genetic homology of 99%
Biological correlates of monogamy
Prairie voles
Young et al 2004; Aragona et al, 2003
In female prairie voles, mating increases DA in the nucleus accumbers
In males mating increases DA selectively in the accumbens = Reward
There is also a Partner preference after mating - Prairie vole spends more time with the partner that montane vole (no mating-induced social bonding)
Curtis et al, 2006
Dopamine antagonist (haloperidol) to males prairie voles after mating - no partner preference
Dopamine agonist (apomorphine) to males together with no mating just female presence – Partner Preference - Induced reward
Dopamine and reward system are critical for partner preference formation
Partner preference
Need something else, Montane voles’ DA also increases after mating but they don’t develop partner preference
You need to be able to recognise your past partner
Social recognition system (OT and AVP): Social memory – need to remember who the partner was
Oxytocin (OT) and Arginine-vasopressin (AVP) as neuro-hormones
Winslow and Insel, 2004
Every time the voles meet again these circuits activate
Knock out mice (have null mutation in oxytocin, OT receptor and AVP receptors) display social amnesia
Mice don’t have partner preference - we re looking at social memory
KO mice are interested every time he is exposed to the same female – He doesn’t recognise her as a past female…WT mice get bored
How do we know this is only social? He could have lost sense of smell?? –
Control – non-social stimulus (scent), Over time they get “bored” of explosion to the scent – Same for KO mice and WT mice - shows that with a no social stimulus (scent) showed that they can smell and they can remember. Social memory is inhibited not general memory.
OT administration in the amygdala produces temporal social recognition.
Both prairie voles and montane voles have DA, OT and AVP, then why prairie voles are monogamic and montane voles are not?
The difference is in the DISTRIBUTION of OT and AVP receptors
Prairie Voles
Very HIGH density of OT and AVP receptors
Montane voles
o Very LOW of OT and AVP receptors
Prairie vole feels great pleasure when mating with his partner
Montane vole feels great pleasure when mating OT and AVP have nowhere to act in the accumbens and ventral pallidum)
Young et al, 2004
The concurrent activation of the dopaminergic system and the oxytocin or AVP system in the NAcc or VP potentially results in the development of a conditioned partner preference.
Young et al, 1999
Is it possible to “convert” a promiscuous individual? – Add receptors not neurotransmitters.
Administration of AVP increases affiliative behaviour in the highly social, monogamous prairie vole, but not in the relatively asocial, promiscuous montane vole - they have nowhere to act!
Difference between monogamy and polygamy is due to receptor distribution
Receptor distribution is determined by genes Microsatellites (genes) are unstable and mutate quickly
o Can change over time – explains why we are more monogamous at different times in our life
Humans and monogamy
Hammock and Young, 2005
The variability in microsatellites could explain the differences in social personality in humans and voles (quick social evolution)
Individual variations in prairie voles and humans could be in differences in the gen that codifies for V1aR
Scheele et al, 2013
Oxytocin effects in humans
OT administration selectively increased trust
Intranasal OXT treatment made male subjects perceive their female partner’s face as more attractive compared with unfamiliar women but had no effect on the attractiveness of other familiar women. This enhanced positive partner bias was paralleled by an increased response to partner stimuli compared with unfamiliar women in brain reward regions
Suggests that oxytocin could contriute to romntic bonds in males by increasing partner attractivemenss and reward value of their partner.
