Week 2: Lecture 2 - Maintaining The Pair Bond - Love And Lust

Question 0

What drives mating behavior?

Answer 0

• Typically, lust - or ‘sexual desire’ noted the role of lust or sexual desire as a potent bodily drive
• for humans, involves both imagination and pleasurable physical sensations
• Freud: libido - an innate, motivational force
• shaped by environmental factors

Question 1

Why maintain a pair bond?

Answer 1

• A better bet for men to invest one or women and their (his) offspring
• In Western culture, bigamy and polygamy has been replaced by serial monogamy; men need to be able to guarantee paternity of offspring to make monogamy worthwhile

Question 2

Influences on sexual desire

Answer 2

• biological drive to have sex may be affected by drugs and illness
• motivation to have sex may be affected by various relationship factors (e.g. previous sexual history with partner)
• cognitive (decision) to have sex may be affected by proximal factors e.g. Fear of preg.

Question 3

Emotional support & desire

Answer 3

• Very important link for women
• decrease in sexual desire over time, associated with lack of confiding relationship and insufficient emotional support from partner

Question 4

Models of love

Answer 4

• Sternberg’s triangular model of love
• intimacy (emotional closeness)
• passion (sexual desire)
• commitment (the ‘cognitive’ aspect of love)

Question 5

Commitment

Answer 5

• without intimacy or passion, may be ‘empty’ love

- consummate love = passion, intimacy, and commitment

Question 6

Combinations of factors

Answer 6

• passion & commitment w/o intimacy = fatuous (foolish) love
• passion & intimacy with or w/o commitment = romantic love
• involves arousal and obsessive thoughts of beloved
• Limerance - love madness
• romantic love lights up the anterior cingulate in the brain
• hormones associated with life
• produces an amphetamine-like ‘high’

Question 7

End of Limerant phase

Answer 7

• global divorce rates; commonly 4th yr of marriage, esp. In marriage w/o children
• end of Limerant phase not necessarily the end of deep as enduring pair bond, especially if intimacy and attachment have developed

Question 8

Companionate love

Answer 8

• the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined (intimacy & commitment) - the love of “settled, domestic people”
• associated with production of endorphins and oxytocin (the cuddle hormone)

Question 9

Propagating the species

Answer 9

• lust and passion are clearly functional; they motivate mating
• it takes a long time to bring up human offspring; parents need to love children
• companionate love keeps parents together long enough to do it

Question 10

Harlow’s monkey experiment

Answer 10

• testing the ‘cupboard love’ theory, cloth mother vs wire mother
• baby monkeys craved comfort, not just milk
• needed a secure base in times of danger

Question 11

Babies mechanism for maintaining the pair bond

Answer 11

• large forehead and eyes
• round face elicit warm
• fuzzy feelings in human adults

Question 12

Separation distress

Answer 12

• key to the function of love - the pain of losing it
• we can’t survive along
• abandoned babies respond in predictable ways (angry, protest, despair)

Question 13

The attachment bond (4)

Answer 13

• Is powerful
• ensures safety and security
• feels good
• enables children to explore the world and trust others - to develop full potential

Question 14

Romantic love

Answer 14

• strong parallels b/w parent-child attachment and romantic love and behaviors
• lots of physical contact, sharing, baby talk, mutual grooming, feeding each other
• also separation distress (can even lead to suicide)

Question 15

Attachment styles

Answer 15

• secure attachment; emotional security, trust, confidence
• avoidant attachment; emotional shut-down, low trust, cynicism
• anxious-ambivalent attachment; emotional roller-coaster, low trust but high hope, dependence and despair