Harlow’s Theory: Love

While people are often able to identify when they feel the emotion love, love itself seems to defy definition.  In her polemic “Against Love”, Laura Kipnis argues that love cannot exist as traditional expressions of love such as marriage, monogamy, and mutuality.  However, in her argument, she defines love incorrectly by equating love to expressions of love. This definition lacks a component essential to understanding the abstract concept of love: emotion. Recognizing love as emotion helps us realize that, contrary to Kipnis’ argument love by nature transcends all expressions of love. Love is subjective and exists in any and all forms. In her argument that love cannot survive as conventional expressions of love, Kipnis ignores the nature of love as emotion in favor of equating love to different expressions of love. Love is a force which exists above expressions of love; a true understanding of love can only come from an assessment of how individuals, not societies, respond to the emotion.

In the movie Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, two different kinds of love are exposed. The love relationship between Ilsa Lund and Rick is a more passionate relationship while the one between Ilsa and Victor Laszlo is more intimate. Love is composed of different feelings and because of that it can be expressed, as seen in Casablanca, in different ways. “The Intimate Relationship Mind”, a text by Garth J. O. Fletcher and Megan Stenswick, helps support that claim providing a scientific background on how love is shaped by those different feelings. It says that “love is composed of three distinct and basic components that each represent evolved adaptations; namely, intimacy, commitment,

“Discovering Love” is an article about the definition of love and the different aspects, such as how it works and where you get it. Developmental psychologist Harry Harlow is the main contributor to this study. Harlow was particularly interested in how early life experiences, specifically interaction with one’s mother or primary caregiver, impact an individual’s ability to love and be loved by others later in life.

The article '' love: the right chemistry'' by Anastasia Toufexis efforts to explain the concept of love from a scientific aspect in which an amateur will understand. Briefly this essay explains and describe in a scientific way how people's stimulation of the body works when you're falling in love. The new scientific researches have given the answer through human physiology how genes behave when your feelings for example get swept away. The justification for this is explained by how the brain gets flooded by chemicals. The author expresses in one point that love isn't just a nonsense behavior nor a feeling that exhibits similar properties as of a narcotic drug. This is brought about by an organized chemical chain who controls different

In his article “Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain,” Benedict Carey expresses that love is not necessarily an emotion but rather a neurological and physical phenomenon. After comparing new love to mania and obsession, Carey offers evidence of romantic love as a neuropsychological event through the description of the caudate nucleus (a specific part of the brain which produces the neurotransmitter dopamine), explaining the cause of desire and passion in relation to love.

The human idea of love is quite possibly the most misunderstood in today’s society. Love can be between a man and woman, mother/father and their kids, or even really good friends. However, these relationships of love go through many interactions and stages to start and progress. Many psychological events must occur and be worked through in order to be successful. All relationships must endure the five perspectives of human behavior. These perspectives are biological, learning, social and cultural, cognitive, and psychodynamic influences.

The original study “The nature of love” was focused on gaining more understanding of human development (Hock, 2013). It involved a series of experiments done by Harry Harlow in 1958, in which he

According to the Harlow’s monkey experiment showing to us, that how the attached our relationship as the humans between an infants and parents. This experiment teach us to how healthy relationship parents needs to develop and maintains with children so in the future they do not feel insecure attachment. Based on an experiment, every human being and different types of animals always need a love, comfort, warmth from every relationship. Some people can lives without foods some weeks or several months but those people are given most importance to the human psychology behaviors like thought, feelings, attitudes and values between the children and parents. For example, new born baby already have strong biologically, psychology and physically bonds

Although Harlow was able to provide evidence that related to the infant-mother attachment in monkeys, it cannot relate to humans as a result of the laboratory conditions and sample size used in Harlow’s Monkey Study. Lastly, I personally believe that by either replacing the surrogate mother with either an adoptive mother or their father and by providing a more natural environment for the Rhesus Monkeys, it will allow Harlow’s study to be more accurate and reliable by increasing the Ecological Validity and allowing the study to be more

To begin the experiment, participants answered a questionnaire rating how intensely in love they were then they were shown photos of their partner during an MRI scan. It was found that dophamine-rich areas of the brain (area associated with rewards) had higher activity when shown their partner than when shown an image of their friend. These findings show that we form relationships with those who are rewarding.

Harlow’s experiment started when the monkeys were “separated at birth from their mother” (Green, N.D.). Therefore, the monkeys had no idea who their actual mother was when the experiment was starting. The monkeys were put in separate cages and half of them were put with a “cold wire mother and the other was a warm, fuzzy cloth mother” (King,2017).  The infant monkeys were being fed by either the cold wire or the fuzzy cloth artificial mothers. Harlow then put the

Some say, to love is to be willing to die. Others say, to love is to be willing to do whatever a loved one asks. Barbara Fredrickson says love is neither of these. In her book, Fredrickson attempts to redefine love through the biological microscope. The author compiles a variety of studies and research data to prove her claim that love is the product of neural coupling, oxytocin in the brain, and the work of the vagus nerve. Fredrickson presents a well-rounded claim, but there are some deficiencies that hinder the strength of her argument. Fredrickson’s use of vague language throughout this excerpt causes the reader to call into question the validity of said studies. In addition, Fredrickson’s use of first person point of view is a clever

In the excerpt from “Love 2.0” by Barbara Fredrickson, the feeling of love is explained to be more biological in nature. Love is often seen as an intense emotion that connects two or more people through trust and communication. It can click into place after a lengthy conversation or just a shared glance. While this may seem dramatic, Fredrickson offers her own biological perspective to explain these phenomena in a more grounded sense. These biological reasonings aide her in proving that love is not unconditional or exclusive, but rather shared with all that give off a positive resonance. It is also made possible through the synchronized flow of the two people’s brains, the release of the hormone, oxytocin, and the healthy control of the vagal. The combination of these parts enables a person to experience this feeling of love and receive it from others as well. It is important to understand these scientific reasonings because they show how people can obtain this deep love with multiple people by just listening to their bodies. The different biological processes enable people to love better by creating a deeper connection in conversation, a strong sense of trust, and providing the skills people need to acquire the love their bodies crave.

The science of love When do you know if you fancy someone? What does love do to your brain chemicals, and is falling in love just nature's way to keep our species alive?  We call it love. It feels like love. But the most exhilarating of all human emotions is probably nature’s beautiful way of keeping the human species alive and reproducing. With an irresistible cocktail of chemicals, our brain entices us to fall in love. We believe we’re choosing a partner. But we may merely be the happy victims of nature’s lovely plan.

Love exists in the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro and in the short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver. in Munro’s short story the plot is that of a mentally ill wife, Fiona, who falls in love with another patient while her husband still tries to hang on to their old love. Her husband eventually wants to have an affair with the wife of the man his wife is having an affair with. Their love changed because of their circumstances due to ill health. Carver’s story discusses the different definitions of love due to the type and quality of relationships; everyone has a different definition. Love also exists all over the world within different environments and cultures. The concept of love depends upon the environment in which it inhabits. Love is dependent on the life of the people in love and it also depends on their current environment. Nature and nurture are also huge factors into the development and process of love. What nature and nurture mean is whether it is due to how the person lives and acts along with their personality compared to whether it’s all in their genetics beforehand. Love is more on the nurture side instead of the nature side of human experience.