The Chemistry Behind The Human Feelings Of Passion And Romance

Harry Harlow’s main focus in his research was to understand the human behavior of love and relationships and how it intertwined as a humanistic need. His experiments were performed in his “Primate

On psychology today “Dr. Arthur Aron, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, says “intense passionate love uses the same system of the brain that gets activated when a person becomes

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.

In Barbara Fredrickson’s “Love 2.0” she talks about how love is a system and has its own biology. Our bodies are constantly changing and going through different experiences and with those experiences our bodies become more attuned to love. And the more people become associated with love, the more they are able to reciprocate it.

But what does that have to do with love? According to evolutionary theory, there are two elements of love that have been passed down through evolution: sexual attraction and attachment.

Commonly, new lovers will continuously think about their beloved, and develop a sense of obsession. This irrepressible feeling of being in love is the result of a ‘biochemical cocktail’ (course companion). In anthropologist Fischer’s (2004) book Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, she suggests that dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin are all involved in human romantic passion. Romantic love is genetically determined in our brains by evolution, and

Helen E. Fisher is a human behavior scientist and an American anthropologist of the biology of attraction and love. She was employed as the scientific chief advisor to the Internet dating webpage, Chemistry.com. Fisher has led broad research and composed five books on the development and eventual fate of human sexuality, monogamy, infidelity and separation, sex contrasts in the brain, and the science of sentimental

Now onto more serious aspects on love from three different fields which are Psychology, Neuroscience, and Sociology. The article Are We Confusing Passionate Love with Irrationality? Putting Passionate Love into a Cognitive-Behavioral Framework , by Joana R. Podina, Lavinia Uscatesci, and Cristina Magoase discusses love to be related to irrationality. This article informs me with research that three academic fields have done while studying passionate love. To support their study on passionate love the authors include a study on people who are recently in love or were in love in the past, they test their passionate love, irrationality, and rationality. The description given by those three fields for passionate love is the following:” it is a transitional phase from lust to companionate love, while conceptually it is generally regarded as an emotional/ motivational state of “longing for union with another.” In the article, passionate love is described as

they are distinctly different in many literal and neurological aspects. The different aspects of love and lust are exemplified through “Discovery” by Michael S. Harper, “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell, “Emerging Perspectives on Distinctions Between Romantic Love and Desire” by Lisa Diamond, and “How Love and Lust Influence Self-Control” by MinJung Kwon and Youngjee Han. Love and lust, however, are both positive emotions experienced frequently in both males and females. Although they are positive, they can have a negative effect on the future of intimate encounters between two partners.The fine line between love and lust is essential to differentiate

Love is a concept that has been dissected and criticized since the beginning of time. People can see, feel, and hear love but understanding the theory behind how love comes to be and the purpose behind it has always been a mystery. Many psychologists and sociologists have engaged in the conversation of love, including Ira Reiss. Reiss is a sociologist with a primary interest in love and sexual behaviors. He proposed his own wheel theory of love which can be applied in analyzing the book Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. This story is about two elderly neighbors, Addie Moore and Louis Waters, and how their relationship flourished from being neighborly to love one another. In reviewing this piece of literature, a person can clearly see the four stages of Reiss’ Wheel Theory and how they developed at different times.

In order to have that positive feeling inside, the human mind needs three of the following hormones; norepinephrine, dopamine and oxytocin, which are released in the mind when he stage is active. The first stage of love is dopamine or the romantic love. In this stage, the human being feels pleasure and makes the person feel good when the hormone is released. The second stage of love would be norepinephrine or the physical love that occurs between people. In this stage, it lets the person focus on a particular person who comes into interest and makes one feel excited at the same time. The third stage of love would be oxytocin or the attachment phase. In this stage, the human being continues to love the same person despite when times are rough, plan on spending their entire life together, and even raising their own children (Radiolab). Furthermore, in the article There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love, psychologist Barbara Fredrickson explains when oxytocin is released, you start to trust that individual and slowly create a bond that is inseparable. This particular hormone is released and spikes up that affects the micro-moments of love (Smith 1).

Larry Young’s overview of animal research and neuroscience in relation to love is fascinating however I think that love is a sacred emotion/mental state that should not be tampered with. Young explained that love can be broken down as a “biochemical chain of events” but I think that love is what makes us who we are, even animals are able to experience love. Even if love can be summed up as a release of oxytocin (falling in love) or a regulation of vasopressin (lack of love) I don’t think that researchers (or anyone else) should tamper with love. Personally, I think love is a balance between a release of hormones and psychological on our mental/emotion states. Currently I can’t think of any type of circumstances would warrant the use of a love

Catron fascination for the scientific component of love began after she experienced a break up in which her heart out-ruled her mind. In the midst, Catron came upon a reading about Dr. Arthur Aron’s study, a study in which psychologist accomplished their objective of making two strangers fall in love. “Much of Dr. Aron’s research focuses on creating interpersonal closeness,” states Catron. Catron then

Harry Harlow was labeled as a man with a desire for learning about what he presumed love to be and consequently, dedicated his later career to the subject. Life presented him with ups and downs yet, he pursued his research with a vigor. He developed notions about the concepts of affection in contrast to bodily needs and what could possibly derive from one not receiving love. This guided him to establish observational research methods to study his ideas via the use of infant primates which, yielded both positive and negative outcomes. Harlow’s article titled, The Nature of Love, relayed his explorations and discoveries, along with his future ideas.

The quality of passion within love overpowers our emotions, while the love in the mind remains a metaphysical quality that we could never understand. ‘Heart and Mind’ Edith Sitwell compares the values of passion, being the finite quality of love which overpowers us contrasted to that of love within the mind and soul which is everlasting but isn’t really noticed. In general, readers learn that passion is valued more highly to us than the love gained from the mind.