Love is by far one of the most talked about, written about, expressed and implied feelings in the human array of emotions. The Beatles told us that “love is all you need”. Dr. Theodor Geisel, best known under the pseudonym Seuss, stated that “When you are in love you can't fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams.” Douglas Adams gave us a dry warning in his book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, stressing that, in terms of love, “Avoid, if at all possible.” With all the artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scientists, and thinkers of the world giving us conflicting and equally meaningful views of love, can it really be explained? Love is loosely defined as “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties” and, indeed, there are aspects of this complex emotion that can be pinpointed and discussed on all three levels of psychological analysis, from cognition to physiology to the sociocultural aspects of love.
Biologically, love spurs a plethora of neurotransmitters and hormones which, when all present simultaneously, can explain the sensations of passionate love. Passionate love can be broken down into two components- attachment and sexual attraction. The attachment between lovers has been compared to that which develops between a child and a parents, presumably working in the same basic pattern. The neurotransmitters responsible for sexual attraction are adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine. Adrenaline is responsible for the effects of the initial stages of falling in love, such as sweating, being unable to breathe, having your heart race, and a dry mouth. Dopamine, a chemical which stimulates desire and reward, is also active, initiating an intense rush of pleasure to th...
... middle of paper ...
...ture, which places value on the individual’s emotions and wellbeing, versus a collective society which values the group. In an individualistic society, love tended to be a substantially more considered factor in marriage decisions. Along with these findings, the studies also showed that love tended to be more valued in societies with a higher economic standard of living, as well as higher marriage and divorce rates. Various studies have also shown higher rates of romanticism among different cultures. For example, Simmons, Vom Volke, & Shimizu, 1986, found that Europeans tend to have more romantic ideals than Americans. They also found that American subjects scored higher in romanticism than Japanese subjects. Another study of North American and Chinese participants showed that Chinese subjects ranked higher on practical love and possessive love than North Americans.
The notion behind loving someone is simply very complicated and esoteric in nature. People often describe a certain chemistry, as in a certain attraction, needed between two individuals who are in love, but Barbara Fredrickson is able to coordinate the definition of love on the basis of chemicals. Barbara Fredrickson is able to provide the definition of love on the deductive reasoning based on chemistry, biology, and neurology explained in Love 2.0: How our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything we Feel, Think, Do, and Become. As Barbara explains, “With each micro-moment of love, then, you climb another rung on the spiraling ladder that lifts you up to your higher ground, to richer and more compassionate social relationships, to greater resilience and wisdom, and to better physical health.” (121).
"Romantic love has been the norm since eighteenth-century Europe, when we began connecting marriage with romance." If people did not love each other, then there would be no relationship. Sure, they could try to make it happen, but what would be the point of having the relationship in the first place? If they are trying to escape from something and are not actually motivated by love, they are just creating a new entity to eventually want to escape from. Only love will cause people to remain and stay together in a relationship. According to a study done at Grand Valley State University, titled "The Social Psychology of Love and Attraction", it's true that "shared traits including similarity, religion, ethnic group and race were important features of the other person for over half the participants [in the study]. Each of these traits is linked to a commonality in background. People are subconsciously drawn to others who have the same familial background." This study shows that people do consider factors such as race and cultural identity when seeking a potential partner for a relationship. However, the study also shows that the most important factor in attracting a potential mate is personality. The second most is physical attractiveness. These traits are more important in deciding a potential mate than anything
Love is one of life's great mysteries. People live and build their lives around love. For many people, love, or the quest to find love, is a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Love is arguably the most overwhelming of all emotions. Many ideals and religions consider the bond of love sacred. But, why do people fall in love? Is romantic love an enigma, or can it be reduced to the presence of certain chemicals and neurotransmitters within the brain at a given time?
Paragraph one intro-What is the origin of this universal feeling known as love? It all starts with the history of love. There really is no marked beginning of this feeling that has no evidence of its existence. It could have begun scientifically with Neanderthals, or even religiously with Adam and Eve-the theories and stories are endless. Some psychiatrists claim it begins with the Oedipal suppression, where the son feels a form of love for their mother just as their daughter would feel the same for their father. As they mature and meet a potential mate who shows similar characteristics to their parents, passionate love forms between them. There is no specific answer as to why any one person falls for a particular type of person, only theories, and approaches. In this essay, we will look at all aspects of love and just what it does to the brain as well as what parts it deactivates, the things you go
Love is said to be one of the most desired things in life. People long for it, search for it, and crave it. It can come in the form of partners, friends, or just simply family. To some, love is something of a necessity in life, where some would rather turn a cold shoulder to it. Love can be the mixture of passion, need, lust, loyalty, and blood. Love can be extraordinary and breathtaking. Love being held so high can also be dangerous. Love can drive people to numerous mad things with it dangerously so full of craze and passion.
However, there are those that contend that love can take a more humanistic path to love as a facet of self-actualization that can comprise caring, cooperation, adaptability, and evolution. This so called path, however, still puts an emphasis on psychological definitions and outcomes that are based on perceptions of perceived happiness, as well as individual needs and wants for happiness. The very notion that love has sociological basis is rooted in the fact this alone can be the basis for conceiving love as a manifestation of a “cooperative principle” which has become increasingly important in evolution (Restivo, 1977). “Sociologists tend to psychologize love by defining it in terms of feelings. [It can be] summarized [that] the sociological literature on love by noting that most definitions of love present it as a strong emotional bond between two people which satisfies their needs to give and to receive happiness. Even when they focus on love as a relationship, sociologists tend to define it as a psychological state of mind that brings happiness. For example, [some sociologist] purposefully limit [their] discussion of love to the interpersonal bond. [They] do not, however, define love in terms of the bond but rather as a ‘pleasurable’ or ‘joyous’ feeling that brings happiness. The prevailing paradigm in the sociology of love is further characterized by an emphasis on the romantic aspects of love often to the point of equating ‘love’ with ‘romantic love’ [the] critique of romantic love is a notable exception. Some sociologists have noted the need to broaden the study of love, and to treat it in more strongly [in] sociological terms. These efforts, however, have been carried out within the boundaries of heterosexual relationships, courtship, and marriage and that this is
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 depending on the individual. A simple action such as a deep look into someone's eyes can start the simulation in the body that an increased production of hand sweat will start. The tingly feeling inside your body is a result of a scientific delineation which makes the concept of love more concretely and more factually mainly for researchers and the wide...
There are four main chemicals in the brain that play roles in compatibility. Dopamine is one of the chemicals, it’s a neurotransmitter and its what stimulates the feeling of pleasure within the body. The second chemical in the brain is serotonin, it’s one of the most important chemicals involved when feeling love. Then there is testosterone and estrogen, they regulate the reproductive system and activate when a person finds someone attractive. Ridge says, “My entire body is battling itself.
Most people would say that love is a concept which will always be a mystery to man, because it is so changeable, and therefore it will always be able to fool and distort man’s thoughts. Love can both be happy and miserable, and this makes it very powerful and therefore able to control the entire behaviour of a person. Throughout a lifetime people will unavoidably experience things that will have a certain impact on the individual’s personality as well as further development. These experiences will often become memories that will follow them their entire life. This is also the case in “Mule Killers”, where a father tells his son about the memories he has of the year his son was conceived and his relationship to his father.
The concept of love is a very ambiguous, controversial, idea that is nearly impossible to come to a singular consensus on. In this essay I will be describing and comparing two philosophical views on the concepts and ideas behind love. Through the works of Todd May and Plato, different approaches to the concept of love will be illustrated as well as determining the similarities and differences between the two perspectives.
Love is a concept that has puzzled humanity for centuries. This attachment of one human being to another, not seen as intensely in other organisms, is something people just cannot wrap their heads around easily. So, in an effort to understand, people write their thoughts down. Stories of love, theories of love, memories of love; they all help us come closer to better knowing this emotional bond. One writer in particular, Sei Shōnagon, explains two types of lovers in her essay "A Lover’s Departure": the good and the bad.
As any romantic will assert, love is by far the most powerful force known to human hearts and minds. This sentiment is espoused throughout history, almost to the point of cliché. Everyone has heard the optimistic statement, “love conquers all,” and The Beatles are certain, however idyllic it may be, that “all you need is love.” Humanity is convinced that love is unique within human emotion, unequalled in its power to both lift the spirit up in throws of ecstasy, and cast it down in utter despair.
Love is arguably the most powerful emotion possessed by mankind; it is the impalpable bond that allows individuals to connect and understand one another. Pure love is directly related to divinity. Without love, happiness and prosperity become unreachable goals. An individual that possesses all the desired superficial objects in the world stands alone without the presence of love. For centuries love has been marveled by all that dare encounter it. Countless books and poems have been transcribed to explain the phenomenon of love, but love surpasses all intellectual explanations and discussions. Love is not a definition, but rather a thought, an idea. This idea, the idea of love, burns inside us all. Instinctually, every soul on Earth is
The Symposium, The Aeneid, and Confessions help demonstrate how the nature of love can be found in several places, whether it is in the mind, the body or the soul. These texts also provide with eye-opening views of love as they adjust our understanding of what love really is. By giving us reformed spectrum of love, one is able to engage in introspective thinking and determine if the things we love are truly worthy of our sentiment.
“A Love like that was a serious illness, an illness form which you can never entirely recover” said Charles Bukowski ,a German born poet. Love can exist in many forms; however, there is one manifestation of love that seems to have fascinated humanity since the dawn of history. This is the love that two people share when they “fall in love”- the love that is now more frequently described as passionate or romantic love. In this sense, love has a special place in human affair. It has always been a universal preoccupation. It may be that lovers’ madness is part of the human condition. The connection between love and states of illness and madness has existed since antiquity. In fact, love is an illness that leads to many psychological and physical disorders.