Elizabeth Svoboda, the author of “Scents and Sensibility” develops her claim that true happiness in love is based on scent by supporting her opinions with a scientific experiment and its results as well as identifiable and relatable facts. In the cleverly-named article, Svoboda describes the highlights of a study in which women were asked to identify the “attractiveness” of a multitude of T-shirts worn by several different men. After outlining the basis of the study, Svoboda states the profound results, including how “far more than often would predict, the women preferred the smell of T-shirts worn by men who were immunologically dissimilar to them” and that “the smell of their favorite T-shirts also [suggested] that MHC (major histocompatibility
For years, I have been told that Lillian Handlan Lemp, better known as the Lavender Lady is one of the many ghosts of the Lemp Mansion. I had no reason to doubt this until I learned that Lillian never lived in the Lemp Mansion. When Lillian was married to William Lemp Jr, they lived in the in a penthouse on top of the Chase Park Plaza. After finding this out, I had to ask myself; “Why would the Lavender Lady haunt the Lemp Mansion if she never lived there?” I could only come to one conclusion, she doesn’t. If there is no reason, then the ghost everyone claims to see in the Lavender Suite cannot be the restless spirit of Lillian Handlan Lemp. I know this may be hard for some to accept, since so many psychics, paranormal investigators, and television shows have identified the ghost on the second floor as the Lavender Lady, but I still find it very hard to believe Lillian would haunt a home in which they never lived in. Lillian actually died in her apartment on Park Avenue in 1960.
Since the beginning of time, our ancestors have made sacrifices for the next generation that brought us to where we are today. This idea is woven throughout the book Krik? Krak! Where the author, Edwidge Danticat, portrays fictional short stories people that live in the impoverished nation of Haiti, and how hard it is for families to stay together, provide for each other, and reach their goals of freedom. Danticat uses the motif of generations to illustrate the ideas of hope and survival to develop the theme of sacrifice for a better future of the youth.
When Divakaruni moved to the United States, tried to abandon the smells of her childhood in favor of acculturation. She realized this is a mistake when she has a child of her own. She eventually comes to appreciate the smells’ abilities to comfort, give joy, and motivate. One smell in particular she told about is how the smell of iodine reminded her that “love sometimes hurts while it’s doing its job.” In rearing her own offspring, she intentionally tried to replicate the “smell technique” with her own twist in hopes that her children reap similar benefits. One example is how she filled the house with the aroma of spices and sang American and Indian tunes with her
know beauty in any form”(86). We are so conditioned to see female beauty as what men
Toufexis focuses mainly on the idea and evolution of love. The talks about the concept of love from a different more scientific perspective. She talks about how love affects individuals and the statistics of romance and love in marriage and relationships. She illustrates that love is actually just chemicals in our bodies that dictate how men and women feel, simplifying the concept so that the reader can fully understand the purpose of her writing.
Vasopressin has long been implicated in the memory of faces and is thus useful for research on recall and recognition of faces. Because of the role vasopressin plays in relationships, it is important to consider its value in affecting romantic relationships and perception of romantic partner's faces. In a study by Thompson and colleagues (2004) researchers looked at how vasopressin administration affects responses to happy, angry and neutral faces in terms of attention, and arousal and physiological measures like corrugator supercilii electromyograms (EMG), heart rate and skin conductance (Thompson, Gupta, Miller, Mills, & Orr, 2004). This was based on previous experiments with the effect of oxytocin on facial perception. Neutral faces were found to elicit higher responses in the EMG. They argued that because the faces were ambiguous having been taken from Paul Ekman's series of faces, vasopressin may have lead participants to view those neutral faces in a more aggressive way causing that increased EMG response. This study demonstrates that there is a link between vasopressin and facial recognition responses and further studies have added on to this. In a follow up study in 2006, they looked at vasopressin effects on perception of friendliness for both men and women on pictures of same sex faces. They found that the results of vasopressin depended on the gender as women were friendlier when presented with same sex faces (Thompson, George, Walton, Orr, & Benson, 2006). Interestingly, they did not repeat the study to see the effect of vasopressin between both sexes seeing opposite sex pictures. In men, however, the familiarity of the romantic partner when combined with insecurity would decrease the per...
When he first begins to appreciate male beauty, he develops an affinity for blood and death. This association may ...
Newitz, Annalee. “Love Unlimited.” New Scientist 191.2559 (2006): 44-47. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 13 July 2011.
In the next 5 pages, we will discuss how to understand and distinguish attraction. Before doing that, we must establish what exactly attraction is. Attraction is defined as the action or power of evoking interest, pleasure, or liking for someone or something. (source) However, that definition can be interpreted in different ways. While feelings of attraction may open the door for the possibility of a relationship, they don’t guarantee that one will develop. Attraction can be broken down into different categories: rewards, proximity, reciprocity, similarity, and barriers. We will discuss each of those individually in the coming paragraphs. We will also discuss the things that men and women find most attractive in the opposite sex.
The character of the Wife of Bath in Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Prologue is a strong woman who knows what she wants from life. She is ahead of her time, seeing that women who portrayed themselves the way she does were not necessarily looked positively upon. In this sense, I believe that the Wife of Bath is a feminist. When I use the word feminist I do not mean bra-burning, men hating feminist. I mean a woman who is in touch with herself. She is her own genre when it comes to feminism. She is comfortable with her sexuality and what she wants from life. Through Chaucer, she is viewed as a promiscuous; however, she is actually in control of her sexual adventures.
Bateson (198-233) states that the basic biological perspective is that all human behavior is biogenetic at its foundation. Thus, people form relationships and marry with those who are perceived as best for the survival of one’s genes. Following this line of thinking, men are attracted to women who signal fertility and women are attracted to men who signal not only fertility but the ability to care for a family. More specifically, there is a neurobiological structure that enables attachment bonding in a manner that motivates reproduction and with it a sense of security, anxiety reduction, and ability to cope. This bonding mechanism, developed in the earliest of years, guides a person throughout life. Thus, the creation and maintenance of a loving marital relationship arises out of and is reinforced by biological wiring involved in forming attachment bonds from the earliest to t...
We expect the passionate love of fairy tales to lead to “happily ever after” in the institution of marriage, and when this fails, we move on and try it again. But, the idea that marriage should be based on love rather than upon social and economic concerns is a relatively recent practice in human history (para4-7). While the romantic marriage ideal doesn’t fit with tradition, biological evidence is mounting against it as well. Biochemists are discovering that love and lust have hormonal causes, and their evidence suggests that our biological makeup predisposes us to seek the excitement of short-term relationships (para8-9). Despite all the difficulties, we spend a lot of the time analyzing the elements of relationships in order to preserve or perhaps reinvent marriage. We clearly want to make it work (para10-12). Because confining passionate love to the institution of marriage hasn’t worked very well, Graham ends by suggesting that we ought to revise our model for human relationships
Love begets love. It is universally known that humans long for the feeling of love. However, what humans perceive as love might not be what love actually is. Many people believe love to be either physical or emotional, but it is never seen biological or physiological. Barbara Fredrickson, however, argues in her article “Selections from Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do and Become” that people are looking at love with a closed view. Fredrickson explains how the system of love is divided in three sections, the brain, oxytocin, and the vagus nerve. Each plays a special part in making a human what they are emotionally and physically. All of these also play
Greater Minds Ltd. “Are You An Eternal Romantic? Discover The Law Of Attraction Relationships And Love”. The Law of Attraction. n.p. 2013-2014. Web. 3 April 2014.
When a person is attracted to someone, the hypothalamus is triggered by certain electrical signals in order to instigate the production of the neurotransmitter phenylethylamine. As a result, phenylethylamine will stimulate the release of greater amounts of norepinephrine and dopamine, which leads to a low level of serotonin (Kaufman, sec. 2). Dr. Helen Fisher, a leading expert on the chemistry of human attraction, theorizes that sentiments due to romantic love are connected with the elevated amounts of dopamine and norepinephrine, and the decline in the levels of serotonin in the brain (sec.