The Science Of Love Barbara Fredrickson Summary

The Science of Love Within Selections from “Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become”, Barbara Fredrickson puts forth that love is a concept that is less of an abstract concept and actually more physical. Frederickson challenges the notion that love comes from vague ideas, such as “from the heart” or “from the soul,” and instead comes from a more worldly cause. Frederickson studies love under a close look in biological terms, challenging and subverting many common notions about love, such as love being what causes romantic thoughts for others, falling in love is destined to end up with a certain individual, love being forever and lasting, and that love is primarily only between two people. Love is

Many love stories, such as Disney’s Aladdin (1992), end with the couple living “happily ever after.” However, biologically, love is not a constant like media and literature imply. A couple is not experiencing “love” at every moment together. Love, according to Frederickson, “is not lasting. It’s actually far more fleeting than most of us would care to acknowledge” (108). People are not always undergoing a neural coupling with one another. Instead, such moments are always brief and sporadic. Even with a significant other, each partner would not always be in sync with the other. Instead, love occurs within any small moments where two people share positive feelings with each other. In turn with neural coupling, such positive moments briefly raise one’s levels of oxytocin. Higher levels of oxytocin help lower stress and also helps build confidence. With such positive engagements, such brief moments of love between others can help one love oneself. However, oxytocin levels rise and lower on a day-to-day basis, which is why love cannot referred to as an everlasting action. It is instead the micro-moments of positivity that make up love, rather than being an everlasting constant, like most people