What is love

Introduction

The concept of love has been explored extensively across various disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, and sociology. Despite its universal presence in human experience, love remains a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. This synthesis aims to present key insights from multiple research papers to provide a cohesive understanding of what love is.

Key Insights

Love as a Basic Emotion:
- Love is argued to be a basic emotion, similar to anger, sadness, happiness, and fear. It can be divided into momentary surge love, which is a basic emotion, and relational love, which involves a bond and includes other emotions like distress and anxiety.
Love as a Physiological Motivation:
- Love is considered a physiological motivation, akin to hunger, thirst, sleep, or sex. It is essential for human survival, particularly in childhood, and has long-lasting consequences on human development.
Triangular Theory of Love:
- Love consists of three components: intimacy (feelings of closeness), passion (drives leading to romance and sexual attraction), and decision/commitment (short-term decision to love and long-term commitment to maintain that love). The interaction of these components determines the type and strength of love experienced.
Romantic Love and Cognitive Processes:
- Romantic love is linked to subcortical-cortical reward, motivation, and emotion systems in the brain. It acts as a goal-directed drive that enhances cognitive behavior, such as improved performance in tasks when subliminally exposed to a beloved's name.
Evolutionary, Neural, and Hormonal Characteristics:
- Romantic love is characterized by extreme euphoria, passion, and intimacy. It has distinct evolutionary, neural, and hormonal profiles that differentiate it from other love-related processes like attraction and attachment.
Love as Sensory Stimulation:
- Love can be defined as the desired sensory stimulation, ranging from abstract cognitive forms to direct sensory experiences. Deprivation of love can lead to compensatory sensory stimulation, manifesting as psychosomatic illness.
Mature vs. Immature Love:
- Mature love supports marriage and family life, characterized by an environment that fosters growth and development for all involved. Immature love includes constructs like limerence, love addiction, and infatuation, often influenced by cultural beliefs.

Conclusion

Love is a multifaceted phenomenon that can be understood from various perspectives. It can be seen as a basic emotion, a physiological motivation essential for survival, or a complex interplay of intimacy, passion, and commitment. Romantic love, in particular, has distinct cognitive, neural, and hormonal characteristics that set it apart from other forms of love. Understanding love in its various forms and dimensions can provide deeper insights into its role in human relationships and well-being.

Summary

Introduction

Key Insights

Conclusion

Sources and full results

Is love a "basic" emotion?

Love should be considered a basic emotion, like anger, sadness, happiness, and fear, and can be further divided into momentary surge love and relational love, which are linked to attachment, caregiving, and sex.

Measurement of romantic love.

A social-psychological construct of romantic love, encompassing affiliative, dependent need, predisposition to help, and exclusiveness and absorption, was developed and validated in a college dating couples study.

Love is a physiological motivation (like hunger, thirst, sleep or sex).

Love should be understood as a physiological motivation, essential for human survival and development, rather than an emotion, which could lead to better understanding of mental illness and cultural phenomena.

A triangular theory of love.

The triangular theory of love explains how intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment interact to form different types of loving experiences and explains various empirical findings in close relationships.

LOVE AS SENSORY STIMULATION: PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF ITS DEPRIVATION AND EXPRESSION

Love, as sensory stimulation, has physiological consequences, including psychosomatic illness and neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying sexual response and orgasm.

What is this thing called love? Defining the love that supports marriage and family

Mature love supports marriage and family life by creating an environment for growth and development, promoting satisfaction and well-being in relationships.

The power of love on the human brain

Romantic love, like passion, enhances cognitive performance in women by presenting their beloved's name during a lexical decision task.

The Science of Romantic Love: Distinct Evolutionary, Neural, and Hormonal Characteristics

Romantic love is a distinct psychological state with distinct evolutionary, neural, and hormonal characteristics, and can be experienced under specific conditions without physical contact.

A Theory of Love in the Contemporary World

Love is a powerful and deep emotion that can be experienced in various relationships and objects, and can be viewed as a feeling of benevolence and closeness between people.

Romantic Love: A Literary Universal?

Romantic love is a universal experience, characterized by a strong desire for union with someone unique, idealization, constant thinking about that person, and changes in priorities.

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