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Biological sciences such as evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience have begun to explore the nature and function of love. Specific chemical substances such as oxytocin are studied in the context of their roles in producing human experiences and behaviors that are associated with love.
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Psychologists have created many descriptive theories of love in an effort to understand the full range of experiences and behaviors associated with love. For example, much human behavioral research and research with non-human primates has centered on the importance of parental love for the development of good mental health in infants.Developing a Sense of Safety: The Neurobiology of Neonatal Attachment by R. M. Sullivan in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2003) Volume 1008 pages 122–131. Romantic love between adults is important in the context of human reproduction.Human sexual behavior by Philip Feldman and Malcolm MacCulloch. Published by John Wiley & Sons. 1980. ISBN:4712767669. Sociological surveys indicate that romantic love is a universal phenomenon of all human cultures."A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love" by W. R. Jankowiak and E. F. Fischer in Ethnology (1992) Volume 31 pages 149–155.
Biological approaches tend to treat love as a brain-generated physiological process like hunger or thirst."Love: an emergent property of the mammalian autonomic nervous system" by S. W. Porges in Psychoneuroendocrinology (1998) Volume 23 pages 837-861. PMID 9924740. The physiology of love is studied in relation to the actions of neurochemicals and hormones (such as oxytocin) and it is suspected that some chemicals might act as human pheromones. Modern brain scanning techniques such as MRI can be used to explore which brain regions are involved in the experiences and behaviors associated with love.
Descriptions of experiences and behaviors associated with love provide a foundation for practical daily living and more detailed scientific analysis of the physiological brain mechanisms that produce those experiences and behaviors.
Limerence is a term, coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov, which characterizes a "state of love" personified by a blending of passion, intrusive thinking, longing, uncertainty, and hope.Love and Limerence: the Experience of Being in Love by Dorothy Tennov. Publisher: Stein and Day (1979) ISBN 0-8128-6134-5 The concept of limerence stems from Tennov’s research, beginning in the mid 60s, in which she interviewed, questioned, and surveyed over 500 people on the topic of romantic love.
In 1980, abnormal sexology researcher John Money developed the concept of lovemaps, defined as a set of love attachment predispositions, i.e. neurological love templates, developed or acquired through association in early youth. Lovemaps help to explain why people like what they like sexuoerotically, such as necrophilia, coprophilia, or masochism, etc. According to Money, a lovemap is "a developmental representation or template in the mind and in the brain depicting the idealized lover and the idealized program of sexuoerotic activity projected in imagery or actually engaged in with that lover." Although the concept of "lovemaps" originally focused on atypical love, it has since been referenced in discussions on typical love.
In 1986 psychologist Robert Sternberg published his famous triangular theory of love in Psychological Review, which postulated a geometric interpretation of love. According to the triangular theory, love has three components:"A triangular theory of love" by R. J. Sternberg in Psychological Review (1986) Volume 93 pages 119-135.
The “amount” of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of these three components; the “kind” of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other. The three components, pictorially labeled on the vertices of a triangle, interact with each other and with the actions they produce and with the actions that produce them so as to form seven different kinds of love experiences:
| intimacy | passion | commitment | |
| Liking or friendship | |||
| Infatuation or limerence | |||
| Empty love | |||
| Romantic love | |||
| Companionate love | |||
| Fatuous love | |||
| Consummate love |
The size of the triangle functions to represent the amount of love - the bigger the triangle the greater the love. The shape of the triangle functions to represent the kind of love, which typically varies over the course of the relationship: passion-stage (right-shifted triangle), intimacy-stage (apex-triangle), commitment-stage (left-shifted triangle), typically. Of the seven varieties of love, consummate love is theorized to be that love associated with the “perfect couple”. Typically, couples will continue to have great sex fifteen years or more into the relationship, they can not imagine themselves happy over the long term with anyone else, they weather their few storms gracefully, and each delight in the relationship with each other."Cupid\'s Arrow - the Course of Love through Time" by Robert Sternberg. Publisher: Cambridge University Press (1998) ISBN 0-521-47893-6
Susan Hendrick and Clyde Hendrick developed a Love Attitude Scale"A relationship-specific version of the Love Attitude Scale" by C. Hendrick and S.S. Hendrick in Journal of Social Behavior and Personality (1990) Volume 5 pages 239-254. based on John Alan Lee\'s theory called Love styles. Lee identified six basic theories that people use in their interpersonal relationships:
The Hendricks found men tend to be more ludic and manic, whereas women tend to be storgic and pragmatic. Relationships based on similar love styles were found to last longer.
In 1992, anthropologist Helen Fisher, in her ground-breaking book the Anatomy of Love,"Anatomy of Love – a Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray" by Helen Fisher.Publisher: Ballantine Books. (1994)ISBN 9780449908976 postulated three main phases of love:
Generally love will start off in the lust phase, strong in passion but weak in the other elements. The primary motivator at this stage is the basic sexual instinct. Appearance, smells, and other similar factors play a decisive role in screening potential mates. However, as time passes on, the other elements may grow and passion may shrink — this depends upon the individual. So what starts as infatuation or empty love may well develop into one of the fuller types of love. At the attraction stage the person concentrates their affection on a single mate and fidelity becomes important.
Likewise, when a person has known a loved one for a long time, they develop a deeper attachment to their partner. According to current scientific understanding of love, this transition from the attraction to the attachment phase usually happens in about 30 months. After that time, the passion fades, changing love from consummate to companionate, or from romantic love to liking.
Similarly, according to psychologist many see love as being a combination of companionate love and passionate love. Passionate love is intense longing, and is often accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness of breath, rapid heart rate). Companionate love is affection and a feeling of intimacy not accompanied by physiological arousal.
Swans forming a heart, a common symbol for love; scientists have recently begun to study the chemistry of pair bonding in animals as models for human bonding.
From the perspective of evolutionary psychology the experiences and behaviors associated with love can be investigated in terms of how they have been shaped by human evolution."Evolutionary psychology: the emperor\'s new paradigm" by D. J. Buller in Trends Cogn. Sci. (2005) Volume 9 pages 277-283. For example, it has been suggested that human language has been selected during evolution as a type of "mating signal" that allows potential mates to judge reproductive fitness.The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffrey F. Miller in Psycoloquy (2001) 12,#8. Miller described evolutionary psychology as a starting place for further research: "Cognitive neuroscience could try to localize courtship adaptations in the brain. Most importantly, we need much better observations concerning real-life human courtship, including the measurable aspects of courtship that influence mate choice, the reproductive (or at least sexual) consequences of individual variation in those aspects, and the social-cognitive and emotional mechanisms of falling in love." Since Darwin\'s time there have been similar speculations about the evolution of human interest in music also as a potential signaling system for attracting and judging the fitness of potential mates.Evolution of human music through sexual selection by G. F. Miller in N. L. Wallin, B. Merker, & S. Brown (Eds.), The origins of music, MIT Press, (2000). pp. 329-360. It has been suggested that the human capacity to experience love has been evolved as a signal to potential mates that the partner will be a good parent and be likely to help pass genes to future generations.Sexual selection and mate choice in evolutionary psychology by C. Haufe in Biology and Philosophy doi:10.1007/s10539-007-9071-0
Studies in neuroscience have involved chemicals that are present in the brain and might be involved when people experience love. These chemicals include: nerve growth factorwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16289361, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin."The neurobiology of love" by S. Zeki in FEBS Lett. (2007) Volume 581 pages 2575-2579. PMID 17531984 Adequate brain levels of testosterone seem important for both human male and female sexual behavior.The endocrinology of sexual arousal by J. Bancroft in Journal of Endocrinology (2005) Volume 186 pages 411-427. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are more commonly found during the attraction phase of a relationship.[citation needed] Oxytocin, and vasopressin seemed to be more closely linked to long term bonding and relationships characterized by strong attachments.
In the February 2006 issue of National Geographic, Lauren Slater\'s cover page article "Love: The Chemical Reaction" discusses love and the chemicals responsible. In it Slater explains some of the research in the area. The conventional view in biology is that there are two major drives in love — sexual attraction and attachment. Attachment between adults is presumed to work on the same principles that lead an infant to become attached to his or her mother or father.
According to Slater\'s research, the chemicals triggered responsible for passionate love and long-term attachment love seem to be more particular to the activities in which both participate rather than to the nature of the specific people involved. Chemically, the serotonin effects of being in love have a similar chemical appearance to obsessive-compulsive disorder; which could explain why a person in love cannot think of anyone else."Aphrodisiacs past and present: a historical review" by P. Sandroni in Clin. Auton. Res. (2001) Volume 11 pages 303-307 For this reason some assert that being on a SSRI and other antidepressants, which treat OCD, impede one\'s ability to fall in love. One particular case:
The long-term attachment felt after the initial "in love" passionate phase of the relationship ends is related to oxytocin, a chemical released after orgasm.Carmichael MS, Humbert R, Dixen J, Palmisano G, Greenleaf W, Davidson JM. (1987) Plasma oxytocin increases in the human sexual response. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 64:27-31 PMID 3782434 Moreover, novelty triggers attraction. Thus, nerve-racking activities like riding a roller coaster are good on dates. Even working out for several minutes can make one more attracted to other people on account of increased heart rate and other physiological responses.
Brain scanning techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging have been used to investigate brain regions that seem to be involved in producing the human experience of love.Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated With Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love by Arthur Aron1, Helen Fisher, Debra J. Mashek, Greg Strong, Haifang Li and Lucy L. Brown in Journal of Neurophysiology (2005) Volume 94, pages 327-337.
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