Talk:Biology of romantic love

Expanded Triangular Theory of Love
[this is from the discussion page of the triangular theory of love, which I added here for suggestion to include some of what is discussed below to the main article.]

I think the theory should be expanded and renamed to include a fourth column: the symbolism of white, which adds purity, cleanliness, and innocence to love. [paul from va]


 * But if you did that it wouldn't be Sternberg's theory any more. And we are describing Sternberg's theory in this article not trying to create a new theory. Moreover both the intimacy component and the commitment component are pure, clean and innocent -- for instance a pure friendship with no sexual element consists of intimacy (and possibly commitment for a very strong friendship); the innocent love between a parent and a child consists of commitment (and probably intimacy when the child is older -- on second thoughts that may be true for the father but the mother is normally intimate from the outset).


 * I think I know what you mean by "pure" love and "innocent" love but I'm not sure what you mean by "clean" love so unfortunately I can't give an example for that. However I would guess that you mean one that doesn't involve sexual feelings, in which case any form of love which is a combination of intimacy and commitment without passion would fit the bill. -- Derek Ross | Talk 02:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

"But if you did that it wouldn't be Sternberg's theory any more." - Yes, it wouldn't be unless Sternberg wanted to change it. The discussion of what I included may or may not influence this theory (and at most this article) as it is in the future. I didn’t know where as to include it in wikipedia at the least.

I did some matching after reading various abstracts, and there are some points which led me to include white:

First, Myers-Briggs as explained by David Keirsey with its four types: Artisan, Guardian, Idealist and Rational.

Second, the claim that there six universal emotions by Paul Ekman: “Of the six universal emotions, four — anger, fear, disgust and sadness — are negative and only one, joy, is positive. (The sixth, surprise, is neutral.) According to the psychologist Daniel Nettle, author of Happiness, and one of the Royal Institution lecturers, the negative emotions each tell us "something bad has happened" and suggest a different course of action. Fear tells us danger is near, so run away. Anger prompts us to deter aggressors. Sadness warns us to be cautious and save energy, while disgust urges us to avoid contamination.”

Third, Keirsey’s observations (in Please Understand Me II) of how his view (of there being four temperaments) could be complementary with some of the forms of the bible such as: He notes of how there are four authors (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), and in Revelations 6, he notes the four riders with its four different colored horses.

This is how it matches: Negative emotions are not necessarily bad for you, because it can point out that something is or could be wrong. I matched the four negative emotions to the riders by looking at their color. Anger to the red one. Fear to the white one. Disgust to the pale one (I chose gray). Sadness to the black one.

While not currently rigorous, the colors match along these lines: red symbolizes passion, white symbolizes justice, innocence, etc. (I think settling on purity for the purposes of this theory is best for making the theory accessible - also think white terror), black symbolizes commitment (because it is recognized by some that black symbolizes strength, thus a proper long term commitment points to the strength of the conviction of their commitment - also, black symbolizes mourning), gray symbolizes intimacy (like gray hairs on an old couple, also wisdom).

You can mix colors, like pink is a mix of innocence and passion, something attributed to young girls.

So maintaining and or building a love that does not perpetuate fear, and so that it drives out any fear in your partner is why I believe the theory was incomplete.

Notes: Joy breaks down to 24 subcategories, which I believe complements as a subset to each of the four negative emotions.

Gray = Rational, Luke, Man, Intimacy (there is a more extensive matching done by me, email me if you want it)

White = Idealist, John, Eagle, Purity

Red = Artisan, Mark, Lion, Passion

Black = Guardian, Matthew, Oxen, Commitment

Some research notes that the happiest marriages are where two people keep some idealism of one's view of their partner. Perhaps another way to think of that type of research is that they hold very little, if at all, any grudge against their partner.

The general stages of life seems to be like this: The innocence of youth, the passions we become aware of when we start maturing, the commitment of adulthood and the wisdom and reflecting of their lives of old people.

[Paul from VA - zerodvp@gmail.com]


 * This is all very well but it's not the "Triangular theory of love" which is the topic of this article. As to where it should appear in Wikipedia: well, frankly, it looks like original research to me so it probably doesn't belong in Wikipedia at all when viewed as a whole. Parts of it, like the Myers-Briggs stuff and the "six emotions" stuff may be usable in the articles on those topics though. -- Derek Ross | Talk 19:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I read Sternberg's article last month (I'm presently reading his book Cupid's Arrow) and the above discussion doesn’t' sound familiar.--Sadi Carnot 21:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Name Change/Request for expansion and expert attention
The (scientific views) tag in the article title is not really appropriate. The article contains little real scientific data and is more a collection of philosophies, metaphores and analogies which used in this way do not constitute science. A more appropriate title would probably be something like "Love (philosophical views)" Mloren 09:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)


 * According to my count, there are 10 scientists and only three philosphers on the page?--Sadi Carnot 15:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with Mloren here - the only trully scientific bit in the article is the "Attraction and attachment" section which is based on ONE National Geographic article. Now, don't get me wrong, it's a GOOD article, but is there NOTHING else that we can add?  And why is that section (the only relevant one, since the rest feature unscientific, unquantifiable hypotheses, mostly from ages past) burried at the very bottom of the page?  There is nothing in the article on the evolutionary reasons for the existence of love, although the introduction suggests that there is.  There is nothing about the different forms that love takes between different lifeforms (the complex form in humans vs. the very simple form in single-celled organisms).  This whole article is badly in need of a serious expansion or rewrite, and it needs not only a lot more data but also more scientific sources to back it up.  In fact, I think I'm going to add the "expert needed" tag.  We need biologists, biochemists, neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists here, not psychologists and philosophers. --Esn 07:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with Mloren on another thing, too. Most of the sections that now make up the "Theories" page need to either be moved to a new article/articles called "Love (philosophical views)" or "Love (psychological views)", or to a new "History" section on this very page.  Perhaps a bit like how Astronomy has a "History" section (although it probably won't be as big).  Also, we need to get rid of that picture with the red hearts and put up some images that show the chemical processes, as well as perhaps comparisons between different types of organisms.
 * Another option is to split the "biological" and "psychological" theories into separate sections, or even better: move the psychological theories to a new article entirely. Esn 08:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Esn, you will have to wait a long time if actually think an "expert" is going to come over to this page. Writers such as Helen Fisher (anthropologist) or Pepper Schwartz both lay claim to being the world's experts on the topic of love and evolutionary biologists like David Buss, who is famous for writing about the "evolution of desire", may be thought of as an expert, but other than these few people, there are no "experts" on the science of love.  It's not like colleges give out degrees on love science.  Your organizing seems to be helpful though.  If you know of more scientific views please add them.  Adios: --Sadi Carnot 14:15, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Alright, thanks for the info. I'll try to scout other wikipedia articles and see whether there's anything usefull.  The "neurochemistry of bonding" page that you added looks good.  Another likely candidate is Sexual attraction.  Esn 23:49, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Please don't put tags such as expert or expand on talk pages – they only go in article space. Thanks. Krakatoa  Katie  21:57, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

New biological theories section
I added in a paragraph from the main love page that seemed really nice to me, but then I realized something:

That paragraph chemically divides love into three phases: lustful, attraction and attachment. The section that was already there, the National Geographic article, only has the latter two phases. This is a contradiction, though it's probably just a matter of wording. I have the NG article lying around somewhere, so I'll look into it and see what it says. Esn 08:52, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Reasons for initial attraction to a face
There's an interesting link here about what causes initial attraction to someone, based on facial features:. Perhaps this could be incorporated into the article somehow. I'll try to do this in a few days (rather busy at the moment) - meanwhile, I'm posting the link here so that I don't forget it. If someone else wants to do it, feel free. Esn 23:44, 9 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Esn, good work. I printed out that article.  Another good one is Beauty Check; also, the 2002 book Facial Attractiveness - Evolution, Cognitive, and Social Perspectives, by Gillian Rhodes and Leslie A. Zebrowitz is exceptional. Later: --Sadi Carnot 02:49, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Double reference error
Human bonding says the main article is Love (scientific views), while that very article, under Biological Theories/Chemical love: attraction and attachment, says that "Neurochemistry of bonding" -that very part of Human bonding- is the main article.

They are referring to eachother as the main article. I'm posting this on both talk pages, in hope someone can figure it out and clean it up.

Cheers and happy editting!

JackSparrow Ninja 18:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Review
This article was edited by User:Sadi Carnot who has added large amounts of original research and pseudoscience to this and other Wikipedia articles. I'm going to start cleaning this article. --JWSchmidt 15:32, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

The following was moved here from the article for discussion: "From a scientifically testable frame of reference, love is a type of interpersonal relationship where mutual assumption of good faith results in a state of emergence, i.e. constituents individually perceive the group's social evolution as both beneficial and greater than what could be achieved by the sum of the relationship's parts."
 * The above paragraph was added by User:Preston Wescott Sr.. Does it add anything useful to the article? --JWSchmidt (talk) 01:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment Perhaps we just need to spiff it up a little? add cites? Also, since it's the lead paragraph, it ought to begin with the article title, thusly:
 * Love, from a scientifically testable frame of reference, is a type of interpersonal relationship where mutual feelings of good faith result in a state of emergence. Each member perceives the couple's or group's social evolution as both beneficial and greater than the sum of the individual parts.


 * .`^) Paine Ellsworthdiss`cuss (^`.  05:02, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Preston Wescott's paragraph asserts that love is "a state of emergence". We can contrast that with statements such as, "love is one of the three primary brain systems that evolved in avian and mammalian species to direct reproduction" (source) and "love is better characterized as a motivation or goal-oriented state that leads to various specific emotions such as euphoria or anxiety" (source) which have been published by scientists. What does "state of emergence" tell us about love and how would we test it scientifically? --JWSchmidt (talk) 04:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Truly sounds like great material, JW. If it can be expanded below the TOC, then it makes a fine summary for the lead.  I wish I were an expert; however, I do not know enough about emergence to answer your questions.    .`^) Paine Ellsworthdiss`cuss (^`.   05:13, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Basis or effects?
Well, it appears that most of this page is about chemical effects of love, rather than chemical basis... I guess that basis is not appropriate, in the title, correlations or something like would be better.--Popopp (talk) 13:16, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Second Paragraph of Evolutionary Psychology
It either needs to disappear or go through a profound change. Any talk of "mommy and daddy" when discussing ancient humans is simply without biological or anthropological foundations and smacks of religious opinion based pseudo-research.--Tallard (talk) 03:24, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:33, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Chemical basis for love → Biological basis of love – The current title is obviously inappropriate when the material includes neuroanatomy and evolutionary psychology and not just "chemicals". "Chemical" is also not a common scientific word for referring specifically to hormones and neurotransmitters. Chemical substances in the body would for example also include the water in the body. Exactly what the new title should can be discussed, "Biological basis of love" is one suggestion. Miradre  (Talk E-mail) 10:17, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. Well argued in the opening statement above. The proposed title is more accurate: in accord with current theory, and with the content of the article. N oetica Tea? 00:54, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 15 February 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. Number   5  7  12:57, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Biological basis of love → Biological aspects of love – The current title is biased and presupposes an ideological reductionist and biologist view, according to which love can be fully reduced to a biological "basis", love is allegedly "nothing but" some biological processes. Such claims are philosophically highly controversial. The article needs to obey WP:NPOV. rtc (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose, brain is an organ and shaped by genetics, it's a "basis" of why you are able to type that note 76.120.164.90 (talk) 20:22, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose - all cognitive processes have a biological basis - you might have heard of the field that studies that sort of thing: neuropsychology.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢ &#124; Maintained) 21:47, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Sorry, but your arguments are not convincing. It is not even uncontroversial that all cognitive processes have biological aspects, let alone a biological basis. So to claim love has a biological basis is reducing love to biology, which is simply ideological. Love needs at least two persons, so it has social aspects as well. It is ideological to call the one or the other aspect the "basis" of love. I suggest the article should be moved despite the obviously biased oppose arguments, in particular since one of them is not from a registered user. My brain is not a "basis" of why I am able to type that note; it is a mere aspect. Me being able to type that note has certainly as much to do with my education, which, again, is a social aspect. Wikipedia needs to stop being biased towards a reductionist biologism and needs to cover social and other aspects as well. --rtc (talk) 18:18, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

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Wiki Education assignment: PSYC 115 General Psychology
— Assignment last updated by Olefinder (talk) 20:31, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Contribution to "Love and Motivation"
We will update the "Love and Motivation" section of this article by adding more helpful sources into this section. We will also add in any content gaps that are present in this section using the three sources that we found. These changes will include more information not just about romantic love, but also the love we feel for our friends and other non-romantic relationships (with citation from Isern-Mas and Gomila), how love functions as a driving motivator, and finally how love is present in other species as well (with citation from Harlow).

--Pinkpenguin17 (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Moved
I've moved the article per WP:RM and WP:BOLD. This move should be uncontroversial, because romantic love is generally the preferred term in academic material. Adam Bode explains the terminology in these quotes:

"Despite [..] attempts to define and describe romantic love, no single term or definition has been universally adopted in the literature. The psychological literature often uses the terms “romantic love,” “love,” and “passionate love” (e.g., Sternberg and Sternberg, 2019). Seminal work called it “limerence” (Tennov, 1979). The biological literature generally uses the term “romantic love” and has investigated “early stage intense romantic love” (e.g., Xu et al., 2011), “long-term intense romantic love” (e.g., Acevedo et al., 2012), or being “in love” (e.g., Marazziti and Canale, 2004). In this review, what we term “romantic love” encompasses all of these definitions, descriptions, and terms. Romantic love contrasts with “companionate love,” which is felt less intensely, often follows a period of romantic love (Hatfield and Walster, 1985), and merges feelings of intimacy and commitment (Sternberg, 1986)."

Unless indicated otherwise, in this review, “romantic love” refers to the state that usually occurs in the early stages of a romantic relationship (i.e., early-stage romantic love) and not long-term romantic love (see Acevedo and Aron, 2009; O’Leary et al., 2011; Acevedo et al., 2012 for explanation of long-term romantic love). Romantic love is sometimes referred to as “passionate love,” in the field of psychology (Feybesse and Hatfield, 2019). I use the term “romantic love” because that tends to be the name conferred in the fields of biology (see Bode and Kushnick, 2021; Bode and Kowal, 2022). Romantic love precedes companionate love (see Hatfield and Walster, 1985), which is the love felt less intensely among individuals in an established pair bond. It tends to last up to about 2-to-3 years and is characteristic of the early stages of a romantic relationship (see Tennov, 1979; Marazziti et al., 1999; Marazziti and Canale, 2004; Emanuele et al., 2006). It is evolutionarily, mechanistically, and psychologically distinct from attachment. 

ShiveryPeaks (talk) 23:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC) ShiveryPeaks (talk) 23:54, 23 May 2024 (UTC)