February 19, 2015 • 43 mins
Does love at first sight really exist? And is it biological or cultural? Stuff to Blow Your Mind explores this split-second phenomenon.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie
Douglas and we're coming off of Valentine's Day here, but
the war still sort of continuing. Um. We rolled through
(00:25):
five or six topics on Valentine, the issues from the
science of lingerie to uh to what happens in a
passionate kiss, to the color pink. The color pink and
what it's hiding. Yeah, and it's hiding hiding quite a
bit as we explored. But today we're gonna we're gonna
really tackle the final piece of the puzzle and and
(00:45):
one of the big tropes about romantic love, love at
first sight. Yes, I saw him from across the room.
He looked at me. I looked at him. Sparks flew
were married just hours later. Is that your story? But
you know that's a big Hollywood trope, you know, like
(01:06):
the you're in a bar, you're somewhere across the room
and uh, you know you lock eyes. Time stands still, Yes, yes,
you're outside of time all of a sudden. Um. And
that's not to say that love at first sight couldn't exist.
I suppose there's a possibility, but in some ways, today's
episode is a bit of a trojan horse, like we're saying, hey,
(01:28):
just love it, first sight exists. But really, what's inside
that trojan horse is this idea that when you do
walk eyes, there's a kind of autobiography of things going
on to that leading up to that moment that are
influencing the way that you're even locking eyes with that
person and assessing them, and that there's probably a lot
(01:48):
more going on than just this instant, palpable chemistry. Indeed,
now I think it's probably a good good point in
the podcast to just sort of establish our own take
on this. Going into it, I definitely thought might take
changed a bit and exploring the information. But where where
were you on the idea of love at first sight
(02:10):
prior to this research? Well, I always feel like this
is just a case of semantics like love, lust, intrigue, interest,
you know, these are all sorts of things that come
up when you're in a room and there are strangers,
and there's always an excitement when you do lock eyes
with someone that you feel like you have a connection with.
So for me, I've never thought of it as like
(02:31):
this sort of you know, you just got swept off
your feet and you locked eyes thing. Okay, Yeah, I
feel like for my part, it's definitely a trope that
I always kind of looked down on a bit. And
maybe even if I was feeling a bit hot on
the topic, I would say that the idea of love
at first sight cheapens love and and and yeah, just
(02:52):
kind of cheapens that the real sustained love that one
has that you build over time. You know. It's kind
of like saying, hey took me ten years to paint.
Look at this painting I did, and then someone said, hey,
yeah I just learned to paint and I made a masterpiece.
You know, No, you didn't make a masterpiece like the
thing that I've been building all this time. Like this
is surely more substantial to than this, you know, brief
(03:15):
look at a bar and yeah, there there's some things
to that. It is. Yeah, that's the thing about it.
Like now, having looked at the research which we're going
to discuss in earnest here, Uh, you know, I I
have to give a little more credence to the idea
or at least the experience of love at first sight.
I'm not saying I'm at this point, I'm no longer
going to say you were not feeling love at first sight.
(03:35):
All right, you were feeling something. And if you want
to classify his love at first sight, it could have
been something and it bloomed into love. Is that what
I'm getting from you? Yeah? Yeah, okay, all right, Well,
before we kind of go into the different aspects of this,
I just wanted to roll out some statistics. There's a
two thousand Gallop poll that found that while so many
Americans believe that there is such a thing as the
(03:57):
one true love, overall, only of people think love could
occur at first glance. And here's the interesting thing about this. Um,
if you break this down by gendercent of men think
that there's love at first sight compared to women. It's
(04:18):
a slight uptick, but it's an uptick. Nonetheless, it seems significant.
I mean especially you know, if you're standing outside of
the figures, one might one might be tempted to expect
the female percentage to be higher. You know, well, I
think that would be the stereotype. Women just can't help
(04:38):
love and love, right, But um, maybe it's a situation
of the stereotype exists, and men are more likely to
buy into the stereotype, and women of course know that,
having the brain of women know that it's not quite
so cut and dry. I don't know. I just don't
even know now, A Lea Malik Pines. A psychologist Ben
(04:59):
Gearing on your university in Israel, found in a survey
that a small fraction eleven percent of people in long
term relationships said that they began their courtships with love
at first sight. So that's that is pretty small, and
that's just that area. And and particularly there's a sort
of cultural lens to you that we're looking at things
(05:21):
when we talk about love at first sight. But still
there are some people who say that's that's how my
relationship began and begun. Is key here because as we're
going to discuss a lot of this falls into the
into an exploration of the timeline of romantic attachment, the
timeline of say, any successful or doomed relationship, however you
want to look at it and how it transpires and
(05:43):
then how we look back at it. Yeah, and timeline
is important. I'm glad that you brought that up to you, because, um,
when we talk about love at first sight. Again, it's
a case of semantics, because if you look at someone's work,
like biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, she might say, Okay, that
could be of at first sight a couple of seconds
up to maybe three minutes, depending on what's going on
(06:04):
in the brain and how primed the brain is. And this,
this is where we really need to turn to you know,
some good old m r Eyes and take a look
into the brain to figure out what's going on. Indeed,
so let's go back to that sort of the bar trope, right,
Like what's happening when person a in person be suddenly
locked glances and there's that magical moment and the music
(06:25):
starts up. It could be it could be some music,
but essentially what's happening is your your your eyes are
locking on, but your brain is locking on to a target.
It's like it's like a scene in Top Gun right
where the you're you're trying to lock the missiles before
you fire the heat seeking missile at the enemy. MiG right, um,
Except when our brains do this, we're sucking away from
(06:51):
other faculties. Were sucking away Environmental stimuli are processing of time.
We're using some of the same parts of the brain
that are also involved in time and perception. So it
begins to it feels like time is standing still. It
feels like everything else is sort of fading, uh into
the periphery, because it sort of is from from just
a computational side of things. Yeah, especially if you consider
(07:15):
what is going on with the chemistry in the brain.
Because as I had mentioned before, you're in the room
full of people who are strangers, there's already an element
of intrigue. You lock those eyes, and maybe when you
do that, that triggers the release of dopamine in the
brain's reward system, which in turn may motivate you to
approach that person. Because if we've learned anything about dopamine
(07:38):
in the reward system, we know that, um, there's kind
of bread crumb trail being made here, and the more
you can revisit it and get more things of that dopamine, well,
the happier your reward system is. So hey, why not
go and then talk to that person and see if
you can increase the dopamine in your brain. Yeah, all
under the dress of elation, passion and this and this
(08:00):
cultural idea of romantic love, right, Yeah, and that's kind
of what is setting the stage for your brain for
this idea of love. Because if you look at this
meta analysis study, it's called the Neuroimaging of Love and
it was conducted by Syracuse University's professor Stephanie Ortiga. It
found that when people are engaged in this sense of love, um,
(08:22):
that there are twelve areas of the brain that work
together to release euphoria inducing chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline,
and that's oppressing and then that's what is culminating to
express that feeling of love. And according to this meta analysis,
this can happen as early as point two seconds of
(08:45):
visual contact. All right, so you're locking in on target
and you can can even think of the dopamine kicking
in the various other alk hormones were mentioning. It's kind
of the the ignition behind the heat seeking missile, like
go out there, go to the next stage, right. Um.
And it's also interesting in this study they pointed out
(09:05):
that these euphoria inducing drugs that are suggesting love, Um,
it's akin to using cocaine. Yeah, And uh, that's what's
interesting about this. There's, uh, this idea that newly found
love sparks in areas of the brain that are associated
with euphoria inducing drugs. So that's that's that feeling of cocaine.
(09:29):
And also, just as a side note, this is why
when new love crashes like you know and and burns,
um and you are with drawing from that person, withdrawing
from you, you feel that sense like you're withdrawing from
a drug because no longer is that source available to you.
You're coming off of your fix and you're gonna need
(09:49):
another fix. It also draws back to our previous episode
that we did I Believe on the Dark Side of
sarahtonin um. So, any of these chemicals, you know, even
though we talk about like the love hormone and the
fuel good neurotransmitter, etcetera, like these are that the brain
is a complex system. In various parts of the brain,
various neuro transmitters are are pulling at least a double duty.
(10:10):
And so there even though there's there is a positive
spin on any of these interactions, there's also a potential
negative one. Indeed, um No, again, you just have to
kind of look at it as this again, this idea
of you know, split second love or love at first
sight is perhaps more like there's some chemistry going on
in the brain that is setting this stage for love.
(10:31):
And Helen Fisher again, she is that biological anthropologist, and
her ted talk called the brain and love. She says,
there are now three academic articles in which they've looked
at this attraction which may only last for a second,
but it's a definite attraction in either the same brain region,
this reward system or the chemicals of that reward system
are involved. In fact, she says, I think animal attraction
(10:54):
can be instant. You can see an elephant instantly go
for another elephant. And I think that this is really
the origin of what you and I call love at
first sight. Yeah, we're talking about animal favoritism here. Um
mate choice, female choice, sexual choice instantly. What comes to
my mind is just like two beatles dancing around each
other on a tree limb. And then ultimately you can
(11:17):
say that any human interaction, with its levels of human complexity,
is essentially the same thing. It's that little dance to
see if these two pieces are gonna lock up. Yeah,
in some ways it's kind of thin slicing, right, assessing
the situation. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break,
and when we get back, we're gonna talk about imprinting.
But we're not going to talk about Twilight, the movie
(11:38):
and imprinting. We promise. Alright, we're back. I know you
just promised we weren't going to talk about Twilight. But
of course you're referring to the the imprinting that occurs
when a werewolf sees a half vampire baby also love
(12:00):
with it. Just to clarify for anyone out there, it
was like, I don't know what they're talking about Twilight,
but and the same thing happens in humans. Well, no,
it's a little bit more complicated. Um in Printing refers
to a really critical period of early time in an
animal life when it forms an attachment and develops a
concept of its own identity. So birds and mammals are
(12:21):
born with the pre programmed drive to imprint on their mother.
And this sort of imprinting provides animals with information about, hey,
this is my mom, or this person or thing or
animal is really important to me, And later on this
can determine who they will find attractive when they reach
adulthood or who they pair up with. And there are
(12:43):
a couple of studies that actually support this in humans
and in other animals. Yeah. I mean we're ultimately talking
about a predisposition to fixate on particular types of people.
You know, the exact parameters are obviously going to vary
a lot. It might relate to race, like you said,
hair color, um, But ultimately it's kind of aiding a
rough template of what you're supposed to look for. Yeah,
(13:05):
And just so you have an idea of how easy
it is to imprint in the animal world. Um. I
wanted to bring up the example of Austrian naturalists Conrad Lawrenz,
who became the first to sort of um codify this
right and established the science behind imprinting. And he found
that when baby birds emerged from their eggs, they'd imprint
on whatever animated thing was in front of them. And
(13:28):
so he tested this out. He himself became the thing
that they imprinted upon, and they followed him around and um,
he became the object of their affection. And then he
also would put in other mother's substitutes. And he found
that those birds would just as easily attached to inanimate
(13:49):
objects and oddities such as a pair of gum boots.
Oh yes, this is the guy you would you see
the images even treking around in the boots, Yes, a
white ball and even an electric train. I Again, this
is if it was presented at the right time when
they were emerging and trying to figure out something to
focus on into again, harness their energy into figuring out
(14:13):
what was important, who was important, and who they were. Yeah,
I mean from a biological standpoint, like life is essentially
a matter of scaling this mountainous survival to fulfill your
genetic mission, you have to reach the top of it,
and imprinting is sort of a way of finding those
first hand and footholds as you make the ascent. Yeah.
(14:33):
Now in humans, it's, uh, it's perhaps not as clear cut,
but there are a couple of studies. There's a two
thousand three study called sexual imprinting and Human mate choice.
In this uh that the abstract actually says, quote, we
report that homogammy in humans is attained partly bi sexual
imprinting on the opposite sex part parent during childhood. We
(14:56):
hypothesize that children's fashion a mental model of their opposite
sex parents phenotype that is used as a template for
acquiring mates to phenotype meaning like the physical characteristics, and
that it goes on in this abstract to say, to
disentangle the effects of phenotypic matching and sexual imprinting, adopted
(15:17):
daughters in their rearing families were examined. Judges found significant
resemblance on facial traits between daughters husbands and their adopted fathers. Furthermore,
this effect may be modified by the quality of the
father daughter relationship during childhood. Daughters who received more emotional
support from their adoptive father were more likely to choose
(15:38):
mates similar to the father than those whose father provided
a less positive emotional atmosphere. And this, to me feels
like one of those adoy moments because you see this
alive classic Oh I married my mother, I married my father,
and also just the myth of the of Oedipus marrying
your mother murdering your father. It's it's kind of funny
(16:01):
because as we'll look at the next section here on
gene um compatibility or genetic compatibility, it's a fine line here.
You want someone who's similar enough and the traits that
you admire and a parent, because hey, your parent was
attracted to that parent and had successful offspring, the same
thing could happen for you, right, But you want enough
(16:22):
genetic diversity to strengthen any offspring that you might have. Yes,
And if I can just return to the Top Gun analogy,
it's it's identifying the any plane, there's a certain type
of plane you need to shoot down. Yeah, poor Goose.
I have theories about Goose. I really wanted to see
a sequel to Top Gun where Goose lived and was
(16:43):
reprogrammed by the Soviets the Battle matter that that would
have been a movie that I really could have wanted
to have seen. Uh oh, well, you never know. Maybe
there'll be some sort of reboot, maybe maybe by Robert
liam Alright, But in terms of genetic compatibility, again, we
can look at the animal world. There's a study from
(17:05):
April two thou and nine, the issue of the journal Genetic,
in which researchers from Cornell University found that female fruit
flies are biologically primed to sense which males are more
genetically compatible with them and to make more eggs after
mating with good matches than they do with less compatible matches.
And so these findings suggest that the females can somehow
(17:28):
judge a potential mate upon their first meeting and then
biologically react to boost the chances of producing against successful offsprings. So,
and we bring this up because we want to kind
of say that whole love at first sight thing isn't
just okay, you locked eyes and um, this person kind
of has these traits that you admire. There's other stuff
(17:50):
going on to Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going
on underneath the surface. Um. And with the fruit fly situation,
like a lot of that is also related to avoiding
hooking up with a close relative, which obviously is genetically speaking,
not a wise move for for any organism. Uh. But
then the human crossover for this is is pretty spectacular.
(18:13):
Now with the fruit flies, I mean a lot of
this is as simple as programming to keep one fruit
fly from mating with a close relative and you know,
and stirring up the genetic ramifications of that. But then
when we when we look at how this plays out
in the human sphere, we see, uh, we see a
lot more complexity. Um, depending how complex you want to
(18:35):
to to make sniffing one another person's sweat or you know,
engaging in a makeout session with them. Yeah, again, that's
just it's complex biochemistry and the fruit flies are exhibiting
the us and humans we have seen in studies exhibit
this when they sniff the sweaty armpits of T shirts
worn by the opposite sex. Again, this is like sort
of gender normed studies that we're talking about here. But
(18:58):
the idea is that women were more uh more likely
to select a mate with someone who had a far
different genetic expression than their own, because again, you need
genetic diversity that's going to uh, that's going to result
in stronger offspring, and that again as part of the
whole genetic mission of of any organism. Um. So, so
(19:19):
we begin to have this picture emerging of it's it's
like multiple scans are going on, you know, kind of
rowbody computer re star trek scans almost if you want
to use that analogy, and and then you almost have
different departments that are reporting back on how things are
matching up, like all right, does she look like our mother? Yep,
it looks like our mother. Right, we're gonna go on that.
(19:40):
And then you have the other the other department, and
they're like, all right, well, we're making some sense of
the genetic combatibility here. Um, we're taking in the smells,
we may have to take in some of the saliva
as well. And we're gonna see what the test results
there are. So so they're they're they're kind of these
different it's almost like trying to get legislation passed or something. Yeah,
you're right in if you think about it that way,
(20:01):
that locking eyes across the room. Alright, dopamine all right, now,
go inch forward and meet the person to get more dopamine. Now,
further assess and then yes, at the end of the night,
there might be the swapping of the spit to further
assess whether or not you're compatible. And in our mind
it's all playing out like like like like a French
romance movie, but but under the surface, it's it's a
(20:23):
lot more complex, weating outgoing. Yeah, and there's another element
here that is pushing the needle a bit when we
talk about this love at first sight, and it's called
a sort of mating. And we already know that people
tend to gravitate towards each other based on their shared
socio economic and education backgrounds. Right, So if you ever
(20:45):
heard the phrase, uh, birds of a feather fly together, Yes, Yeah,
it's sort of like this, like you're seeking out someone
who is like you, and we know that we're doing
this even when we're not trying to go after some
sort of relationship, we just tend to do, you know,
with each other. When when we're connecting with one another. Yeah,
(21:05):
I mean people you can have conversations with about the
things that matter to you. Do you end up engaging
with people that are kind of from the same background
or have similar interests. Well, it turns out that there
may even be a body fat component to a sort
of mating. There's a two thousand and seven study in
which the researchers, who are based at Rout Research Institute
(21:26):
in the University of Aberdeen, measured the body composition of
forty two couples using a sophisticated technique called dual energy
X ray absorbed geometry, and the results show that the
amount of body fat in one person was proportionately very
similar to that of their partners. And so there's this
idea that not only do we try to find similarities
(21:49):
and our you know, socio economic backgrounds and what our
taste and music are, but maybe even the shapes of
our bodies. Yeah. Now that the study point out that
it's it's unclear though, exactly how these associations come about.
I mean, do the social activities of of overweight and
obese people just merely conside to the you know that
(22:11):
the social activities of active runners, they just happened to concide.
You met this person while you were engaging in similar
activities that have an impact on your physical fitness or
you know, or vice versa. So we're just more likely
to meet people that have a similar body index. Yeah,
and I kind of feel like across the board, obviously
you don't see this. I mean, you see plenty of
(22:32):
examples of couples who don't match up in terms of
body type or body fat. Yeah, I mean I think
it was Paula Abduel that that pointed out that opposites attract, right,
that was the big track. Yes, it was Paula Abduel.
But as we've discussed before, opposite they do attract. But
can you still have to have enough there in common
(22:53):
in order to make that whole dynamic work. So again,
it kind of comes back to this idea of multiple
m committees weighing in. And so one committee might say
they're a lot shorter than we are, I'm not sure
this is gonna match up, And they'll say, well, but
look at the stats on the genetic compatibility, look at
the stats on whether she looks like our mother. All
these things are looking good. So we're gonna we're gonna
(23:13):
maybe pass on worrying about high her body mass index
in this case. Yeah. A lot of this dates back
to nine seventy study from social psychotist K. Reuben where
to a college student couples gave him me to each
of them a survey asking questions about the relationship, and
then put them in a room measured their gaze uh
and uh. And what he found was you saw stronger
(23:34):
connections of love or at least reported love on the questionnaires,
matching up with more prolonged eye contact. So the more
and again this is another one of those that sounds
pretty obvious. It seems like an overstatement of the obvious
when we we spell it out like this, But the
idea that if you're making more eye contact between these couples,
there's more love present, stronger connection. I also wanted to
(23:55):
mention that just the bear gaze, when you're you're looking
out across the room at someone, um, if you're giving
a really direct gaze, um, and that person is perceiving
that already. The fact that you're like, you're trying to
get that person's attention, is going to ratchet up your
attractiveness one notch. It's kind of like this mutual admiration society, right,
(24:18):
So if you both are kind of like baseline attracted
to each other and you notice that you're looking at
each other, there's that oh you're looking at me, I
must be attractive to you, and so on and so forth. Now,
this is again one of those adoin moments. But if
you smile, that's going to give even more, you know,
(24:39):
the confirmation that, yes, you should pursue this. If you
do not smile, of course, this is going to tell
the person that you're not interested unless you look away
and don't smile. There's something to this, like you maybe
catch eyes, you look away and you're not smiling, you're
being a little bit mysterious about loose and this was
(25:00):
This was actually proven out in a two thousand six
study from the Institute of Neuroscience Psychology at the University
of Glasgow in case anyone just really wanted some some
hard science to back up back that up. You know.
It also reminds me of a story that a friend
of mine told me, and that maybe some people can
relate to. So, my wife a couple of friends. They
were traveling on a subway in New York and one
(25:23):
of the friends in this group has this, uh like
when she feels nervous, she smiles. And so they were
leaving like a restaurant or something, and like some guy
was interested and she wasn't interested, but she was kind
of like nervous, so she made eye contact and smiled,
and like the dude ended up following them on the
(25:44):
train for like a long portion of their leg back
to where they were staying, to the point where they
had to like stop him and say, look, we just
need to go on because she's just just a nervous
tick with her. Well, also there is um, I'm sure
that simint arts stuff Mom never told you has probably
covered this before too. There's a cultural expectation that women
(26:05):
should smile back. Yeah. I was thinking about that, um,
because there's the whole the word one of the one
of the worst, well, one of the many bad things
you can say to a female say hey, honey, why
don't you smile more? Right? Right? Coming from maybe like
older gentlemen at a fruit stand or something, right, yeah,
(26:26):
or you get stuff like you'd look a lot prettier
if you're smiling, and then you just want to punch
the person. Yeah, because its matching up with the state.
It's kind of like they're saying, I would want to
mate with you more if you would smile for me.
Now that's horrible, right, do my bidding right now. I
don't know you, but right now I want you to smile. Uh.
But yeah, So that again as part of those those
(26:47):
unconscious um communications that were throwing at each other all
the time. Now, Cheryl Murphy, writing for Scientific American, looks
at the gaze and smiling in a little bit more
deaf and she reports that in one study, Kellerman at
All took seventy two unacquainted undergraduate students and they split
(27:09):
them into male female pairs and then studied the effects
that two minutes of uninterrupted mutual eye contact had on
their feelings towards one another. And in their study they
found that if the two strangers gazed into each other's
eyes for those two minutes, they later reported that they
had increased feelings a passionate love and affection towards the
(27:30):
other person. And then another phase of the experiment had
the pairs of students interact in other ways, like looking
at the partner's hands or counting blinks of their partner,
but it was mutual eye contact that best fanned the
flames of attraction. I feel like we've discussed this in
terms of working and collaborating in our modern age as well,
(27:54):
like just at a very basic level, and I think
most people can relate to this, like having that eye
contact with the people you work with or even you know, family, etcetera.
Like that makes all the difference in your in your
ability to sort of rain in how you're supposed to
be feeling about any given situation. Well, it's very powerful.
And I think we talked about this before. We were
(28:15):
talking about performance artists and Maria Abramovich. Yes, maybe that's
where this came out. Yeah, she she had um the
uh performance. I think it was at MoMA in New York.
So the artist is president, the artist is present. There's
a great documentary on it, and people would just sit
across from her, I think for about eight minutes uninterrupted,
(28:36):
just gazing at each other. And people were going bananas
over this. They were crying, I mean they were it
was almost like they were having these mystical or even
ecstatic experiences just by being looked at by someone. Indeed,
because you wonder, like you know, I mean if you
just self the valuate like how much time in our
(28:57):
day goes by without any significant eye contact going on.
And this is kind of an artificial environment for us
to be discussing this because we have to make a
lot of eye contact during the recording of the podcast,
and yeah, we look away. I mean, like you and
I don't like just pull on like staring each other
the entire times. That would just be so weird if
I was doing that, you know, that would be very intense.
I feel like there's a timer in my head. So
(29:19):
it's like I make eye contact with with anybody, not
just shoot, um, we'll basically anybody except like you know,
my wife or my child, um or maybe a cat.
I don't know. Uh, there's like a tim or going off.
It's like, all right, that's enough eye contact. You have
to look away because if you don't, too much sustained
eye contact is maybe sending too much of a crazy
vibe or something. I actually have an egg timer icon
(29:41):
that I said, Yeah, well that's a good that's a
good method. I need. I need a more solid method
than sort of trying to figure out how much time
has passed in my head. You can borrow mine. All right,
we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back,
we're going to talk about the gaze a bit more
and the difference between the love and lust gaze. Continuing
(30:05):
to explore the question does love at first sight exist
or more to the point, what is the thing that
exists that we tend to classify as love at first sight? Yeah,
And Helen Fisher gives I think an interesting um answer
to why this might exist in the first place. And
of course she's coming at it from an evolutionary angle,
(30:27):
and she's co author of the study reward, motivation and
emotion systems associated with early stage intense romantic love. And
then she again again looks at these, uh, this sort
of constellation of neural systems involved with the feeling of love,
and her idea is that we're marshaling these resources really
quickly and efficiently because it could be a mating shortcut.
(30:51):
She says, quote, even love at first sight is a
basic mammalian response that developed and other animals and our
ancestors inherited this in order to speed up the mating process.
So if you think about it, our ancestors did not
have much dot com at their disposal, and they only
had you know, maybe thirty or forty years of a
(31:12):
lifespan in the first place, So there wasn't a lot
of like this is gonna be my my first marriage
sort of talk. Yeah. So, as as as Fisher and
Uh and her co researchers pointed out in that study, Um,
we're talking about early stage, intense romantic love, and we're
associating that with sub quartal reward regions, all this rich
(31:35):
with dopamine, as we discussed, and we see that romantic
love engaged his brain systems associated with the motivation to
acquire a reward. Yeah. She says about romantic love, it
enables you to focus your mating energy on just one
at a time, conserve your mating energy, and start the
mating process with this single individual. And she said, I
(31:55):
think of all the poetry that I've read about romantic love.
What sums it up us is something that is said
by Plato over two thousand years ago. He said, the
god of Love lives in a state of need. It
is a need, it is an urge, It is a
homeo state static imbalance, like hunger and thirst, it's almost
impossible to stamp out. Yeah, I mean we call it
(32:16):
love sickness for a reason. You feel love sick it's
I mean you begin to almost really bodily suffer out
of this longing. Yeah. And if anyone who's ever been
a teenager and had any sort of love interest knows
what that feels like, right, you can kind of feel
that in the pit of your stomach right now. Um. Now,
there are some who, may you know, say, look, this
(32:38):
is all very well, and perhaps we are neurally put
together to quickly identify feelings of love. However, maybe this
framing of it has more to do with the fallacy
of memory. Yes, as we've discussed in a few different
podcast episodes, our memories are not these solid, fixed items.
(33:01):
They're not little stone sculpture stored away in a drawer.
If anything, they are clay sculptures stored away in a drawer.
And every time we get a memory out of that drawer,
it's susceptible to change. We we put our we we
project our present onto these little fragments of our past,
and then reform our past and reform our present. In
doing so yeah, and when you do that, you're strengthening
(33:23):
those neural connections, right. So that's why, Um, sometimes people
feel very like, yes, I know this happened exactly the
way I think it happened, because they've taken that memory
out over and over again and revisited it, and so
they can quickly get to it and there's this certainty
that they feel because of these neural connections, when in fact,
there is a lot of fallacy and memory. And we've
(33:45):
talked about this before. Uh. Donna Joe Bridge, a postdoctoral
fellow and Medical Social Sciences and a co author of
the study on how the brain refrains the past to
fit the present, says quote, when you think back to
when you met your current partner, you may recall this
feeling of love and euphoria, but you may be projecting
your current feelings back to the original encounter with this person. Yeah.
(34:09):
I mean, our lives are experienced in a in a
sort of storytelling way. We we create a story, we
are the center of our story, and uh, and and
we are constantly tweaking the narrative even though we don't
realize it. Yeah, And that's what I think is interesting
about that moment that across the room you lock eyes,
and there's this idea that all these disparate elements of
(34:34):
your autobio biographical past may coalesce in this person. In
other words, this sort of spreadsheet of what you find
interesting in another person, this person might check off some
of those boxes and it might feel like, ah, this
is the one. And if that is successful, if you
see that relationship through then through the power of narrative
(34:57):
and the way that we reef framar experiences, then all
of a sudden that becomes yes, it was love at
first sight, even though maybe it was just intrigue. Yeah.
I mean, for the most part, you're you're probably going
to be more likely to to skew positive on your
reframing of your personal story. I mean, for the most part,
(35:17):
we want to live a happy narrative life. So you're
gonna you're gonna tweak at your I mean, we all
experienced this every every day. I feel like I do.
It's like I'll think back on something in the past,
past experience, past something I did, maybe something I miss
but don't get to do anymore, and then I have
to questions like, well that I really was it really
all positive? Or were there some negatives in there that
(35:37):
I'm kind of omitting in my in my current narrative.
You know, there was, um recently a study that came out,
and my apologies because I don't have the name of
the study in front of me, but basically it was
a study of ten different languages from twenty four different
types of media like literature and Twitter and so on
and so forth, and they had hundreds of billions of
(35:59):
war words and they went through this painstaking process of
trying to figure out this sort of qualitative narrative here
is there a sort of more positive words or less
positive words that we use? And there does seem to
be this positive skew to language. No matter what language
(36:20):
they were looking at, people were using more positive terms.
And so the idea there is that you're you're trying
to survive, and storytelling a narrative is like a very
basic way in which we do survive. And so overwhelmingly
the message becomes it's going to be okay, you know,
like you're gonna survive, You're gonna get through this. And
(36:40):
so it's no wonder that when we revisit our past
histories we do the same thing unconsciously we're shaping them
in a more positive light. Yeah, and indeed, I don't
think there's any anything wrong with that. I mean, I
guess sometimes I maybe if I'm going to engage with
the idea of something like love at first, not on
a scientific level, but onlike I just sort of a
(37:02):
loftier level. Yeah, I can think of it maybe in
terms of the present reaching back through the past, you know,
because because ultimately our experience of time is more or
less an illusion. If you look at everything as a constant,
you can say, well, there's not really a timeline of
my relationship with the person I love. It's a constant.
(37:23):
And so there's ultimately nothing wrong with applying the emotions
and the and the importance that builds up over time,
applying that back to the beginning, because ultimately it's you know,
we're not talking about a timeline, We're talking about a
a constant, singular thing. Hey, this is this is personal history, right,
(37:43):
So we already know that rescuing stuff in terms of
what's realistic and what's sort of made up, fairland fun
stuff that we like to throw in our personal narratives. Now,
when we get back to though, that that idea of
the gays and how this all first coalesced and happen
to all these things unconsciously bubbling beneath um. There is
(38:05):
a way that we can kind of do some eye
tracking to figure out whether or not that first moment
has more to do with love or lust. Yes, and
and again this is another one of those studies that
might seem like an outrageous overstatement of the obvious fact
up by by science. But uh, but yeah, there's there's
the lustful gaze, and there is a more or less
(38:25):
loving gaze, and we probably have some pretty firm ideas
in our mind about what those gazes look like like.
The lustful gaze is a cartoon coyote with bulging out
and its tongue lolling, and maybe it's it's going like
that's the one. Yeah, So there's that, And then there's
the more loving lost in your your your potential lover's
(38:47):
eye just kind of look, I'm lost in love and
I don't know. I don't know that one. I don't
know either. That's in my head, but I do not
know the artist, all right, So of course there's a
report All the Loves and the Gaze published in psychological
science male and female students from the University of Geneva.
They viewed a series of black and white photographs of
(39:08):
people they had never met. And in the first experiment,
participants looked at photos of young heterosexual couples interacting with
each other. Now and the second experiment, participants looked at
photos of the opposite sex. Then they were asked too
quickly identify the photos as either eliciting a feeling of
romantic love or sexual desire. Now the whole time, of course,
there was eye tracking software looking at what was happening,
(39:32):
and for both men and women. The software reveal that
when participants reported feelings of a romantic love, they tended
to dwell upon the face, which makes sense right then
eyes and but when they felt lusty, well their their
their gaze went south, and that makes sense, right. But
(39:53):
I also can't help but pick it this, especially with
all the information we've just gone through, and say, is
there really that much difference between the two if you
really start looking under the hood of of all that's
going on. When when these two when individual a and
individual be lock eyes for the first time, or you know,
or one looks at the other ones. But what however
(40:14):
it ends up going down. I mean, ultimately, is there
is there that much difference between the two, Like there's
just an exchange of stimuli, there's a there's an initial
gazing and uh and scanning of the other organism to
see if there's compatibility. I agree, I think there's a
whole like tail wagging the dog element. Yeah, I mean,
because you can just boil it down to this person
(40:37):
is feeling lovey and giving the love gaze because they're
genetically inclined to mate and produce offspring and then die
and uh. And meanwhile, the lusty individual is is, you know,
fantasizing about getting this person back to their apartment because
their genetic programming says that they need to mate with somebody,
produce offspring and then die, right, And then you know,
(40:57):
eventually that works out or it doesn't, you know, it
turns into love or I mean, you know it does
It sort of doesn't matter, right. But to me this
is interesting because it once again unpacks this idea that
are unconscious and our experiences, our autobiography, every moment is
(41:18):
influencing the decisions that we make and our perceptions. So
it's lovely to say that you know. Ah, yes, I
saw him and it was love at first sight, but
there's so much more going on underneath that. Also, I
wanted to mention in terms of really obvious studies and
information that I think all of us probably know on
(41:40):
some level. There was recently one about the best way
to caress someone's cheek, like there their face. Apparently it's
moderate pressure moving at one per second up or down.
I don't recall with knuckles or fingers, I know, I
think fingers, knuckles, I don't know, I don't know. Kind
(42:02):
of like that, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, well that's
kind of nice too. I was just striking my face
with my knuckles in case you guys are wondering what
the heck is going on? All right, So there you
have it now. If you want to check out more
about this topic, be sure to check out stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. I'll make sure that the
landing page for this episode includes links to related contents
and just some of that other Valentine's Day Lovey Debbie
(42:24):
stuff about Laingderie, wearing rats and uh and the microbiology
of a kiss um. All of that will be on there,
so as well as some links out to some of
these outside sources we've talked about, such as that that
Ted Talk and you can also check out our videos
are blog post and uh you know links out to
our very social media accounts so you can follow us
wherever you tend to hang out, and we would love
(42:44):
to hear from you. Guys. Does this information change your
ideas of your experiences of love and perhaps even love
it first sight? Let us know. You can email us
below the mind at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie
Douglas and we're coming off of Valentine's Day here, but
the war still sort of continuing. Um. We rolled through
(00:25):
five or six topics on Valentine, the issues from the
science of lingerie to uh to what happens in a
passionate kiss, to the color pink. The color pink and
what it's hiding. Yeah, and it's hiding hiding quite a
bit as we explored. But today we're gonna we're gonna
really tackle the final piece of the puzzle and and
(00:45):
one of the big tropes about romantic love, love at
first sight. Yes, I saw him from across the room.
He looked at me. I looked at him. Sparks flew
were married just hours later. Is that your story? But
you know that's a big Hollywood trope, you know, like
(01:06):
the you're in a bar, you're somewhere across the room
and uh, you know you lock eyes. Time stands still, Yes, yes,
you're outside of time all of a sudden. Um. And
that's not to say that love at first sight couldn't exist.
I suppose there's a possibility, but in some ways, today's
episode is a bit of a trojan horse, like we're saying, hey,
(01:28):
just love it, first sight exists. But really, what's inside
that trojan horse is this idea that when you do
walk eyes, there's a kind of autobiography of things going
on to that leading up to that moment that are
influencing the way that you're even locking eyes with that
person and assessing them, and that there's probably a lot
(01:48):
more going on than just this instant, palpable chemistry. Indeed,
now I think it's probably a good good point in
the podcast to just sort of establish our own take
on this. Going into it, I definitely thought might take
changed a bit and exploring the information. But where where
were you on the idea of love at first sight
(02:10):
prior to this research? Well, I always feel like this
is just a case of semantics like love, lust, intrigue, interest,
you know, these are all sorts of things that come
up when you're in a room and there are strangers,
and there's always an excitement when you do lock eyes
with someone that you feel like you have a connection with.
So for me, I've never thought of it as like
(02:31):
this sort of you know, you just got swept off
your feet and you locked eyes thing. Okay, Yeah, I
feel like for my part, it's definitely a trope that
I always kind of looked down on a bit. And
maybe even if I was feeling a bit hot on
the topic, I would say that the idea of love
at first sight cheapens love and and and yeah, just
(02:52):
kind of cheapens that the real sustained love that one
has that you build over time. You know. It's kind
of like saying, hey took me ten years to paint.
Look at this painting I did, and then someone said, hey,
yeah I just learned to paint and I made a masterpiece.
You know, No, you didn't make a masterpiece like the
thing that I've been building all this time. Like this
is surely more substantial to than this, you know, brief
(03:15):
look at a bar and yeah, there there's some things
to that. It is. Yeah, that's the thing about it.
Like now, having looked at the research which we're going
to discuss in earnest here, Uh, you know, I I
have to give a little more credence to the idea
or at least the experience of love at first sight.
I'm not saying I'm at this point, I'm no longer
going to say you were not feeling love at first sight.
(03:35):
All right, you were feeling something. And if you want
to classify his love at first sight, it could have
been something and it bloomed into love. Is that what
I'm getting from you? Yeah? Yeah, okay, all right, Well,
before we kind of go into the different aspects of this,
I just wanted to roll out some statistics. There's a
two thousand Gallop poll that found that while so many
Americans believe that there is such a thing as the
(03:57):
one true love, overall, only of people think love could
occur at first glance. And here's the interesting thing about this. Um,
if you break this down by gendercent of men think
that there's love at first sight compared to women. It's
(04:18):
a slight uptick, but it's an uptick. Nonetheless, it seems significant.
I mean especially you know, if you're standing outside of
the figures, one might one might be tempted to expect
the female percentage to be higher. You know, well, I
think that would be the stereotype. Women just can't help
(04:38):
love and love, right, But um, maybe it's a situation
of the stereotype exists, and men are more likely to
buy into the stereotype, and women of course know that,
having the brain of women know that it's not quite
so cut and dry. I don't know. I just don't
even know now, A Lea Malik Pines. A psychologist Ben
(04:59):
Gearing on your university in Israel, found in a survey
that a small fraction eleven percent of people in long
term relationships said that they began their courtships with love
at first sight. So that's that is pretty small, and
that's just that area. And and particularly there's a sort
of cultural lens to you that we're looking at things
(05:21):
when we talk about love at first sight. But still
there are some people who say that's that's how my
relationship began and begun. Is key here because as we're
going to discuss a lot of this falls into the
into an exploration of the timeline of romantic attachment, the
timeline of say, any successful or doomed relationship, however you
want to look at it and how it transpires and
(05:43):
then how we look back at it. Yeah, and timeline
is important. I'm glad that you brought that up to you, because, um,
when we talk about love at first sight. Again, it's
a case of semantics, because if you look at someone's work,
like biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, she might say, Okay, that
could be of at first sight a couple of seconds
up to maybe three minutes, depending on what's going on
(06:04):
in the brain and how primed the brain is. And this,
this is where we really need to turn to you know,
some good old m r Eyes and take a look
into the brain to figure out what's going on. Indeed,
so let's go back to that sort of the bar trope, right,
Like what's happening when person a in person be suddenly
locked glances and there's that magical moment and the music
(06:25):
starts up. It could be it could be some music,
but essentially what's happening is your your your eyes are
locking on, but your brain is locking on to a target.
It's like it's like a scene in Top Gun right
where the you're you're trying to lock the missiles before
you fire the heat seeking missile at the enemy. MiG right, um,
Except when our brains do this, we're sucking away from
(06:51):
other faculties. Were sucking away Environmental stimuli are processing of time.
We're using some of the same parts of the brain
that are also involved in time and perception. So it
begins to it feels like time is standing still. It
feels like everything else is sort of fading, uh into
the periphery, because it sort of is from from just
a computational side of things. Yeah, especially if you consider
(07:15):
what is going on with the chemistry in the brain.
Because as I had mentioned before, you're in the room
full of people who are strangers, there's already an element
of intrigue. You lock those eyes, and maybe when you
do that, that triggers the release of dopamine in the
brain's reward system, which in turn may motivate you to
approach that person. Because if we've learned anything about dopamine
(07:38):
in the reward system, we know that, um, there's kind
of bread crumb trail being made here, and the more
you can revisit it and get more things of that dopamine, well,
the happier your reward system is. So hey, why not
go and then talk to that person and see if
you can increase the dopamine in your brain. Yeah, all
under the dress of elation, passion and this and this
(08:00):
cultural idea of romantic love, right, Yeah, and that's kind
of what is setting the stage for your brain for
this idea of love. Because if you look at this
meta analysis study, it's called the Neuroimaging of Love and
it was conducted by Syracuse University's professor Stephanie Ortiga. It
found that when people are engaged in this sense of love, um,
(08:22):
that there are twelve areas of the brain that work
together to release euphoria inducing chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline,
and that's oppressing and then that's what is culminating to
express that feeling of love. And according to this meta analysis,
this can happen as early as point two seconds of
(08:45):
visual contact. All right, so you're locking in on target
and you can can even think of the dopamine kicking
in the various other alk hormones were mentioning. It's kind
of the the ignition behind the heat seeking missile, like
go out there, go to the next stage, right. Um.
And it's also interesting in this study they pointed out
(09:05):
that these euphoria inducing drugs that are suggesting love, Um,
it's akin to using cocaine. Yeah, And uh, that's what's
interesting about this. There's, uh, this idea that newly found
love sparks in areas of the brain that are associated
with euphoria inducing drugs. So that's that's that feeling of cocaine.
(09:29):
And also, just as a side note, this is why
when new love crashes like you know and and burns,
um and you are with drawing from that person, withdrawing
from you, you feel that sense like you're withdrawing from
a drug because no longer is that source available to you.
You're coming off of your fix and you're gonna need
(09:49):
another fix. It also draws back to our previous episode
that we did I Believe on the Dark Side of
sarahtonin um. So, any of these chemicals, you know, even
though we talk about like the love hormone and the
fuel good neurotransmitter, etcetera, like these are that the brain
is a complex system. In various parts of the brain,
various neuro transmitters are are pulling at least a double duty.
(10:10):
And so there even though there's there is a positive
spin on any of these interactions, there's also a potential
negative one. Indeed, um No, again, you just have to
kind of look at it as this again, this idea
of you know, split second love or love at first
sight is perhaps more like there's some chemistry going on
in the brain that is setting this stage for love.
(10:31):
And Helen Fisher again, she is that biological anthropologist, and
her ted talk called the brain and love. She says,
there are now three academic articles in which they've looked
at this attraction which may only last for a second,
but it's a definite attraction in either the same brain region,
this reward system or the chemicals of that reward system
are involved. In fact, she says, I think animal attraction
(10:54):
can be instant. You can see an elephant instantly go
for another elephant. And I think that this is really
the origin of what you and I call love at
first sight. Yeah, we're talking about animal favoritism here. Um
mate choice, female choice, sexual choice instantly. What comes to
my mind is just like two beatles dancing around each
other on a tree limb. And then ultimately you can
(11:17):
say that any human interaction, with its levels of human complexity,
is essentially the same thing. It's that little dance to
see if these two pieces are gonna lock up. Yeah,
in some ways it's kind of thin slicing, right, assessing
the situation. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break,
and when we get back, we're gonna talk about imprinting.
But we're not going to talk about Twilight, the movie
(11:38):
and imprinting. We promise. Alright, we're back. I know you
just promised we weren't going to talk about Twilight. But
of course you're referring to the the imprinting that occurs
when a werewolf sees a half vampire baby also love
(12:00):
with it. Just to clarify for anyone out there, it
was like, I don't know what they're talking about Twilight,
but and the same thing happens in humans. Well, no,
it's a little bit more complicated. Um in Printing refers
to a really critical period of early time in an
animal life when it forms an attachment and develops a
concept of its own identity. So birds and mammals are
(12:21):
born with the pre programmed drive to imprint on their mother.
And this sort of imprinting provides animals with information about, hey,
this is my mom, or this person or thing or
animal is really important to me, And later on this
can determine who they will find attractive when they reach
adulthood or who they pair up with. And there are
(12:43):
a couple of studies that actually support this in humans
and in other animals. Yeah. I mean we're ultimately talking
about a predisposition to fixate on particular types of people.
You know, the exact parameters are obviously going to vary
a lot. It might relate to race, like you said,
hair color, um, But ultimately it's kind of aiding a
rough template of what you're supposed to look for. Yeah,
(13:05):
And just so you have an idea of how easy
it is to imprint in the animal world. Um. I
wanted to bring up the example of Austrian naturalists Conrad Lawrenz,
who became the first to sort of um codify this
right and established the science behind imprinting. And he found
that when baby birds emerged from their eggs, they'd imprint
on whatever animated thing was in front of them. And
(13:28):
so he tested this out. He himself became the thing
that they imprinted upon, and they followed him around and um,
he became the object of their affection. And then he
also would put in other mother's substitutes. And he found
that those birds would just as easily attached to inanimate
(13:49):
objects and oddities such as a pair of gum boots.
Oh yes, this is the guy you would you see
the images even treking around in the boots, Yes, a
white ball and even an electric train. I Again, this
is if it was presented at the right time when
they were emerging and trying to figure out something to
focus on into again, harness their energy into figuring out
(14:13):
what was important, who was important, and who they were. Yeah,
I mean from a biological standpoint, like life is essentially
a matter of scaling this mountainous survival to fulfill your
genetic mission, you have to reach the top of it,
and imprinting is sort of a way of finding those
first hand and footholds as you make the ascent. Yeah.
(14:33):
Now in humans, it's, uh, it's perhaps not as clear cut,
but there are a couple of studies. There's a two
thousand three study called sexual imprinting and Human mate choice.
In this uh that the abstract actually says, quote, we
report that homogammy in humans is attained partly bi sexual
imprinting on the opposite sex part parent during childhood. We
(14:56):
hypothesize that children's fashion a mental model of their opposite
sex parents phenotype that is used as a template for
acquiring mates to phenotype meaning like the physical characteristics, and
that it goes on in this abstract to say, to
disentangle the effects of phenotypic matching and sexual imprinting, adopted
(15:17):
daughters in their rearing families were examined. Judges found significant
resemblance on facial traits between daughters husbands and their adopted fathers. Furthermore,
this effect may be modified by the quality of the
father daughter relationship during childhood. Daughters who received more emotional
support from their adoptive father were more likely to choose
(15:38):
mates similar to the father than those whose father provided
a less positive emotional atmosphere. And this, to me feels
like one of those adoy moments because you see this
alive classic Oh I married my mother, I married my father,
and also just the myth of the of Oedipus marrying
your mother murdering your father. It's it's kind of funny
(16:01):
because as we'll look at the next section here on
gene um compatibility or genetic compatibility, it's a fine line here.
You want someone who's similar enough and the traits that
you admire and a parent, because hey, your parent was
attracted to that parent and had successful offspring, the same
thing could happen for you, right, But you want enough
(16:22):
genetic diversity to strengthen any offspring that you might have. Yes,
And if I can just return to the Top Gun analogy,
it's it's identifying the any plane, there's a certain type
of plane you need to shoot down. Yeah, poor Goose.
I have theories about Goose. I really wanted to see
a sequel to Top Gun where Goose lived and was
(16:43):
reprogrammed by the Soviets the Battle matter that that would
have been a movie that I really could have wanted
to have seen. Uh oh, well, you never know. Maybe
there'll be some sort of reboot, maybe maybe by Robert
liam Alright, But in terms of genetic compatibility, again, we
can look at the animal world. There's a study from
(17:05):
April two thou and nine, the issue of the journal Genetic,
in which researchers from Cornell University found that female fruit
flies are biologically primed to sense which males are more
genetically compatible with them and to make more eggs after
mating with good matches than they do with less compatible matches.
And so these findings suggest that the females can somehow
(17:28):
judge a potential mate upon their first meeting and then
biologically react to boost the chances of producing against successful offsprings. So,
and we bring this up because we want to kind
of say that whole love at first sight thing isn't
just okay, you locked eyes and um, this person kind
of has these traits that you admire. There's other stuff
(17:50):
going on to Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going
on underneath the surface. Um. And with the fruit fly situation,
like a lot of that is also related to avoiding
hooking up with a close relative, which obviously is genetically speaking,
not a wise move for for any organism. Uh. But
then the human crossover for this is is pretty spectacular.
(18:13):
Now with the fruit flies, I mean a lot of
this is as simple as programming to keep one fruit
fly from mating with a close relative and you know,
and stirring up the genetic ramifications of that. But then
when we when we look at how this plays out
in the human sphere, we see, uh, we see a
lot more complexity. Um, depending how complex you want to
(18:35):
to to make sniffing one another person's sweat or you know,
engaging in a makeout session with them. Yeah, again, that's
just it's complex biochemistry and the fruit flies are exhibiting
the us and humans we have seen in studies exhibit
this when they sniff the sweaty armpits of T shirts
worn by the opposite sex. Again, this is like sort
of gender normed studies that we're talking about here. But
(18:58):
the idea is that women were more uh more likely
to select a mate with someone who had a far
different genetic expression than their own, because again, you need
genetic diversity that's going to uh, that's going to result
in stronger offspring, and that again as part of the
whole genetic mission of of any organism. Um. So, so
(19:19):
we begin to have this picture emerging of it's it's
like multiple scans are going on, you know, kind of
rowbody computer re star trek scans almost if you want
to use that analogy, and and then you almost have
different departments that are reporting back on how things are
matching up, like all right, does she look like our mother? Yep,
it looks like our mother. Right, we're gonna go on that.
(19:40):
And then you have the other the other department, and
they're like, all right, well, we're making some sense of
the genetic combatibility here. Um, we're taking in the smells,
we may have to take in some of the saliva
as well. And we're gonna see what the test results
there are. So so they're they're they're kind of these
different it's almost like trying to get legislation passed or something. Yeah,
you're right in if you think about it that way,
(20:01):
that locking eyes across the room. Alright, dopamine all right, now,
go inch forward and meet the person to get more dopamine. Now,
further assess and then yes, at the end of the night,
there might be the swapping of the spit to further
assess whether or not you're compatible. And in our mind
it's all playing out like like like like a French
romance movie, but but under the surface, it's it's a
(20:23):
lot more complex, weating outgoing. Yeah, and there's another element
here that is pushing the needle a bit when we
talk about this love at first sight, and it's called
a sort of mating. And we already know that people
tend to gravitate towards each other based on their shared
socio economic and education backgrounds. Right, So if you ever
(20:45):
heard the phrase, uh, birds of a feather fly together, Yes, Yeah,
it's sort of like this, like you're seeking out someone
who is like you, and we know that we're doing
this even when we're not trying to go after some
sort of relationship, we just tend to do, you know,
with each other. When when we're connecting with one another. Yeah,
(21:05):
I mean people you can have conversations with about the
things that matter to you. Do you end up engaging
with people that are kind of from the same background
or have similar interests. Well, it turns out that there
may even be a body fat component to a sort
of mating. There's a two thousand and seven study in
which the researchers, who are based at Rout Research Institute
(21:26):
in the University of Aberdeen, measured the body composition of
forty two couples using a sophisticated technique called dual energy
X ray absorbed geometry, and the results show that the
amount of body fat in one person was proportionately very
similar to that of their partners. And so there's this
idea that not only do we try to find similarities
(21:49):
and our you know, socio economic backgrounds and what our
taste and music are, but maybe even the shapes of
our bodies. Yeah. Now that the study point out that
it's it's unclear though, exactly how these associations come about.
I mean, do the social activities of of overweight and
obese people just merely conside to the you know that
(22:11):
the social activities of active runners, they just happened to concide.
You met this person while you were engaging in similar
activities that have an impact on your physical fitness or
you know, or vice versa. So we're just more likely
to meet people that have a similar body index. Yeah,
and I kind of feel like across the board, obviously
you don't see this. I mean, you see plenty of
(22:32):
examples of couples who don't match up in terms of
body type or body fat. Yeah, I mean I think
it was Paula Abduel that that pointed out that opposites attract, right,
that was the big track. Yes, it was Paula Abduel.
But as we've discussed before, opposite they do attract. But
can you still have to have enough there in common
(22:53):
in order to make that whole dynamic work. So again,
it kind of comes back to this idea of multiple
m committees weighing in. And so one committee might say
they're a lot shorter than we are, I'm not sure
this is gonna match up, And they'll say, well, but
look at the stats on the genetic compatibility, look at
the stats on whether she looks like our mother. All
these things are looking good. So we're gonna we're gonna
(23:13):
maybe pass on worrying about high her body mass index
in this case. Yeah. A lot of this dates back
to nine seventy study from social psychotist K. Reuben where
to a college student couples gave him me to each
of them a survey asking questions about the relationship, and
then put them in a room measured their gaze uh
and uh. And what he found was you saw stronger
(23:34):
connections of love or at least reported love on the questionnaires,
matching up with more prolonged eye contact. So the more
and again this is another one of those that sounds
pretty obvious. It seems like an overstatement of the obvious
when we we spell it out like this, But the
idea that if you're making more eye contact between these couples,
there's more love present, stronger connection. I also wanted to
(23:55):
mention that just the bear gaze, when you're you're looking
out across the room at someone, um, if you're giving
a really direct gaze, um, and that person is perceiving
that already. The fact that you're like, you're trying to
get that person's attention, is going to ratchet up your
attractiveness one notch. It's kind of like this mutual admiration society, right,
(24:18):
So if you both are kind of like baseline attracted
to each other and you notice that you're looking at
each other, there's that oh you're looking at me, I
must be attractive to you, and so on and so forth. Now,
this is again one of those adoin moments. But if
you smile, that's going to give even more, you know,
(24:39):
the confirmation that, yes, you should pursue this. If you
do not smile, of course, this is going to tell
the person that you're not interested unless you look away
and don't smile. There's something to this, like you maybe
catch eyes, you look away and you're not smiling, you're
being a little bit mysterious about loose and this was
(25:00):
This was actually proven out in a two thousand six
study from the Institute of Neuroscience Psychology at the University
of Glasgow in case anyone just really wanted some some
hard science to back up back that up. You know.
It also reminds me of a story that a friend
of mine told me, and that maybe some people can
relate to. So, my wife a couple of friends. They
were traveling on a subway in New York and one
(25:23):
of the friends in this group has this, uh like
when she feels nervous, she smiles. And so they were
leaving like a restaurant or something, and like some guy
was interested and she wasn't interested, but she was kind
of like nervous, so she made eye contact and smiled,
and like the dude ended up following them on the
(25:44):
train for like a long portion of their leg back
to where they were staying, to the point where they
had to like stop him and say, look, we just
need to go on because she's just just a nervous
tick with her. Well, also there is um, I'm sure
that simint arts stuff Mom never told you has probably
covered this before too. There's a cultural expectation that women
(26:05):
should smile back. Yeah. I was thinking about that, um,
because there's the whole the word one of the one
of the worst, well, one of the many bad things
you can say to a female say hey, honey, why
don't you smile more? Right? Right? Coming from maybe like
older gentlemen at a fruit stand or something, right, yeah,
(26:26):
or you get stuff like you'd look a lot prettier
if you're smiling, and then you just want to punch
the person. Yeah, because its matching up with the state.
It's kind of like they're saying, I would want to
mate with you more if you would smile for me.
Now that's horrible, right, do my bidding right now. I
don't know you, but right now I want you to smile. Uh.
But yeah, So that again as part of those those
(26:47):
unconscious um communications that were throwing at each other all
the time. Now, Cheryl Murphy, writing for Scientific American, looks
at the gaze and smiling in a little bit more
deaf and she reports that in one study, Kellerman at
All took seventy two unacquainted undergraduate students and they split
(27:09):
them into male female pairs and then studied the effects
that two minutes of uninterrupted mutual eye contact had on
their feelings towards one another. And in their study they
found that if the two strangers gazed into each other's
eyes for those two minutes, they later reported that they
had increased feelings a passionate love and affection towards the
(27:30):
other person. And then another phase of the experiment had
the pairs of students interact in other ways, like looking
at the partner's hands or counting blinks of their partner,
but it was mutual eye contact that best fanned the
flames of attraction. I feel like we've discussed this in
terms of working and collaborating in our modern age as well,
(27:54):
like just at a very basic level, and I think
most people can relate to this, like having that eye
contact with the people you work with or even you know, family, etcetera.
Like that makes all the difference in your in your
ability to sort of rain in how you're supposed to
be feeling about any given situation. Well, it's very powerful.
And I think we talked about this before. We were
(28:15):
talking about performance artists and Maria Abramovich. Yes, maybe that's
where this came out. Yeah, she she had um the
uh performance. I think it was at MoMA in New York.
So the artist is president, the artist is present. There's
a great documentary on it, and people would just sit
across from her, I think for about eight minutes uninterrupted,
(28:36):
just gazing at each other. And people were going bananas
over this. They were crying, I mean they were it
was almost like they were having these mystical or even
ecstatic experiences just by being looked at by someone. Indeed,
because you wonder, like you know, I mean if you
just self the valuate like how much time in our
(28:57):
day goes by without any significant eye contact going on.
And this is kind of an artificial environment for us
to be discussing this because we have to make a
lot of eye contact during the recording of the podcast,
and yeah, we look away. I mean, like you and
I don't like just pull on like staring each other
the entire times. That would just be so weird if
I was doing that, you know, that would be very intense.
I feel like there's a timer in my head. So
(29:19):
it's like I make eye contact with with anybody, not
just shoot, um, we'll basically anybody except like you know,
my wife or my child, um or maybe a cat.
I don't know. Uh, there's like a tim or going off.
It's like, all right, that's enough eye contact. You have
to look away because if you don't, too much sustained
eye contact is maybe sending too much of a crazy
vibe or something. I actually have an egg timer icon
(29:41):
that I said, Yeah, well that's a good that's a
good method. I need. I need a more solid method
than sort of trying to figure out how much time
has passed in my head. You can borrow mine. All right,
we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back,
we're going to talk about the gaze a bit more
and the difference between the love and lust gaze. Continuing
(30:05):
to explore the question does love at first sight exist
or more to the point, what is the thing that
exists that we tend to classify as love at first sight? Yeah,
And Helen Fisher gives I think an interesting um answer
to why this might exist in the first place. And
of course she's coming at it from an evolutionary angle,
(30:27):
and she's co author of the study reward, motivation and
emotion systems associated with early stage intense romantic love. And
then she again again looks at these, uh, this sort
of constellation of neural systems involved with the feeling of love,
and her idea is that we're marshaling these resources really
quickly and efficiently because it could be a mating shortcut.
(30:51):
She says, quote, even love at first sight is a
basic mammalian response that developed and other animals and our
ancestors inherited this in order to speed up the mating process.
So if you think about it, our ancestors did not
have much dot com at their disposal, and they only
had you know, maybe thirty or forty years of a
(31:12):
lifespan in the first place, So there wasn't a lot
of like this is gonna be my my first marriage
sort of talk. Yeah. So, as as as Fisher and
Uh and her co researchers pointed out in that study, Um,
we're talking about early stage, intense romantic love, and we're
associating that with sub quartal reward regions, all this rich
(31:35):
with dopamine, as we discussed, and we see that romantic
love engaged his brain systems associated with the motivation to
acquire a reward. Yeah. She says about romantic love, it
enables you to focus your mating energy on just one
at a time, conserve your mating energy, and start the
mating process with this single individual. And she said, I
(31:55):
think of all the poetry that I've read about romantic love.
What sums it up us is something that is said
by Plato over two thousand years ago. He said, the
god of Love lives in a state of need. It
is a need, it is an urge, It is a
homeo state static imbalance, like hunger and thirst, it's almost
impossible to stamp out. Yeah, I mean we call it
(32:16):
love sickness for a reason. You feel love sick it's
I mean you begin to almost really bodily suffer out
of this longing. Yeah. And if anyone who's ever been
a teenager and had any sort of love interest knows
what that feels like, right, you can kind of feel
that in the pit of your stomach right now. Um. Now,
there are some who, may you know, say, look, this
(32:38):
is all very well, and perhaps we are neurally put
together to quickly identify feelings of love. However, maybe this
framing of it has more to do with the fallacy
of memory. Yes, as we've discussed in a few different
podcast episodes, our memories are not these solid, fixed items.
(33:01):
They're not little stone sculpture stored away in a drawer.
If anything, they are clay sculptures stored away in a drawer.
And every time we get a memory out of that drawer,
it's susceptible to change. We we put our we we
project our present onto these little fragments of our past,
and then reform our past and reform our present. In
doing so yeah, and when you do that, you're strengthening
(33:23):
those neural connections, right. So that's why, Um, sometimes people
feel very like, yes, I know this happened exactly the
way I think it happened, because they've taken that memory
out over and over again and revisited it, and so
they can quickly get to it and there's this certainty
that they feel because of these neural connections, when in fact,
there is a lot of fallacy and memory. And we've
(33:45):
talked about this before. Uh. Donna Joe Bridge, a postdoctoral
fellow and Medical Social Sciences and a co author of
the study on how the brain refrains the past to
fit the present, says quote, when you think back to
when you met your current partner, you may recall this
feeling of love and euphoria, but you may be projecting
your current feelings back to the original encounter with this person. Yeah.
(34:09):
I mean, our lives are experienced in a in a
sort of storytelling way. We we create a story, we
are the center of our story, and uh, and and
we are constantly tweaking the narrative even though we don't
realize it. Yeah, And that's what I think is interesting
about that moment that across the room you lock eyes,
and there's this idea that all these disparate elements of
(34:34):
your autobio biographical past may coalesce in this person. In
other words, this sort of spreadsheet of what you find
interesting in another person, this person might check off some
of those boxes and it might feel like, ah, this
is the one. And if that is successful, if you
see that relationship through then through the power of narrative
(34:57):
and the way that we reef framar experiences, then all
of a sudden that becomes yes, it was love at
first sight, even though maybe it was just intrigue. Yeah.
I mean, for the most part, you're you're probably going
to be more likely to to skew positive on your
reframing of your personal story. I mean, for the most part,
(35:17):
we want to live a happy narrative life. So you're
gonna you're gonna tweak at your I mean, we all
experienced this every every day. I feel like I do.
It's like I'll think back on something in the past,
past experience, past something I did, maybe something I miss
but don't get to do anymore, and then I have
to questions like, well that I really was it really
all positive? Or were there some negatives in there that
(35:37):
I'm kind of omitting in my in my current narrative.
You know, there was, um recently a study that came out,
and my apologies because I don't have the name of
the study in front of me, but basically it was
a study of ten different languages from twenty four different
types of media like literature and Twitter and so on
and so forth, and they had hundreds of billions of
(35:59):
war words and they went through this painstaking process of
trying to figure out this sort of qualitative narrative here
is there a sort of more positive words or less
positive words that we use? And there does seem to
be this positive skew to language. No matter what language
(36:20):
they were looking at, people were using more positive terms.
And so the idea there is that you're you're trying
to survive, and storytelling a narrative is like a very
basic way in which we do survive. And so overwhelmingly
the message becomes it's going to be okay, you know,
like you're gonna survive, You're gonna get through this. And
(36:40):
so it's no wonder that when we revisit our past
histories we do the same thing unconsciously we're shaping them
in a more positive light. Yeah, and indeed, I don't
think there's any anything wrong with that. I mean, I
guess sometimes I maybe if I'm going to engage with
the idea of something like love at first, not on
a scientific level, but onlike I just sort of a
(37:02):
loftier level. Yeah, I can think of it maybe in
terms of the present reaching back through the past, you know,
because because ultimately our experience of time is more or
less an illusion. If you look at everything as a constant,
you can say, well, there's not really a timeline of
my relationship with the person I love. It's a constant.
(37:23):
And so there's ultimately nothing wrong with applying the emotions
and the and the importance that builds up over time,
applying that back to the beginning, because ultimately it's you know,
we're not talking about a timeline, We're talking about a
a constant, singular thing. Hey, this is this is personal history, right,
(37:43):
So we already know that rescuing stuff in terms of
what's realistic and what's sort of made up, fairland fun
stuff that we like to throw in our personal narratives. Now,
when we get back to though, that that idea of
the gays and how this all first coalesced and happen
to all these things unconsciously bubbling beneath um. There is
(38:05):
a way that we can kind of do some eye
tracking to figure out whether or not that first moment
has more to do with love or lust. Yes, and
and again this is another one of those studies that
might seem like an outrageous overstatement of the obvious fact
up by by science. But uh, but yeah, there's there's
the lustful gaze, and there is a more or less
(38:25):
loving gaze, and we probably have some pretty firm ideas
in our mind about what those gazes look like like.
The lustful gaze is a cartoon coyote with bulging out
and its tongue lolling, and maybe it's it's going like
that's the one. Yeah, So there's that, And then there's
the more loving lost in your your your potential lover's
(38:47):
eye just kind of look, I'm lost in love and
I don't know. I don't know that one. I don't
know either. That's in my head, but I do not
know the artist, all right, So of course there's a
report All the Loves and the Gaze published in psychological
science male and female students from the University of Geneva.
They viewed a series of black and white photographs of
(39:08):
people they had never met. And in the first experiment,
participants looked at photos of young heterosexual couples interacting with
each other. Now and the second experiment, participants looked at
photos of the opposite sex. Then they were asked too
quickly identify the photos as either eliciting a feeling of
romantic love or sexual desire. Now the whole time, of course,
there was eye tracking software looking at what was happening,
(39:32):
and for both men and women. The software reveal that
when participants reported feelings of a romantic love, they tended
to dwell upon the face, which makes sense right then
eyes and but when they felt lusty, well their their
their gaze went south, and that makes sense, right. But
(39:53):
I also can't help but pick it this, especially with
all the information we've just gone through, and say, is
there really that much difference between the two if you
really start looking under the hood of of all that's
going on. When when these two when individual a and
individual be lock eyes for the first time, or you know,
or one looks at the other ones. But what however
(40:14):
it ends up going down. I mean, ultimately, is there
is there that much difference between the two, Like there's
just an exchange of stimuli, there's a there's an initial
gazing and uh and scanning of the other organism to
see if there's compatibility. I agree, I think there's a
whole like tail wagging the dog element. Yeah, I mean,
because you can just boil it down to this person
(40:37):
is feeling lovey and giving the love gaze because they're
genetically inclined to mate and produce offspring and then die
and uh. And meanwhile, the lusty individual is is, you know,
fantasizing about getting this person back to their apartment because
their genetic programming says that they need to mate with somebody,
produce offspring and then die, right, And then you know,
(40:57):
eventually that works out or it doesn't, you know, it
turns into love or I mean, you know it does
It sort of doesn't matter, right. But to me this
is interesting because it once again unpacks this idea that
are unconscious and our experiences, our autobiography, every moment is
(41:18):
influencing the decisions that we make and our perceptions. So
it's lovely to say that you know. Ah, yes, I
saw him and it was love at first sight, but
there's so much more going on underneath that. Also, I
wanted to mention in terms of really obvious studies and
information that I think all of us probably know on
(41:40):
some level. There was recently one about the best way
to caress someone's cheek, like there their face. Apparently it's
moderate pressure moving at one per second up or down.
I don't recall with knuckles or fingers, I know, I
think fingers, knuckles, I don't know, I don't know. Kind
(42:02):
of like that, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, well that's
kind of nice too. I was just striking my face
with my knuckles in case you guys are wondering what
the heck is going on? All right, So there you
have it now. If you want to check out more
about this topic, be sure to check out stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. I'll make sure that the
landing page for this episode includes links to related contents
and just some of that other Valentine's Day Lovey Debbie
(42:24):
stuff about Laingderie, wearing rats and uh and the microbiology
of a kiss um. All of that will be on there,
so as well as some links out to some of
these outside sources we've talked about, such as that that
Ted Talk and you can also check out our videos
are blog post and uh you know links out to
our very social media accounts so you can follow us
wherever you tend to hang out, and we would love
(42:44):
to hear from you. Guys. Does this information change your
ideas of your experiences of love and perhaps even love
it first sight? Let us know. You can email us
below the mind at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuff
works dot com
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