Why Do You Get Crabby When You Think of Old 'Bae'?

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Link: http://neurosciencenews.com/love-psychology-neuroscience-5982/
Article: The Science Behind Love


Summary: Are love feelings really uncontrollable? A study was conducted on individuals who are in a relationship and those dealing with a break up. A questionnaire was given out to the participants measuring their beliefs on regulation of love feelings. All of the participants came to a conclusion that love feelings are uncontrollable. However, the participants were asked four open questions that revealed their method for maintain their love feelings for their partner or removing their love feelings from their previous partner. Those in a relationship used techniques like cognitive reappraisal to make the feelings stronger. While those dealing with a breakup dealt with avoidance and distractions. In conclusion, love feelings is very much controllable. Many people forget that love is all cognitive.

Reaction: I've always thought of love as something that is uncontrollable and when it leaves it is gone. After reading this article and thinking back on what I've learned in class, love is definitely controllable. In the brain we have the limbic system that includes the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, and other functions. When it comes to love and being in a relationship positive emotions will influence how a person thinks and what they remember in that moment. They view their partner as someone good because of the great memories that are associate with their partner; therefore,  this leads them to making decision to increase the happy feeling. On the other hand, when the person is going through a break they start to activate their amygdala, in which this releases negative emotions towards that person. These negative emotions are now associated with their ex-partner and now every time their ex-partner is brought up they are going to remember that negative emotion.






Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 16, 2017 at 9:02 PM

    I’ve heard a lot in my life that love “isn’t just a feeling; it’s a choice” and I didn’t realize how true this was, and how powerful intentional explicit love regulation could be in altering intensity of romantic love. This made me think about the divorce rate, and how I’ve heard elderly people say that they didn’t throw things away that were broken, but that they fixed them. It would be very interesting to see how this concept of intentional regulation could be integrated into couple’s therapy. It was also very interesting to read about how love can improve or harm cognition. When you’re in love with someone, your limbic system is very active, but another part that is involved is the ventral tegmental area – the reward center in the midbrain that is involved in addiction, but also motivation and focused attention. Therefore, it makes sense how love feelings can motivate you to think more about someone or cause “tunnel vision”. These areas work together to reinforce these feelings through the release of different neurotransmitters. It would be interesting to read more about the implications of practicing regulation every day in different individuals – those who are at the beginning of a relationship, and those who have been together for years, for example.

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  2. UnknownNovember 16, 2017 at 9:55 PM

    This article caught my attention because there have been times in my life where after breaking up with someone it has been very difficult to get rid of my feelings for her. This article explains why because it is all cognitive and I might not be cognitively strong enough. Talking to some of my friends some of them move on very quickly and myself it takes a month or two, that depends on how invested I was with that person. After reading this article it has pushed to look up ways to cope better with a break up and to strengthen those cognitive abilities. The idea of love being able to hurt or help me is very interesting for me because usually when you break up with someone you are in this state of depression were you isolate yourself from your friends and family. It would be interesting to find out how dopamine affects an individual when dealing with love.

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  3. UnknownNovember 16, 2017 at 10:20 PM

    Leela,
    This article was interesting for me to read seeing how love is not always thought of in a psychological way but rather just a magical feeling that people experience. I have always thought of love or the act of being in love with someone uncontrollable. As intriguing and persuasive as your post and the article is, I still consider love to be somewhat uncontrollable. You do get to make the choice of who you interact with and ultimately fall in love with but at the same time, there are chemicals in our bodies and brains that make us attracted to certain people physically, mentally and emotionally and we have no way of controlling these chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin in the brain.

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  4. Morgan SagerNovember 16, 2017 at 10:56 PM

    I do believe that you choose to look at a person in a particular light; such as, when going through a happy time you feel euphoric and concentrate on positives about the individual. The prefrontal cortex give you the ability to make rational judgments. In this area is the ventromedial cortex which processes physical attractiveness. In my family studies class, we were taught that physical attractiveness is due to the symmetry of the face. I feel that love is controllable at some level. You fall in love with the person, not their face. But your body is made up of chemicals such as norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. There are also different phases of love that trigger different amounts of hormones being produced. I feel that the only thing about love that is uncontrollable, without altering medication, is the level of hormones being produced.

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