Science of Love

Jeri Favis
Miguel Suerte
 What is love?

“Love is playing every game as if it is

your last.”
-M. Jordan
“Love: … fresh as the morning air”

“love is only a feeling…”

 Scope: Romantic Love
and eventually, relates to familial love

1. Evolution of Love (courting and preferences)
2. Courting in different perspective
3. Chemistry’s perspective (hormones)
4. Genetics’ perspective
 Prehistoric Courtship
• Communal relationships
– females look for groups with the most food, males
look for groups with the most females
• Spent a great amount of time thinking
about, no, not their survival but, their
social and sexual problems
 Prehistoric Courtship:
Females 3 Preferences
1. Highest ranking males to provide food and
protection
2. Males that have groomed the female a lot
and who are kind to her offspring
3. New males outside of the group to avoid
genetic inbreeding….

*But men could be choosy too if he decided she wasn’t

worth the trouble
 Prehistoric Courtship
• Males with high levels of fitness are the prime
candidates for mating (the best genes were desired)
• (Couples tended to be balanced. Rank 1 Male gets
Rank 1 Female, Rank 2 Male gets Rank 2 Female and
so on)
• However, that would be it for the males in terms of
impressing their partner. Once they got bored with
them, the females could stick it out or more
commonly leave and find a new mate. (No
entertainment to keep the girl interested)
 Prehistoric Courtship
• Courtship did not happen between the
young but with adults who had children
• Good mothers = Prime candidates
• Males had to appeal to the children too
 Prehistoric Courtship: Sex
• Partners hung out
• Partners who hung out a lot would
have sex and have kids
• If they really liked each other, they
had more kids
• Basically, they had sex all the time
 Prehistoric Courtship:
Summary
If we continued with the practices of
prehistoric courtship…
2. First impressions are VERY important
3. Sex right away
4. Males would then decide if the
female was worth it and vice versa.
 Courting practices from around
the world: Betrothal
• During the Middle Ages, Betrothal was
how courting went down
• “Courtship” was between the families
and the betrothed had no input in it
• The bride had a price tag or “dowry”
• More business like than love like and it
had to be blessed by the clergy
 Courting practices from around
the world: Betrothal
• Couples needed to spend much time
together to get to know it each other
• “I WILL take you as my
wife/husband…”
• Sexual intercourse consummated the
vows
• Semi-binding contract – Could be
invalidated
 Courting practices from around
the world: Omiai
• Japanese miai: literally “looking at each other”
• Chinese: “mutual familiarity”
• Parents will hire a matchmaker to provide
pictures and résumés of potential mates
• Parents are involved again but this time the
kids have some say in the matter
• Courtship here is like buying a car
 Courting practices from around
the world: Indian and Muslim
cultures
• Arranged Marriages
• Kids have no say, again.
• Sometimes, dating = premarital sex, which is not
allowed. Chastity and Furthering Family Interests >
Romantic preferences
• These days, potential couples are allowed to meet
before they decide whether or not the relationship
will go any further
 Courting practices from around
the world: U.S.A. of the early 1900’s
• Parents, again, got involved
• Going out on dates started at around the
1920’s. Before then, the man would have to
go to the woman’s home. During those
times, it wasn’t appropriate for the kids to
get alone-time.
• Everything had to be prim and proper.
Respectability and reputation were essential
in dating etiquette
• “Going steady” or dating one person at a
time only became prevalent after the second
World War
 Courting practices from around
the world: Old-School Philippines

• Tuksuhan
– Feeling out stage
– Bad reaction to tukso = DENIED
– Good reaction to tukso = YAY
– The men don’t actually do anything yet
• Ligawan
• Tampuhan
 Looking at Hormones
Love can be seen through hormones
 The 3 stages of love
• Stage 1: Lust
– love is driven by the sex hormones testosterone
and Estrogen – in both men and women.
• Testosterone
• Estrogen
 The 3 stages of love
• Stage 2: Attraction
– time when you are truly love-struck and can think
of little else.
• that three main neurotransmitters are
involved in this stage;
» adrenaline
» dopamine
» serotonin
 The 3 stages of love
• Serotonin
– important chemicals that may explain why when you’re
falling in love, your new lover keeps popping into your
thoughts.
• Adrenaline
– “you start to sweat, your heart races and your mouth goes
dry.”
– stress response
– increasing your blood levels of adrenalin and cortisol
• Dopamine
– stimulates ‘desire and reward’ by triggering an intense rush
of pleasure (similar effect with cocaine).
 The 3 stages of love
Stage 3: Attachment
• keeps couples together long enough for them
to have and raise children
– Involves two hormones:
» Oxytocin
» Vasopressin
 The 3 stages of love
• Vasopressin
– Regulate the body's retention of water
– initiates and sustains patterns of activity that support the
pair-bond between the sexual partners

• Oxytocin
– In females, it is released in large amounts after distension
of the cervix and vagina during labor
– stimulation of the nipples, facilitating birth and
breastfeeding.
Genetic Love

The Absurdity of Family Love

by Robert Wright And Randy Cohen
3 Misconceptions about kin selection:
1. Genes are smart
2. People are smart – or they are smart Darwinian Robots
3. Our Genes aren’t downright stupid
 Manipulation

Does this mean that we can know use

what we know about the human body
to manipulate each other’s emotions?
 Smaller Scale
• On small scales we already are.
• Perfumes, deodorants, aphrodisiacs,
etc.
• Granted, the effect, if any, is not the
large, these products promise the
manipulation of human emotions and
feelings in a way that is beneficial for
the customer
 Larger Scale
• What if we started upping the ante?
• Say we developed a drug that could
make you fall in love? Fall out of love?
A drug that would make the maternal
and paternal instincts already us more
assertive?
• If they have drugs that cure depression
then why not have drugs that cure
heartbreak? Infidelity? Bad parenting?
Larger Scale: Specific Effects
• An actual cure for heartache? For
broken families? Better parenting?
• “Love potions” and “anti-love potions”
• Situation 1: Person A likes Person B but
B doesn’t like A, A uses drug to get B
to fall in love with A
Larger Scale: Specific Effects
• Situation 2: Husband and Wife are
having problems because Husband is
cheating on her. Wife wants to leave.
Husbands drugs her to so that she
doesn’t leave him.
Larger Scale: Specific Effects
• Situation 3: Kids have bad parents.
They’re abusive, irresponsible and
selfish. Parents take drugs to become
better parents
• Situation 4: A couple experiences
problems as the man suffers from
deficiencies in his system of the
chemical that makes him act lovingly.
He takes a drug to increase these low
levels.
 What does this mean?
• Is love then merely a disease? Disorder?
Imbalance?
• Has science crossed a boundary that
shouldn’t be crossed?
• Is love, true love just a manipulation of
your senses, emotions and controllable
factors.
 Should we allow manipulation of 
Love?

Positive Negative
• New Drug, new cure • Drug abuse
• New breakthrough in • Circulation of drug can
business (Income) be legal or illegal
• Long-lasting • Debate between
relationships science and
• “Better Families” ethics/religion
• Relationships are more
susceptible to break up
• Forced love
Is love then…

…not real?
 Jeri and Miguel say…
• If we do find ways of curing broken hearts
and families, then by all means, let’s do it.
But then inadvertently
– create the problems inherent to the dynamic of
any other drug.
– Drug abuse and illegal circulation are going to be
present as always…and the abuse will be
something new and different.
– We’ll have cases of people forcing love and
abusing the freedoms of afflicted people. True
love will be much more difficult to find in a world
where we can create it.
– It’s like cloning. We would be in effect creating
“love.” And that in itself is astounding.
 Jeri and Miguel say…
• But we already have ways of combating
it: counselling, therapy, etc.
– Less danger from drug side effects
– More rational way
 Conclusion
• Attraction in early stages is based on
chemical reactions and hormonal
effects, things that modern science
can analyze and measure. BUT for it to
become LOVE there must be rational
thought and a conscious decision to
commit.
• LOVE is a DECISION that we make
What do you say?