14
votes
Accepted
How can we scientifically measure love?
One way to measure love is to look at behaviors that people engage in to express love.
Chapman (1995) theorized that there were five broad classes of behaviors that people would engage in to express ...
- 5,824
11
votes
How can we scientifically measure love?
To add some general theoretical background...
Answering this is very complicated because the answer depends on how you define emotions, whether you see emotions as latent or emergent, whether you ...
- 4,256
10
votes
Accepted
From a neuroscientific standpoint, what are the most effective ways to develop empathy, love and compassion for others?
I'm including some relevant papers below, but one important thing to note abot this whole compassion/Buddhism/neuroscience discussion is that neuroscience may not necessarily have the most to say ...
- 318
9
votes
How to predict romantic attraction
You are quite astute to have noticed the difference between your stated preferences and actual preferences - most people don't. Yes, there has been a fair bit of research on prediction techniques and ...
- 18.1k
8
votes
How can we scientifically measure love?
This BBC documentary reviews a number of methods for measuring love that have enjoyed some success. To summarize:
Dr. Angela Rowe of the University of Bristol presents subjects with unfavourably ...
- 18.1k
6
votes
Can bipolar disorder be considered a malfunction of the "love circuit" in the human brain?
A Love Circuit?
The idea that there is a "love circuit" has little evidence (for or against it). But in general studies that look at "love" (however defined) reveal broad activation across multiple ...
- 4,256
6
votes
Accepted
Correlation between selfie and Narcissism
Self-reported number of selfies has been found to correlate positively with some measures of narcissism in US men (Fox and Rooney, 2015).
Fox, J., & Rooney, M. C. (2015). The Dark Triad and ...
- 6,912
5
votes
Is attraction between two people just physical, not neurological/psychological?
All attraction involves the brain. The brain is responsible for consciousness, perception, and motivation.
Not all attraction is physical. In two structural theories of love with which I'm familiar, ...
- 9,284
4
votes
Accepted
Looking for happines in marriage survey according to living/not living together before marriage
A study reported, in the 80's, that unmarried cohabitation prior to marriage was associated with "significantly" lower marital satisfaction, but did not report an effect size. They also ...
- 6,912
3
votes
Accepted
Why do battered persons love their partners?
I long pondered the answer to this question myself. The short answer is: Cognitive Dissonance*
("Cognitive Dissonance" is a hypothesized mental process in which two conflicting ideas are resolved ...
- 18.1k
3
votes
Accepted
Why are we so possessive of our significant others?
The big hot potato here is the evolutionary hypothesis that men are more sexually jealous whereas women are more emotionally jealous.
Contrast Harris (2003) totally dissing it (but also giving a nice ...
- 9,915
1
vote
Accepted
Psychological theories about the end of a romantic relationship
Is there a split between desire and love?
Of course, love and lust/desire are two completely different things.
A simple definition I have of the word love: An involuntary response to virtue.
This ...
- 26
1
vote
Can scientific evidence support concepts of the soul?
Step one would be to define what you mean by "soul".
The common Judeo/Christian/Muslim theory is that there is something that (a) is the essential core of a person's personality that is related to ...
- 111
1
vote
How has psychology categorised different types of love?
Sternberg's Triangular theory is certainly well-known. The field you want to dig into more is called 'close relationships'. Here's an accessible treatment of other common theories:
Summary of ...
- 1,448
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible