link from clock-desktop.com

In the past we’ve covered Arthur Aron’s idea of the spark of romantic love being this idea of self-expansion, that through the other we find that we feel more as ourselves, that we extend ourselves in a way that forms this meaningful connection. This article from Wired takes the questions from an intimacy study (at first developed to “make friends in 45 minutes”) and applies it to some bigwig conference. Basic idea is get this list of questions, have two people ask them to each other, and by the end of it participants report feeling closer to the other person. They compared this with another group that just had questions based around small talk and, naturally, feelings of closeness in this group were close to nil. Many of the questions from the study, including some additional ones, are included in the article. Conclusion: “The effect is based not just on reciprocal self-disclosure, but on gradually escalating reciprocal self-disclosure.”

The study also produces similar results when pairs are of different races and people in professional groups you might think would struggle to find much in common, he said. “We’ve used the method with cross-race groups, and other cross-group pairs like community members and police, with great effects — not just at creating closeness within each pair, but that closeness extending to more positive attitudes towards the partner’s group as a whole.”

Great article. And really great writing from Aron’s team. It starts off easy but then escalates in a really moving way.

In addition, in looking for Arthur Aron’s picture, we found this blog, ThingsAboutLove. The writer mentions some research about science “proving that true love exists”. I won’t go that far. But I will say what’s more fascinating to me than relationships that last so long and so well is who these kinds of people are. I’m convinced it takes a very particular set of people to work that way. And not that “anybody can find true love if they find the right person”, but that both of the people have to be the right kind of people. And also, perhaps, that there really are only a few kinds of people that can do it.

I’m excited to see what our generation looks like at 80 years old. If I can still see, that is.

Science and love are hot topics when mixed together. Just look at some Hollywood attempts to enter the territory: No Strings Attached (2011) and Friends With Benefits (2011). It’s clear, through everything imaginable, that our ideas of love have shifted, and monogamy is no longer a necessary component of the modern life.

So the play “Completeness” makes a lot of sense. It’s a talky play by Itimar Moses that I will likely never see unless I get that New York City job quickly. It’s about a comp sci grad student and a molecular biologist grad student that talk mathy and sciencey about love. Sounds like an amazing play, and holds some similarities to my Science of Love ideas, but not enough to shake my confidence!

Point being (1) I have to finish this screenplay soon, and (2) it’s ofish: being nerdy about love is the new way inside your intellectual other’s heart (and brain).

I might be in New York soon, so we’ll see if I can catch the live-flick. For now,

Roman

A recent study entitled “Effects of Everyday Romantic Goal Pursuit on Women’s Attitudes Toward Math and Science” claims that when women have love on their mind, they like math less and do less math. The same, apparently, is not the case for men. I think there’s something to this study, but I also think it misses a lot. Plus, if I don’t see an fMRI, I’m not satisfied!

It is possible that women are simply moved more by romantic images than men are. I think that’s a weaker, less objectionable conclusion. I know when I’m in love, though I can become more strategic and systematic (as is my nature), I certainly go to class less, do less work, become entirely consumed in thoughts of the other person. And we’ve seen this behavior as characteristic of romantic love, as suggested by Helen Fisher.

Still, I think there’s something important to the idea that women are, in a way, “dumbing themselves down” for men. Now I’m not entirely sure this is the case, and I think some articles rush here a little too quickly, but I think it’s a very real possibility. I also think it’s more difficult to make a biological case for this. Probably the best article I’ve read on the matter is this one, which talks about some logical, less heated reasons why women have historically seemed to prefer non science careers.

Additional Articles

How Wanting Girls Makes Girls Bad At Math

Twenty Reasons Why Girls Don’t Like Math

Women’s Underrepresentation in Science: Sociocultural and Biological Considerations.

This is from a series of photos from Martin Parr, interestingly enough based around the "veracity of the caption". The awesome series can be seen by clicking this photo. If I may quote a great movie, "Are we the dining dead?"

Hello world. It’s been forever since I’ve posted, but I decided to revive this somewhat as I work through my screenplay, as motivation and research. So today I provide you with good news: you’re boring and will probably be divorced because of it. Well, maybe (especially if you’re a lawyer). The following article is short, but poignant on those cynical heart strings.

The Science of Love: The article talks about boredom, doubts monogamy as a natural state (though it does so a little quickly), and claims that men fall in love faster–an idea we’ve heard before. Suspiciously, I was not able to find the actual studies behind the below article.

“Infidelity, which formerly topped the list of reasons for marriage breakdown, has been surpassed by couples saying they no longer felt in love and had “grown apart”. A survey by the consultancy Grant Thornton interviewed 101 family lawyers, to find that boredom has become the greatest threat to couples living together.

Couples in the survey claimed that they felt increasing resentment towards their partner for being boring. Divorce statistics, although they appear to have levelled out, suggest that sticking with marriage is yesterday’s game.”

The original article from The Guardian is much more insightful and has a lot of interesting explanations for why this might be the case, including celebrity influence. I should note now though that the study took 101 lawyers (which is my next animated Disney film, by the way). Lawyers are a particular character type and, let’s face it, probably a little more boring and reprehensible than the rest of us.

I think this is also a good time to bring up Martin Heidegger, who believed that boredom (waiting) is the essential human state. Then there’s Schopenhauer, who believed life was a pendulum between pain and boredom. Then there is Nietzsche, who believed boredom to be the root of all evil. And finally, in this short sum-up, there was Kierkegaard, the fierce champion of anti-boredom under his more nihilistic pseudonyms (ie: Johannes Climacus)–who believed boredom was created by repetition, and that we must always fight boredom and keep life interesting.

Philosophy aside, these kinds of suggestions bring up those same harsh possible realities that we deal with in the science of love. I know personally, since the love class, I’ve questioned a lot of my views on marriage, love, commitment, etc. After a breakup in June, I found myself 40 years old and wanting a stable job with benefits and someone to come home to, and someone that could come home to me–a support network, a partner. The world just seemed all too terrible to take on alone. Yet with these doubts of commitment resurfaced, one is forced to confront the possibility of, well, to put it dramatically, dying alone. Is that our essential destiny? Broken and fading into darkness with no one around to hear us? If a man dies in a room alone, was he ever alive?

I’m gonna go listen to the Smiths in all black and cry in the rain writing poetry real quick, brb.

Additional Reading

Why Marriage Is Worth The Effort

Relationship Advice: The Real Women Women Choose Divorce– I hate relationship advice. I like facts. But this article is better than it sounds.

Are British Couples Accepting Infidelity or Embracing Non-Monogamy?

Morse thinks that trying to find lifelong love is worthwhile and that it’s pre-political, while Coontz is somewhat on the other side, arguing that marriage has historically been for political reasons. What do you think? This was a surprisingly good discussion.

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UPDATE: I also ran across this really terrible discussion. This is incredibly unprofessional (as are many programs of this nature), but the woman being interviewed is very collected and makes a great point about marriage being around before when our life expectancy was much lower, and in consequence the expectation. The panel does make one or two interesting points, including the apprehensions of marriage. This is how a conversation on the study of love SHOULD NOT go. The worst point has to be from the woman who says that if you behave as if you’re in love, then your emotions will follow. What. The. Hell. I try to withhold too much bias from this blog, but really, that’s just a terrible notion. (For philosophy geeks, it equals the absurdity of Pascal’s Wager).

Please comment, share, and let us know what you think of these interviews. Is marriage an outdated institution? Let ‘er rip.

Roman

Apologies for not posting in a while. The semester’s almost over! We most very regularly on our facebook page if you’re looking for more info. After class let’s out this semester (which is what has been keeping us from updating the blog!) I hope to pool together all the readings we added/ended up doing and putting them up on a page to give a more thorough potential syllabus for other love classes of this kind that will be made by students in the future. In our stats we get a lot of searches for “love syllabus” or something similar, so there’s certainly an interest out there, and we want to cater to it.

But this is just a hello to say that we’ve been hard at work with a lot of exciting projects and you’ll see the fruits of our labor quite soon. Keep in touch!

-Roman and the Love Class

Hey everyone, Amy Rassumussen wrote an article for the Brown Daily Herald on our project! We’re super excited and thank everyone at the BDH and Brown for their continual support of LoveAtBrown. Good news is on the way concerning the survey!

-Roman

On the Saturday of the Brown vs. Harvard football game (Brown won! Woohoo!), Lauren and I went over the IRB and the survey for her half of the class final project. I’m focusing on the documentary, her on the survey. This episode consists of four parts.

In this part, Lauren and I are discussing the balance between questions about sex (she conducted a study two years ago available at www.sexatbrown.wordpress.com) and questions about love (I started www.loveatbrown.com). Watch the hilarity ensue.

Since I’m posting the videos, I can have a last word—what I wanted to get across is that its just that interior life (the subjective) that I want to get a hold of. Anyone can look at Brown and tell us how we’re acting, but I want to know what’s going on in people’s minds. We’ll see if I can get that in the documentary. In any case, the survey’s gonna make people bring back the phrase “da bomb”. It’s that cool.

Hey there, don’t forget to follow us at our facebook page, where we post links more or less daily and try to encourage more discussion. We’re at www.facebook.com/loveatbrown. See you there!

This is a really fantastic video (the images link to the video as well) that goes through some neuroscience with Helen Fisher, some psychology of emotions with Aron, and some psychological ideas about love maps with Friar, whom I hadn’t heard of before. But I will surely be looking for articles he’s written soon on Love Maps. For now, enjoy! It’s a great video.

Be expecting more updates from Discovery Health and Science soon.

-Roman