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