Vertical electro-oculogram and horizontal electro-oculogram were recorded by attaching additional electrodes (UltraFlat Active electrodes, BioSemi) above and below the left eye, and at the outer canthi of both eyes. See Table 4 for the other group characteristics and the statistics related to group differences. No, Is the Subject Area "Electroencephalography" applicable to this article? The idea of romantic love initially stems from the Platonic tradition that love is a desire for beauty-a value that transcends the particularities of the physical body. Love up- and down-regulation have numerous applications, ranging from stabilizing long-term relationships including marriages, reducing heartbreak after romantic break-ups, ameliorating unwanted crushes and forbidden loves, and perhaps even coping with the death of a beloved. There were no major differences between this Dutch sample and the US sample in Study 1. In the first two blocks, participants passively viewed partner and neutral pictures (order counterbalanced between participants). People did perceive more control over some aspects of love than others and the majority of people reported to use a variety of strategies when heartbroken or when in a long-term relationship. We thank Annemieke van Arum, Mandy van Dijk, Liesbeth Janssen, and Ginger Sassen for help with the data collection. See Table 4 for the mean perceived control over the seven different aspects of love. them until you find a common ground that works for both. negotiate them so that they don't distance you or kill the For more information, please contact lawcls@hofstra.edu. ... Love by Lauren Slater Masters of Love by Emily Esfahani Smith The Limits of Friendship by Maria Konnikova. Even though the LPP was reduced by love up-regulation at the group level, participants who actually showed a more enhanced LPP amplitude as a result of love up-regulation in this time window also showed a greater decrease in negative affect as a result of love up-regulation. However, the mean score on the perceived control questions approached the midpoint of the scale, indicating that participants did not entirely reject the idea of controllable love. Strategies such as expressing love feelings to the beloved, spending (quality) time with the beloved, and loving unconditionally/making compromises were mentioned by some participants. No, Is the Subject Area "Event-related potentials" applicable to this article? The second ANOVA concerned the three blocks with partner pictures and tested the factors Regulation, Group, and Caudality. The four open questions about the use of behavioral and cognitive strategies in the contexts of heartbreak and long-term relationships have some limitations. Lewis referred to it as “gift love,” the highest form of Christian love. In the context of heartbreak, distraction was used to feel better after a break-up (i.e., emotion regulation), while reappraisal was used to down-regulate love feelings. The early phase of love is quite different” from later phases. In addition, Study 2 employed a love regulation task to achieve the final research goal, which was to examine if people can intentionally up- and down-regulate love feelings. Scholarly articles are written by experts in the field and, additionally, peer reviewed by a panel experts in the field. This article examines cognitive links between romantic love and creativity and between sexual desire and analytic thought based on construal level theory. Finally, a third research line has shown that people think more favorably of their romantic partner than objectively justified [32, 33]. First, it is well known that people can regulate their emotions [18–21], which entails generating new emotions or changing the intensity of current emotions using behavioral or cognitive strategies [20]. Because the LPP amplitude is typically enhanced in response to both positive and negative stimuli, the LPP does not reflect whether a stimulus elicits positive or negative feelings. The latter was used more for maintaining long-term relationships than for preventing love feelings from declining. When instructed to down-regulate love feelings by thinking about negative aspects of the partner or the relationship or imagining negative future scenarios, participants reported decreased levels of infatuation and attachment, as expected. The word ‘love’ has many different meanings and may have different meanings to different people. Focus on the other person. Sex. These findings suggest that the more participants used the reappraisal strategy to regulate emotions in their daily life, the more they perceived love feelings as controllable. What I made a mistake." Indeed, falling out of love is the primary reason for divorce [17]. People may, for example, be in love with someone who does not love them back or who has broken up with them. situation to something more adequate, you can act again in an effective Nevertheless, they use various behavioral and cognitive strategies to cope with romantic break-ups and to maintain long-term relationships. ERP waveforms at Fz, Cz, and Pz for the four conditions, for each group separately. Being in love was an inclusion criterion because some of the questions assessing perceived control over love feelings (see below) contained a blank in which the participants had to mentally insert the name of their beloved. Search across a wide variety of disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions. For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America, Affiliation ", Recognize the difference between limerance and love. The more you can focus on others and learn to respond and meet Instructed up-regulation of love using reappraisal increased subjective feelings of attachment, while love down-regulation decreased subjective feelings of infatuation and attachment. Even though love up-regulation resulting in decreased positive affect in participants who were in a relationship is in contrast to the hypothesis, it does show that participants were not just regulating their emotions. In the 1000–3000 ms time window, there was a Regulation x Group x Caudality interaction, F(4,136) = 2.7, ε = .78, p = .048. We measured regulation success by asking participants how much infatuation and attachment they experienced after each regulation condition, because self-report is the only way to assess phenomenological experience [39]. 4. Reappraisal by focusing on negative aspects of the beloved was the most popular reappraisal strategy. S1 Appendix. As in Study 1, some of these strategies were the typical cognitive and behavioral emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal, distraction, situation selection, and suppression. Participants also completed the Infatuation and Attachment Scales (IAS) [14], and the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) [50] to assess the intensity of infatuation and attachment. I love my dog (or cat). The more you can communicate the Love feelings can also be stronger than desired. Recommended Citation Limerance is This study, being the first of its kind, provides many suggestions for future research. Dr. Nina Mikirova All my life, I have long been stereotyped as a “bluestocking,” I was very surprised when I was asked to write an article on a psychological perspective on love. Although the current study did not study the long-term effects of love down-regulation using reappraisal, it has recently been shown that thinking negative thoughts about the relationship has adaptive features when recovering from a romantic break-up [75]. Six participants stated that love feelings would not decline if the relationship was good and/or that they would end the relationship if love feelings would decline. The relationship group experienced most negative affect after down-regulation, both ps < .008, whereas negative affect in the break-up group was not affected by instructed love regulation, all ps > .67. OKLC's Editorial Team 16th August 2016 Articles About Love – Family, Relationship, Friendship And More! The direction of the effect of love regulation on emotion or affect may differ depending on the context, as indicated by the hypothesized opposite effects of love regulation on emotion/affect in the relationship and break-up groups. The instruction to up-regulate love feelings resulted in a more positive ERP between 300–400 ms (cf. Brain imaging studies of love suggest that 12 different areas of the brain are involved. Five paired sample t-tests were conducted to test for differences in perceived control between related aspects of love (i.e., love in general vs. infatuation, love in general vs. attachment, infatuation vs. attachment, self vs. people in general, and intensity vs. object of feelings). While communication/honesty was used more to maintain long-term relationships than to prevent love from declining, undertaking (new) activities with the beloved was mostly used to prevent love from declining. These questions were phrased to measure perceived control over love in general, and over infatuation and attachment specifically. However, also participants who had recently experienced a break-up unexpectedly experienced more unpleasant feelings after love down-regulation. See Table 3 for the other love characteristics. The results of this first exploratory study show that people perceive love feelings as neither controllable, nor uncontrollable (or as somewhat uncontrollable, if anything). As a To summarize, up-regulation elicited a more positive ERP than passive viewing at midline centro-parietal electrodes between 300–400 ms. The results showed that people have the preconception that love is somewhat uncontrollable. Down-regulation instructions were to decrease love feelings by thinking about negative aspects of the partner (e.g., “She is so lazy”) or relationship (e.g., “We often fight”), or negative future scenarios (e.g., “We won’t stay together forever”). Participants felt more in control of the intensity than of the object of their love feelings. It is interesting that the down-regulation effect occurred a few hundred milliseconds later than the up-regulation effect (cf. Emotion regulation can be used to up- and down-regulate positive and negative emotions [23] and may happen implicitly or explicitly [18]. It was expected that love up-regulation would enhance the LPP in response to pictures of the (ex-)partner in both groups, which would indicate that love up-regulation would enhance the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to the (ex-)partner. No, Is the Subject Area "Motivation" applicable to this article? They tend to include a lot of research and data, and the information in the article is backed up by a list of references. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. to love. We present the first two studies on preconceptions about, strategies for, and the feasibility of love regulation. ideal is misplaced. Photograph by Kazumasa Ogawa, 1906. In the 700–1000 ms time window, the up-regulation effect in the LPP amplitude was negatively correlated with the up-regulation effect in negative affect, r(34) = -.40, p = .015, see Fig 8. Therefore, in addition to subjective self-reports, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) as a more objective measure of love regulation success. Some participants even stated that love feelings should not be up-regulated to maintain long-term relationships, because declining love feelings would indicate that the relationship is not meant to be. Ratings and PANAS scores after the view conditions were analyzed with an ANOVA with factors Picture (partner, neutral) and Group. Because this was only a pilot study with mostly female participants, we conducted a follow-up study (Study 2) to replicate and confirm these preliminary findings in a more gender-balanced sample. It is important to note that the observed pattern resembles some previous emotion regulation studies that have revealed numerically or significantly enhanced LPP amplitudes for down-regulation [27, 48, 57, 76] and numerically reduced LPP amplitudes for up-regulation [46] as well. Unrequited love (UL) is unreciprocated love that causes yearning for more complete love. Most depressed people don't love Even though self-reports gain a unique insight into what people experience, they also suffer from social desirability biases and demand characteristics [40, 41]. tetw. Of course, the change in love feelings may in turn influence emotions or affect. Scholarly Articles. Importantly, people who idealize their partner and whose partners idealize them have happier relationships [34]. The Shen-Wu Gate. That period is followed by increases in the hormone oxytocin, a neurotransmitter associated with a calmer, more mature form of love. Even though this last research line shows that people can regulate their love feelings implicitly, there are no studies that provide information about the deliberate, explicit up- and down-regulation of love feelings. good or close you are, and if the relationship is going right those For example, the partner wearing a yellow shirt and standing next to a friend on a picture could inspire the participant to up-regulate love feelings by thinking “I love that yellow shirt he’s wearing” and to down-regulate love feelings by thinking “He is always hitting on that friend, and he might cheat on me one day”. depressed. Respondents completed the Love Attitudes Scale and a questionnaire … Some strategies seemed specific for changing the intensity of love feelings, rather than for regulating emotions or maintaining relationships. The break-up groups did tend to report lower relationship quality than the relationship group. Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. Scalp topographies of the differences between passive viewing of partner and neutral pictures, separately for both groups. The less connected you are, the more you are Use your own document to search for articles and books. Rather than focus on what you are who that person is, and by being able to represent yourself. However, one type of treatment for substance dependence and other mental disorders is exposure therapy, which is based on the mechanism of extinction [66]. This article describes some of the more central and well-established findings from psychologically informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships. Participants were not informed of the exact research purpose or hypothesis before testing, but they were instructed to increase or decrease their love feelings using cognitive reappraisal. Scatterplots displaying the positive correlations between the ERQ reappraisal score and perceived control over various aspects of love feelings. Love down-regulation decreased the LPP amplitude between 700–3000 ms in participants who were in a romantic relationship, which indicates that love down-regulation reduced the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to the partner. ERPs have been used before to study emotion regulation and to study romantic love, but not to study love regulation. During the first love-year, serotonin levels gradually return to normal, and the “stupid” and “obsessive” aspects of the condition moderate. Arousal ratings showed no significant effects involving the factor Regulation, all ps > .26. Participants mostly used distraction and reappraisal when heartbroken. To conclude, participants reported to use several behavioral and cognitive strategies in heartbreak and long-term relationship contexts. Because the LPP begins in the time range of the classic P300 [19] and can last as long as the stimulus duration [56], the ERP was quantified by mean amplitude measures in four time windows based on previous work [47, 48, 56–58]: 300–400 ms, 400–700 ms, 700–1000 ms, 1000–3000 ms. For each time window, mean amplitudes measures at Fz, Cz, and Pz were subjected to two ANOVAs. After the regulation task, participants wrote down what they had thought to up- and down-regulate love feelings to verify that they had followed the instructions. Participants reported the use of prototypical emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal, distraction, and situation selection. Recognize that the internal voice is strong but it's not real. I love chocolate (or skiing). Two participants reported that they could not decrease love feelings. develop trust and intensify connection. In the four open strategy questions, we did not ask participants about the effectiveness of the strategies they listed. And yet, it has a strong influence on workplace outcomes. In the third and fourth block, participants were instructed to up- and down-regulate their love feelings in response to the partner pictures (order counterbalanced between participants) using reappraisal. A negative up-regulation effect in negative affect means a reduction in negative affect due to love up-regulation. Per participant, a maximum of one bad electrode included in the analyses (see below) was corrected using spherical spline topographic interpolation. We did not test the long-term effects of love regulation, but it might be that even though it may be cumbersome at this moment to use reappraisal to up-regulate love feelings, it may have beneficial long-term effects in the context of romantic relationships. When the The mean score on the 17 perceived control questions was 4.5 (SD = 1.4). Those follow-up tests were paired samples t-tests testing differences between conditions across both groups (in case of significant main or interaction effects without the factor Group) or within groups (in case of significant interactions with the factor Group). themselves and they do not feel loved by others. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both Romantic love is deemed to be of a higher metaphysical and ethical status than sexual or physical attractiveness alone. The LPP amplitude can therefore be used as an objective measure of regulation success [19]. Example of a Journal with Scholarly Articles In the break-up group, none of the post hoc tests were significant. They also are very The break-up group used undertaking (new) activities with the beloved mostly to prevent love feelings from declining, while the relationship group used this strategy both to maintain their relationship and to prevent love feelings from declining. Love regulation will benefit individuals and society because it could enhance positive effects and reduce negative effects of romantic love. In short, love regulation may increase the positive effects and decrease the negative effects of love on individuals and on society and therefore deserves much attention from the scientific community. The 32 Ag-AgCl active electrodes were placed upon the scalp by means of a head cap (BioSemi), according to the 10–20 International System. It could be that the five-point rating scale we used was too coarse to detect any changes in arousal due to love regulation. These findings suggest that implicit up-regulation of love feelings for the current romantic partner is feasible and that it contributes to relationship satisfaction. In order to help define this idea of love, several books and numerous research articles were consulted, and interviews were conducted with faculty of The University of Rhode Island. 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