Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

What kind of mental phenomenon is romantic love? Many philosophers, psychologists, and ordinary folk treat it as an emotion. This chapter argues the category of emotion is inadequate to account for romantic love. It examines major emotion theories in philosophy and psychology and shows that they fail to illustrate that romantic love is an emotion. It considers the categories of basic emotions and emotion complexes, and demonstrates they too come short in accounting for romantic love. It assesses the roles of (...) culture and evolution in shaping the romantic love phenomenon and evaluates the ways in which the norms of rationality that are applied to standard emotions fail to apply to love. It considers the category of sentiments and argue that despite coming close, it does not adequately capture the nature of romantic love. Finally, the chapter makes a case for love being best characterized as a syndrome. (shrink)

“Love hurts”—as the saying goes—and a certain amount of pain and difficulty in intimate relationships is unavoidable. Sometimes it may even be beneficial, since adversity can lead to personal growth, self-discovery, and a range of other components of a life well-lived. But other times, love can be downright dangerous. It may bind a spouse to her domestic abuser, draw an unscrupulous adult toward sexual involvement with a child, put someone under the insidious spell of a cult leader, and even inspire (...) jealousy-fueled homicide. How might these perilous devotions be diminished? The ancients thought that treatments such as phlebotomy, exercise, or bloodletting could “cure” an individual of love. But modern neuroscience and emerging developments in psychopharmacology open up a range of possible interventions that might actually work. These developments raise profound moral questions about the potential uses—and misuses—of such anti-love biotechnology. In this article, we describe a number of prospective love-diminishing interventions, and offer a preliminary ethical framework for dealing with them responsibly should they arise. (shrink)

We argue that the fragility of contemporary marriages—and the corresponding high rates of divorce—can be explained (in large part) by a three-part mismatch: between our relationship values, our evolved psychobiological natures, and our modern social, physical, and technological environment. “Love drugs” could help address this mismatch by boosting our psychobiologies while keeping our values and our environment intact. While individual couples should be free to use pharmacological interventions to sustain and improve their romantic connection, we suggest that they may have (...) an obligation to do so as well, in certain cases. Specifically, we argue that couples with offspring may have a special responsibility to enhance their relationships for the sake of their children. We outline an evolutionarily informed research program for identifying promising biomedical enhancements of love and commitment. (shrink)

This paper reviews the evolutionary history and biology of love and marriage. It examines the current and imminent possibilities of biological manipulation of lust, attraction and attachment, so called neuroenhancement of love. We examine the arguments for and against these biological interventions to influence love. We argue that biological interventions offer an important adjunct to psychosocial interventions, especially given the biological limitations inherent in human love.

One longitudinal study of married couples and one experiment tested the hypothesis that the experience of sexual desire for an alternative sexual partner might heighten feelings of desire for one’s long-term romantic partner, and conversely, sexual desire for one’s long-term partner might heighten desire for alternative partners. A daily-diary study of newlywed couples revealed that (a) on days people reported heightened interest in alternative partners, they also reported increased desire to have sex with their partner and (b) on days people (...) reported heightened desire to have sex with their partner, they also reported increased interest in alternative partners. An experimental study of partnered individuals revealed that people primed with sexual desire for an alternative partner reported increased sexual desire for their romantic partner (relative to a control condition). People primed with sexual desire for their romantic partner, however, did not report increased sexual desire for alternatives. Taken together, these findings support evolutionary perspectives on the function of sexual desire. Findings are consistent with the broader hypothesis that sexual desire is not partner-specific. (shrink)

Lamy probing rich analysis focuses more on the criteria necessary to spark or produce a potential lover’s readiness to “fall in love.” His analysis is silent, however, about the feeling state of congeniality or mutual attachment. This raises the intriguing question: if romantic love requires some form of cognitive realization or awareness of the love object, then does long-time companionship or comfort love anchored in a deep attachment have a similar cognitive horizon?

Romantic love is associated with mind wandering about the beloved. We tested associations between mind wandering about the beloved and infatuation, attachment, self-reported distraction, task performance, and enjoyment. Participants who were in love completed self-report measures and a sustained attention response task with thought probes. Participants reported thinking about their beloved for 67% of the time in general and up to 42% of the time during task performance. Thinking about the beloved in general was positively associated with infatuation (passionate love) (...) but not with attachment (companionate love). The more time participants reported thinking about their beloved in general, the more distracting they found it and the less they could withhold a response to no go stimuli. The more participants thought about their beloved during the task, the slower their responses to go stimuli were. In contrast to the negative terminology typically used to describe frequent thoughts about the beloved, such as intrusive or obsessive thinking, participants overwhelmingly enjoyed thinking about their beloved. The findings suggest that romantic love impairs cognitive task performance because people are thinking about their beloved instead, which may negatively impact performance at school and work. Nevertheless, people seem to greatly enjoy thinking about their beloved. (shrink)

Males and females of a number of animal species divide labor and provide jointly for offspring. Males may provide food, for example, while females protect defenseless young. This exchange is unlikely, however, unless a prior partnership has been established in which a female practices fidelity in exchange for a male’s provisioning activity. The formation of the trading partnership is itself an exchange, and economic theory can help explain when and why there are mutual gains from trading fidelity for resources. Environmental (...) factors determine the potential gains from trade while evolved psychological mechanisms influence the extent to which gains are realized. (shrink)

Concealed fecundity and extended female sexual receptivity have evolved in some primates, including humans, conferring advantages both within primarily monogamous relationships and from extrapair liaisons. As humans evolved the intellectual capacity for decision-making, women became capable of altering their own fertility. In some circumstances, they may choose to ameliorate risks and responsibilities associated with pregnancy by reducing sexual motivation near the perceived most fecund time of their menstrual cycle. But three findings—a general inability of women to accurately recognize their own (...) intervals of fecundity, high variability in ovulation timing, and unconscious transmission and reception of cues associated with fecundity—constitute a physiological and behavioral syndrome that can be considered self-deception. In this study, I develop a descriptive model to determine implications of the hypothesis that these features of female and male physiology and behavior have been shaped by natural selection in response to female decision-making. My analysis shows that consensus motivation for coitus between partners influences both the importance of variable ovulation date and the probability of conception, under the influence of self-deception. It also identifies priorities for future empirical work. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBesides physiological, behavioural, and affective effects, romantic love also has cognitive effects. In this study, we tested whether individual differences in infatuation and/or attachment level predict impaired interference control even in the absence of a love booster procedure, and whether individual differences in attachment level predict reduced adaptive cognitive control as measured by conflict adaptation and post-error slowing. Eighty-three young adults who had recently fallen in love completed a Stroop-like task, which yielded reliable indices of interference control and adaptive cognitive (...) control. We did not observe the predicted negative association between infatuation or attachment level and interference control. It might be that reduced interference control with love only happens when people are actively thinking about their beloved. In addition, we observed only weak evidence for the prediction t... (shrink)

Romantic love is a phenomenon of immense interest to the general public as well as to scholars in several disciplines. It is known to be present in almost all human societies and has been studied from a number of perspectives. In this integrative review, we bring together what is known about romantic love using Tinbergen’s “four questions” framework originating from evolutionary biology. Under the first question, related to mechanisms, we show that it is caused by social, psychological mate choice, genetic, (...) neural, and endocrine mechanisms. The mechanisms regulating psychopathology, cognitive biases, and animal models provide further insights into the mechanisms that regulate romantic love. Under the second question, related to development, we show that romantic love exists across the human lifespan in both sexes. We summarize what is known about its development and the internal and external factors that influence it. We consider cross-cultural perspectives and raise the issue of evolutionary mismatch. Under the third question, related to function, we discuss the fitness-relevant benefits and costs of romantic love with reference to mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding. We outline three possible selective pressures and contend that romantic love is a suite of adaptions and by-products. Under the fourth question, related to phylogeny, we summarize theories of romantic love’s evolutionary history and show that romantic love probably evolved in concert with pair-bonds in our recent ancestors. We describe the mammalian antecedents to romantic love and the contribution of genes and culture to the expression of modern romantic love. We advance four potential scenarios for the evolution of romantic love. We conclude by summarizing what Tinbergen’s four questions tell us, highlighting outstanding questions as avenues of potential future research, and suggesting a novel ethologically informed working definition to accommodate the multi-faceted understanding of romantic love advanced in this review. (shrink)

How do women's sexual interests change across their ovulatory cycles? This question is one of the most enduring within the human evolutionary behavioral sciences. Yet definitive, agreed-upon answers remain elusive. One empirical pattern appears to be robust: Women experience greater levels of sexual desire and interest when conceptive during their cycles. But this pattern is not straightforward or self-explanatory. We lay out multiple possible, broad explanations for it. Based on selectionist reasoning, we argue that the conditions that give rise to (...) sexual interests during conceptive and non-conceptive phases are likely to differ. Because conceptive and non-conceptive sex have distinct functions, the sexual interests during conceptive and non-conceptive phases are likely to have different strategic ends. We discuss provisional evidence consistent with this perspective. But the exact nature of women's dual sexuality, if it exists, remains unclear. Additional empirical research is needed. But perhaps more crucially, this topic demands additional theory that fruitfully guides and interprets future empirical research. (shrink)

Previous research in North America has supported the view that male involvement in committed, romantic relationships is associated with lower testosterone (T) levels. Here, we test the prediction that undergraduate men involved in committed, romantic relationships (paired) will have lower T levels than men not involved in such relationships (unpaired). Further, we also test whether these differences are more apparent in samples collected later, rather than earlier, in the day. For this study, 107 undergraduate men filled out a questionnaire and (...) collected one saliva sample (from which a subject’s T level was measured) at various times across the day. As in previous studies, men involved in committed, romantic relationships had lower salivary T levels, though only during later times of the day. Furthermore, additional analysis of the variation among unpaired subjects indicated that men without prior relationship experience had lower T levels than experienced men. Finally, while paired men as a group had lower T levels than unpaired men, those men at the earliest stage (less than six months) of a current relationship had higher T levels than unpaired men as well as men in longer-term relationships. These results suggest that variation in male testosterone levels may reflect differential behavioral allocation to mating effort. (shrink)