Understanding the Psychology Behind Falling in Love

In the lecture by Doctor Helen Fisher titled, "Why People Fall in Love", she explores precisely that- explaining what emotional, biological and physical drives lead human beings to fall in love with another person. Though we have always had an innate drive for reproduction, humans did not initially evolve as monogamous beings. Fisher believes that initial romantic attraction stemmed from mammal mating rituals and sexual competition within the animal kingdom. This phenomenon is even noted by Charles Darwin as, "what has become known as ‘mate choice’, as a central aspect of intersexual selection, the type of sexual selection by which individuals of one sex evolve traits that attract members of the opposite sex." This phenomenon is akin to what is familiarly known today as natural selection. Though modern humans no longer resort to flashy displays of feathers or intricate dances, the way we attract and find attraction in other humans has only further developed, as seen in Fisher’s aforementioned lecture.

First, Fisher separates the idea of love into three unique categories. The first base level of attraction is the "sex drive", the need for sexual gratification. It can be as instantaneous as seeing someone that you find physically attractive standing at a party or a bar. The sex drive is connected to the hormone testosterone, and in turn, is our most animalistic sense of love and attraction. The sex drive is focused on one singular goal in a person’s life and can be temporarily satiated, but like cracked glass, it will not stay full forever. For humans, our levels of androgens (male sex hormones, like testosterone) decline with age, meaning that to form meaningful and lasting relationships with another human being, it must extend beyond the boundaries of sexual desire and into the realm of romantic attraction and attachment.

The second category of love is "romantic attraction", arguably the most complex of the three. Romantic attraction, also called courtship attraction, is what determines whether one’s feelings for someone extend beyond just sexual chemistry. It involves three hormones: dopamine, norephedrine, and serotonin, and they all play an important part in determining how and why we fall in love. We can see in animals the connection of hormone responses to emotional feelings, and humans are no exception. The brain produces dopamine, which is responsible for positive rewards when we do things that please us. Certain actions or even certain people create different levels of dopamine reactions. Dopamine’s effect on the brain can explain why some people feel romantic attraction for a partner after casual sex, orgasms flood the brain with dopamine and which in turn can be interpreted as, or even spark, romantic attraction. This influence of hormones is why we feel "butterflies" or our palms become sweaty when we are around someone we find romantically attractive. However, romantic attraction is more than just the influence of chemicals on the brain. As Fisher describes, "it’s like a fever. It comes and goes quite independently from the will."

The last category is "attachment". Fisher says that "partner attachment, or pair-bonding, in birds and mammals is characterized by mutual territory defense and/or nest building, mutual feeding and grooming, maintenance of close proximity, separation anxiety, shared parental chores and affiliative behaviors." Once past the stage of initial sexual chemistry, and upon the decision of deciding to become partners, "attachment" determines whether partners can bond with each other and pursue long term relationships. Attachment affects a part of the brain also linked to physical pain. Fisher explains that it is the same area that is affected by a toothache. Humans can become addicted to anything that brings them pleasure, and love is no exception. If a couple separates, they both are not receiving their usual doses of dopamine, which in turn may lead to a string of casual relationships or casual sex. Attachment is far more than just a commitment between two people, it is an exchange of neurotransmitters and hormones that can become addictive.

After assessing and reading about Doctor Helen Fisher’s claims, I do find them to be convincing. From a simple biological standpoint, her information seems credible and I also held onto this conclusion even after reading research from others. Her presentation was backed by research from other scientists, basic biological data as well as her own clinical trials and experimentation. It was presented in a way that was easy to comprehend and she offered definitions and explanations for almost every aspect of her presentation. All in all, I found her work in the video lecture to be convincing and seemingly accurate.

To be sure that what she claimed was factual, I checked with other scientific journals and articles written by credible individuals. An especially interesting scientific journal I found was written by Helen Fisher herself, Arthur Aron and Lucy Brown, titled: "Romantic love: a mammalian brain system for mate choice". This text dives into much deeper into the physical and biological changes that the body endures when falling in love, and explains why certain neurotransmitters and hormones affect us the way that they do. Touching on ideas from Charles Darwin, this article explains how hormones like dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine determine the way we love one another. Another researcher who I looked into was a Psychologist Rick Hanson who was a Senior Fellow at UC Berkley. In his article titled, "The Evolution of Love" he explains how humans evolved to have the capacity for love, and why. His theory that humans developed a complex emotional capacity over time to better care for their young, is consistent with what Fisher explained in her research.

Chapter 3 of "Psychology: From Inquiry to Understanding" is heavily intertwined with this topic on how humans feel love and attraction. In Fisher’s presentation, she showed brain scans of couples who have been in love for long periods, and the scans showed an increase of activity in the ventral tegmental area, the area responsible for the production of dopamine. The feelings of love and attraction are also heavily linked to the endocrine system, as hormones such as dopamine and serotonin factor in majorly to our feelings of love and attraction. Love itself is a largely chemical process that relies on many factors of the body to function in its entirety.

The documentary titled Brainsex: Why We Fall in Love was an interesting approach to the scientific reasons as to why we fall in love. They explain evolutionary factors as to why we are attracted to others, for example, men are more attracted to women they perceive as youthful and fertile, who make good candidates for childbearing, and women are attracted to the faces of men whom they find friendly and approachable, making for easy mating. Many of the facts mentioned in this documentary were general, surface-level explanations for human attraction, which I believe to be a bit outdated in today’s culture. Some claims even felt a bit pseudo-scientific. Another fact mentioned in the documentary was that women are most attracted by men with money and power, which will, in turn, lead to a more prosperous life for their children. I do not believe this to be entirely false, but in my opinion, I felt that many deeper and more emotional reasons for the attraction were omitted. Some things I did find interesting, however, was that women and men have the same hormonal changes as when exposed to pornography, and that when women ovulate, their senses of smells are heightened to male pheromones. I think an interesting perspective in this documentary would have covered same-sex attraction, because when the evolutionary desire of procreation is removed from a couple, how is their attraction to each other changed or altered?

Attraction or even the act of falling in love are things that almost everyone experiences in their life. Even in our subconscious, beauty is factored into most everything we consume. Television and movies tend to cast attractive actors and actresses, models on the runway or plastered on magazine covers are in a career that exists solely because they are aesthetically pleasing, we are even shilled products with empty promises to make us thinner or feel more beautiful. Attraction cannot be escaped. Part of this is ingrained in us through evolution, by way of "survival of the fittest", trying to find the most physically superior mate, and part of it is through the media and culture of humanity pushing this idyllic idea of beauty. But, we know that attraction isn’t everything, as is evident in the United States divorce rate. If the success of long term relationships was based solely on looks, the rate of divorces would be virtually non-existent. I found the topic of attractiveness and why exactly we fall in love to be fascinating. For so long I believed love and attraction to be some kind of metaphysical feelings that came and went as they pleased. It was interesting to look into the scientific and biological reasoning as to why we feel love, and especially just how much our hormones affect these feelings.

After watching Doctor Helen Fisher’s presentation titled "Why People Fall in Love", reading through scientific journals and independent research, and watching Brainsex: Why We Fall in Love, I believe that I have a much deeper understanding of just why humans fall in love with each other. The initial stages begin with baseline physical attraction and our sex drives, this is the most primal element of love and is based on our evolutionary desire for reproduction. The next stages of romantic (or courtship) attraction are based on trying to win over this prospective partner, we become giddy and nervous, our hormones responsible for these feelings such as "butterflies" in our stomachs. The last stage is attachment, where we hold onto our partners and try to form long term bonds with the. We grow accustomed to the rushes of dopamine that we get from spending time with them, we feel anxious when we are apart from them, and can even feel real physical pain when broken up or separated. As this is just a summary of what I learned, the language of love and attraction are far more intricate than three simple stages of a relationship. However, overall, I feel that the research I learned from Doctor Helen Fisher’s presentation and the Brainsex Documentary helped me to better understand all of the components that make up the most complex aspect of human behavior: love.