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Hi Everyone!

I first want to thank our entire class for a wonderful discussion on Tuesday night. I think we covered interesting, controversial topics and participated in some very engaging discussions. So, thanks everyone for participating! I look forward to continuing our conversation about the "science of love" through this online forum.

I wanted to pose some interesting questions/ ideas that came up in our discussion and would like to hear what other people think of them:

E-Harmony- although we only just began talking about this topic at the end of our discussion, I think E-Harmony (and other sites like it) raise some interesting questions. E-Harmony matches people on 29 "core dimensions of personality"- E-Harmony has looked at core traits such as emotional temperament, social style, cognitive mode, physicality and at vital attributes such as relationship skills, beliefs & values, & key experiences. E-Harmony uses research based on successful & happy married couples to determine how they can match up two people based on 29 core dimensions of personality and then hopefully, so they can get married. However, although E-Harmony does not seem to match identical people to one another (clones), they definitely seem to be matching people who are "similar" on these 29 core dimensions of personality. My question is how does matching similar people together for marriage/ life/ families/ parents affect our natural "diversity"? I think it is an important issue to think of the implications E-Harmony could potentially have on effecting our diversity. E-Harmony's matching of similar people also makes me think of the cliche phrase: "opposites attract"- if this is true, which I think for some people it may be and for others it may not be, this idea goes against what "E-harmony" is trying to do. The opposites attract idea- seems to create more diversity (at least in my mind) than putting people who are very similar together.

Another interesting question that arose- "Is love an addiction?" Granted, it seems to me that love has many "addictive" qualities- and it does seem to be linked w/ brain areas involved in reward pathway. And, as I mentioned in class the same brain areas activated during cocaine and opioid-induced euphoria are activated while looking at a picture of your loved one- which suggests that love has this same "euphoric component" and "addictive component"? Although, no matter what brain areas lit up, I'm sure people would find a "plausible" story, however, I think the story they are telling right now (as far as brain areas are concerned) is quite plausible & convincing to me.

I also enjoyed talking about break-up as a good or a bad thing? And the question (emily brought up again) why do we fall out of love (and break-up?)? I think break-ups can be good & bad depending on each situation- however, I do think there is a stigma/ stereotype in our current society that break-ups are a "bad thing." I think this is primarily because when many of us are in a relationship that "breaks-up" we feel bad/ sad/ mad/ angry- many negative emotions afterwards. I'm interested to hear what other people think.

Also, I thought Paul raised an interesting question at the end of class and in the forum- about how this research on love/ romantic love relates to research in bio labs? should we be applying the same standards to both research? is the research on love/ romance worth doing? why? I think these are big questions to answer, and important ones we should continue to think about. I look forward to hearing everyone's responses!