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First of all I would like to thank everyone for their thoughtful discussion both in class and in the forum. Our group set out to pick an ambiguous concept like love for the very reason that it would spark a great deal of debate about the tie-in between environment, psychology, and biology. I’d like to start by addressing the concern that some of you have expressed in terms of science “demystifying” or “dissecting” the concept of love. I personally believe that a person can strive to understand the interplay between the environmental and biological factors that underlie a specific cognitive or emotional state while simultaneously enjoying it! As we have seen, both in our own experiences and over the course of discussion, love is by its very nature an irrational and capricious emotion. And while science is making strides to understand the underlying framework upon which love is based, the end product can still take your breath away. To use another example, I spent a semester learning about the science of rollercoasters. I now know that gravity, track angles, breaks, etc. contribute to a rollercoaster’s function, but when I strap myself into a car it still takes my breath away. I think that love is similar; The emotion is defined by the complex interplay between biology (as Emily and Gillian discuss), cultural and environmental influences (as Liz and Natsu discuss in their posts), and also by the way we choose to deal with the emotion on a conscious level (as Jenna addresses in her post). Even taking these things into consideration, there is no reason why it can’t still feel magical. Due to the complexity of the emotion, I agree with Jessica’s point that there may indeed be no such thing as “true love.” At the same time, I believe that aspects of love appear to be universal: Human empathy, the formation of social hierarchy, and sexual feelings to name a few.

Another point that has been brought up is how animal models (like the voles) explain human relationships. Again, it is important to understand that these studies do not attempt to summarily explain the complexity of human monogamy, but rather show that neurophysiology appears to have at least a partial role in human bond pairs. As an animal researcher, I am often asked about how my work is “practical,” or directly relates to the human condition. To use the vole study as an example, voles do not have sex for the same reasons that human do. As far as we can tell, voles do not have sex because they are bored, or as an affair as a way to show a spouse that the marriage is over. Human sexuality is almost hopelessly complex, but the important thing to understand when trying to parse out the reasons for emotions like love and jealousy is the concept of proximal versus ultimate goals. We have sex for many different reasons: We’re bored, we’re in love, we’re jealous, we’re tying to have a baby, it feels good, we had too much to drink, etc. These are all proximal reasons- in very few instances are you thinking “I want to propagate the survival of my species” when you are flirting with an attractive stranger. Yet I believe that the only, the only way that these behaviors make sense is by putting them into perspective, to find the ultimate reason for why these traits have been passed down over thousands of generations of successful maters. And the reason is reproduction. Paul and Jessica have both brought up interesting counter-examples to these points, talking about other goals that lead up to or occur during sex. I would argue, however, that while love-related euphoria and the female orgasm may stem from a more basic reward-pathway or social framework, both of these systems evolved over time because they facilitated survival of younger generations (either by rewarding sex or the formation of a dyadic pair with a cocaine-like high, or increasing the chances that a mate will stick around to enjoy additional bouts of superior sex).

Finally, I’d like to address Paul’s comment about the reasons for this type of social research. I think that concepts like love are too complex to rationally define at this point in time, either in a scientific or political forum. Yet the latter has already done so by restricting the rights of homosexuals, including marriage. I wish that we had had more opportunity to discuss gay marriage in class, and the current stance on gay versus straight love. I think that additional research may help show that, in fact, there are no differences in the way that homosexual couples feel about one another, and that they deserve the same opportunities that heterosexual couples enjoy in our society. I’ll leave off at this point (this post is getting very long!) but I’d love to hear other thoughts about why this type of research is needed.

~Alex Tuttle

Haverford '08