The Science of Love

Dunbar Robin

Description

A scientific exploration of some of humanity's most puzzling questions: What is love? Why do we fall in (and out) of love? And why would we have evolved to feel something so weird, with so many downsides?

Whether you live for Valentine's Day or are the type to forget your wedding anniversary, love is, quite simply, part of being human. In The Science of Love, renowned evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar uses the latest science to explore every aspect of human love. Why do we kiss? What evolutionary benefit could there be to feeling like you would die for your mate? If love exists to encourage child-bearing and child-rearing, why do we love until death do us part (and beyond)? Is parental love anything like romantic love? Dunbar explores everything science has discovered about romance, passion, sex, and commitment, answering these questions and more.

• Draws on the latest scientific research to examine the many aspects of love?passion, commitment, intimacy, hugging, kissing, monogamy, cheating, and more?and explain why we have evolved to behave as we do
• Filled with fascinating insights into specific human behaviors and experiences, from the European air kiss on both cheeks to the phenomenon of love at first sight
• Written by Robin Dunbar, a prominent anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist whose work have been featured in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and many other books

1 Now We Are One 1

2 Truly, Madly, Deeply 31

3 The Monogamous Brain 60

4 Through a Glass Darkly 84

5 Saving Face 114

6 By Kith or by Kin 133

7 A Cheat by Any Other Name 162

8 Sleeping with the Devil 193

9 Love and Betrayal Online 215

10 Evolution?s Dilemma 236

Acknowledgements 265

Bibliography 266

Index 295

Sujets

• Life Sciences
• Sciences et techniques
• Evolution
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 09 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118397671
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Chapter 1: Now We Are One
Can t take my eyes off of you . . .
Motherhood and apple pie
What is love?
When language is so inadequate
Chapter 2: Truly, Madly, Deeply
Love hormones?
The story gets more complicated
Laughter, the best medicine
The whiff of success
Ae fond kiss?
Chapter 3: The Monogamous Brain
Just how demanding can pairbonds be?
Scheherazade triumphant
The mystery in the mind
Chapter 4: Through a Glass Darkly
Rational choice?
How lonely the heart
The Cinderella moment
Showing off
Chapter 5: Saving Face
Something in the way she moves
Faces in the crowd
The sweet smell of symmetry
Chapter 6: By Kith or by Kin
Family and friends
The importance of being networked
Why friendships wane
The costs of romance
When your choice is not your own
Chapter 7: A Cheat by Any Other Name
Breaking up isn t hard to do
It s the pain that you feel
Cads v. dads
Trust in what you see
Mad, bad and indescribable
Chapter 8: Sleeping with the Devil
In love with God
Charisma, sex and religion
The God spot
Beyond the edge of despair
Chapter 9: Love and Betrayal Online
Mirage and avatar
Virtual love
Cyberwars
Virtual unreality
Chapter 10: Evolution s Dilemma
Unpacking the evolutionary question
Putting humans in their place
Hired guns in a poacher s paradise
Who loves whom?
When did pairbonds evolve?
Envoi
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index
By the same author

Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language
The Trouble with Science
The Human Story
How Many Friends Does One Person Need ?

Copyright 2012 by Robin Dunbar. All rights reserved
Cover image: science beakers Lumina Imaging/Getty Images; painting The Kiss (detail) by Gustav Klimt
Cover design: Wendy Mount
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Faber and Faber Limited
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data :
Dunbar, R. I. M. (Robin Ian MacDonald), date.
The science of love / by Robin Dunbar.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-39765-7 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-46684-1 (ebk);
ISBN 978-1-118-39767-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-39766-4 (ebk)
1. Love. 2. Man-woman relationships. I. Title.
BF575.L8D86 2012
306.7-dc23
2012025736
For Patsy
Chapter 1
Now We Are One
O my luve s like a red, red rose
That s newly sprung in June!
O my luve s like the melodie
That s sweetly play d in tune!
A Red, Red Rose
It s the weirdest thing that will ever happen to you. Falling in love, I mean. Think about it - there you are, wending your way innocently through childhood, doing the things that children do, and then the hormones suddenly kick in. And then you fall in love. Hesitatingly in that first allconsuming crush, but then with more confidence and determination as practice and experience make perfect. And although it doesn t happen every day, from time to time throughout the rest of your life it will catch you by surprise. It s very weird. All at once, you can t think of anything else except this seemingly random person who has just stepped - probably equally innocently - into your life. Your attention is focused almost to exclusion on the object of your desire. You just cannot get enough of them. You experience heightened happiness, often associated with glazed eyes, a faraway look and a dreamy expression, and roused (though not turbulent) emotions. The word besotted often comes to mind.
Think Romeo and Juliet. Here in one single story, Shakespeare has managed to encapsulate every aspect of that extraordinary phenomenon in a beautifully crafted play. Were two star-crossed lovers ever so finely drawn? Their agony and angst distilled so deftly? Their story remains the quintessential tale of unrequited love, of the unattainable for which the protagonists ache with such all-consuming passion. In this richly complex play, Shakespeare combines all the elements of the human mate choice predicament - the accidental meeting that precipitates instantaneous love on both sides, the friends that try to arrange trysts (as Benvolio does in his attempt to facilitate Romeo s meeting with Rosaline at the Capulet ball, thus inadvertently engineering the fatal meeting between hero and heroine), parents inevitable attempts to manipulate their offspring s marital arrangements to their best advantage (as Capulet does in agreeing to Count Paris s request for his daughter Juliette s hand), and, last but not least, the raw uncertainty as to whether we can achieve our desired outcome (instantiated here by the enmity that separates the Capulet and Montague families and forms so insidious a barrier between the lovers).
The story raises, in one seminal moment, all the questions about love and betrayal that one can imagine. Why did Romeo fall so suddenly for Juliet, when he went to the ball to sneak a meeting with Rosaline? Can we really fall in love at first sight, or is that just an urban myth? Why is the desire for a kiss so strong? Can we really love one person forever? Are we ever so distraught that we could take our own lives when our passion is thwarted - never mind if we return home to discover the love of our life awaiting burial? But even if we don t go to the lengths that Romeo did, can we actually die of a broken heart ? And even if we can t, why is it that we feel the pain of separation or rejection as real pain?
This book brings modern science to bear on these questions. It will oblige us to draw on scientific disciplines that are very rarely bedfellows. The very richness of the experience makes that inevitable. But first, what is this phenomenon we refer to as falling in love? And is it really a human universal? Many have claimed that it is not, and that many traditional societies do not recognise it - that it is a phenomenon born of nineteenth-century romantic novels. So let s begin by looking more closely at what we have to study.
The kind of besottedness that we associate with romantic love can be both intense and, compared to mate attraction in most other animals, relatively long-lasting. This early intense phase of a human relationship typically lasts twelve to eighteen months, but can often extend for several years beyond that in attenuated form. In the heady intellectualised aftermath of the 1960s, it became fashionable among intellectuals, and especially among anthropologists, to assert that this sense of falling in love is a peculiarity of modern, Western, capitalist culture, driven no doubt by the market in Mills Boon-style romantic fiction. In traditional societies, people did not marry for love, but as a matter of economic convenience or for political reasons. It is still a common view. But this is to confuse the reasons for marriage contracts with the relationships involved. People have always been hardnosed and married for political or economic convenience. Arranged marriages have been a feature of every human culture the world over. Currently, they happen to be especially common throughout much of South Asia, from Iraq as far east as Japan, but they were the bread and meat of the noble houses of Europe ever since the Romans left us alone to get on with our lives as best we could. People still marry for convenience and economic advantage every day all over the Western world. But that doesn t mean to say that people don t fall in love. Whether they marry because they fall in love is a separate issue. In actual fact, the falling in love bit can happen just as often the other way around: people get married for strategic reasons and then, lo and behold, fall in love. As Moli re put it in his play Sganarelle (1660): Love is often a fruit of marriage.
The evidence from arranged marriages tells us that the seemingly hapless couple often end up falling in love with each other after the formalities of the wedding - sometimes months,