Study about How Science Can Help People Fall in Love
NOTE TO HUFFINGTON POST READERS: The contents of this article has a lot of good points that you can use in your marriage to help get closer to your partner. I've been using this in part of the Marriage Mediation I do with couples who are on the verge of divorce. It's all about reconnecting with your partner. These are the tools to help you do it.
References: Epstein, R. (2010). How Science Can Help You Fall in Love. Scientific American Mind, 20(7), 26-33. Retrieved from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection database.
Nothing is more fulfilling than being in a successful love relationship. Yet we leave our love lives entirely to chance. Maybe we don't have to anymore The best way to get students interested in scientific studies is to give them hands-on experiences that get them excited about the subject matter. In chemistry courses, teachers accomplish that with test tubes and mysterious liquids. In a course I taught recently at the University of California, San Diego, on relationship science, I piqued my students' interest with exercises on, well, love. To begin, I invited eight students who did not know each other to come to the front of the auditorium, where I paired them up randomly. I then asked each individual to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much he or she liked, loved, or felt close to his or her partner. Then I asked the couples to look deeply into each other's eyes in an exercise I call Soul Gazing. There was some giggling at first and then some very intense gazing. After two minutes, I again asked for the numbers. The result? A modest 7 percent increase in loving (meaning 1 point added for one person in one couple), an 11 percent increase in liking, and a whopping 45 percent increase in closeness.
There were gasps and cheers in the audience. When I asked everyone in the class to pair up for two minutes of gazing, 89 percent of the students said the exercise increased feelings of intimacy. And that was just the beginning.
Eye Contact
About 50 percent of first marriages fail in the U.S., as do two thirds of second marriages and three quarters of third marriages. So much for practice! We fail in large part because we enter into relationships with poor skills for maintaining them and highly unrealistic expectations. We also tend to pick unsuitable partners, mistakenly believing that we are in love simply because we feel physical attraction.
That combination of factors sets us up for failure: eventually — often within a mere 18 months — the fog of passion dissipates, and we begin to see our partner with new clarity. All too often we react by saying, "Who are you?" or "You've changed." We might try hard for years after that to keep things going, especially if children are in the picture. But if we start out with the wrong person and lack basic tools for resolving conflicts and communicating, the chances that we will succeed are slim to none.
Over the years, having looked carefully at the fast-growing scientific literature on relationship science and having conducted some new research of my own, I have come to believe that there is a definite fix for our poor performance in romantic relationships. The fix is to extract a practical technology from the research and then to teach people how to use it.
At least 80 scientific studies help to reveal how people learn to love each other. A 1989 study by psychologist James D. Laird of Clark University and his colleagues inspired my Soul Gazing exercise. The researchers showed that mutual eye gazing (but not gazing at hands) produced rapid increases in feelings of both liking and loving in total strangers. Mutual gazing is like staring, but with an important difference: for many mammalian species, staring is both intended and received as a threat. Try it on a New York subway if you have any doubts about its efficacy. In mutual gazing, however, people are giving each
other permission to stare; that is, they are being vulnerable to each other, and that is the key element in emotional bonding. The vulnerability created when people are in war zones can create powerful emotional bonds in seconds, and even hostages some-times develop strong attachments to their captors, a phenomenon called the Stockholm syndrome.
Signs of vulnerability in an animal or another person bring out tendencies in many people to provide care and protection — to be drawn to that being and to like or even love him or her. And as research in social psychology has shown for decades, when a person is feeling vulnerable and thus agitated or otherwise aroused, he or she often looks around for clues about how to interpret and label those feelings. The body is saying, "I'm aroused, but I'm not sure why," and the environment is suggesting an answer, namely, that you're in love.
A Technology of Affection
Soul Gazing is one of dozens of exercises I have distilled from scientific studies that make people feel vulnerable and increase intimacy. Love Aura, Let Me Inside and Secret Swap are other examples of fun, bond-building activities that any couple can learn and practice [see box on preceding page].
Students could earn extra credit in my course by trying out such techniques with friends, romantic interests or even total strangers. More than 90 percent of the students in the course reported using these methods successfully to improve their relationships , and more than 50 of the 213 students submitted detailed reports about their experiences. Nearly all the reports documented increases in liking, loving, closeness or attraction of between 3 and 30 percent over about a month. In a few cases , ratings tripled [see box on opposite page]. (Students did not need to enhance their relationships to receive extra credit; all they had to do was document their use of the techniques.)
The few except ions I saw made sense. One heterosexual male saw no positive effects when he tried the exercises with another male; moreover, the experience made him "uncomfortable ." When he tried them with a female, however, his intimacy ratings increased by 25 percent — and hers increased by 144 percent!
A student named Olivia attempted the exercises with her brother, mother, a good friend and a relative stranger. Soul Gazing failed with her brother because he could not stop giggling. When she and her mom tried the Secret Swap — an activity that creates vulnerability when people disclose secrets to each other — intimacy ratings increased by 31 percent. Exercises she tried with her friend boosted ratings between 10 and 19 percent, but most impressive was the outcome of gazing with someone she barely knew: a 70 percent increase in intimacy.
One student did the assignment with her husband of five years. The couple, Asa and Gill, tried out eight different exercises, and even though their "before" scores were usually very high (9s and 10s), every exercise they tried increased their scores by at least 3 percent. Overall, Asa wrote, "I noticed a drastic change in our bond for one another. My husband seems more affectionate now than he was, for which I am really grateful." She also reported a bonus: a substantial drop in the frequency with which she and her spouse called attention to their past mistakes. This change probably came about because the couple was now, as a result of my course , broadly interested in enhancing their relationship.
Taking Control
The students in my course were doing something new — taking control over their love lives. We grow up on fairy tales and movies in which magical forces help people find their soul mates, with whom they effortlessly live happily ever after. The fairy tales leave us powerless, putting our love lives into the hands of the Fates.
But here is a surprise : most of the world has never heard of those fairy tales. Instead more than half of marriages on our globe are brokered by parents or professional matchmakers, whose main concerns are long-term suitability and family harmony. In India an estimated 95 percent of the marriages are arranged, and although divorce is legal, India has one of the lowest divorce rates in the world. (This is starting to change, of course, as Western ways encroach on traditional society.)
Young couples in India generally have a choice about whether to proceed, and the combination of choice and sound guidance probably accounts for the fact that studies of arranged marriages in India indicate that they measure up well — in, for example, longevity, satisfaction and love — against Western marriages. Indeed, the love experienced by Indian couples in arranged marriages appears to be even more robust than the love people experience in "love marriages." In a 1982 study psychologists Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh of the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, India, used the Rubin Love Scale, which gauges intense, romantic, Western-style love, to determine that love in love marriages in India does exactly what it does in love marriages here: it starts high and declines fairly rapidly. But love in the arranged marriages they examined started out low and gradually increased, surpassing the love in the love marriage about five years out. Ten years into the marriage the love was nearly twice as strong.
How do they do it? How do people in some arranged marriages build love deliberately overtime — and can we do it, too?
Over the past few years I have been interviewing people in arranged marriages in which love has grown over time. One of these couples is Kaiser and Shelly Haque of Minneapolis, who have been happily married for 11 years and have two bright, well-adjusted children. Once he had a secure life in the U.S., Kaiser, an immigrant from Bangladesh, returned to his native country to let his family know he was ready for matrimony. The family did the rest. After just one meeting with Shelly — where, Kaiser said, there was "like at first sight" — the arrangements were made. "We've grown to love each other and to get to know each other over time," Kaiser says. "The sparks are getting bigger, and I think we can do even better in the future."
Kaiser and Shelly are not atypical. A study that Mansi Thakar, a student at the University of Southern California, and I presented at the November 2009 meeting of the National Council on Family Relations included 30 individuals from nine countries of origin and five different religions. Their love had grown, on average , from 3.9 to 8. 5 on a 10-point scale in marriages lasting an average of 19.4 years.
These individuals identified 11 factors that contributed to the growth of their love, 10 of which dovetailed beautifully with the scientific research I reviewed in my course. The most import ant factor was commitment, followed by good communication skills. The couples also identified sharing secrets with a spouse , as well as accommodation — that is , the voluntary altering of a partner's behavior to meet the other person's needs. Seeing a spouse in a vulnerable state (caused by injury or illness) was also singled out. There are many possible lessons here for Westerners, among them: do things deliberately that make you vulnerable to each other. Try experiencing danger, or thrilling simulations of it , as a couple . [ For more tips based on U.S. research, see box on opposite page.]
The results conflicted with those of American studies in only one respect: several of the subjects said their love grew when they had children with their spouse. Studies in the U.S. routinely find parenting to be a threat to feelings of spousal love , but perhaps that tendency results from the strong feelings and unrealistic expectations that launch our relationships. The stress of raising children tends to disrupt those expectations and ultimately our positive feelings for each other.
Creating Love
A careful look at arranged marriage, combined with the knowledge accumulating in relationship science, has the potential to give us real control over our love lives — without practicing arranged marriage . Americans want it all — the freedom to choose a partner and the deep, lasting love of fantasies and fairy tales. We can achieve that kind of love by learning about and practicing techniques that build love over time. And when our love is fading, we can use such techniques to rebuild that love. The alternative — leaving it to chance — makes little sense.
The researchers found that mutual eye gazing (but not gazing at hands) produced rapid increases in feelings of both liking and loving in total strangers. "I noticed a drastic change in our bond for one another," one student wrote. "My husband seems more affectionate now than he was, for which I am really grateful."7 A careful look at arranged marriage, combined with the knowledge accumulating in relationship science, has the potential to give us real control over our love lives.
FAST FACTS Lessons on Love
- About half of first marriages fail in the U.S., as do two thirds of second marriages and three quarters of third marriages, We fail in large part because we enter into relationships with poor skills for maintaining them and highly unrealistic expectations.
- The fix for our poor performance in romantic relationships: extract a practical technology from scientific research on how people learn to love each other — and then teach individuals how to use it
- A study of arranged marriages in which love has grown over time hints that commitment, communication, accommodation and vulnerability are key components of a successful relationship. Other research indicates that sharing adventures, secrets, personal space and jokes can also build intimacy and love with your partner.
The Author Robert Epstein is a contributing editor for Scientific American Mind and former editor in chief of Psychology Today. He holds a ph.d. in psychology from Harvard university and is a long time researcher and professor. He is currently working on a book called Making Love: How People Learn to Love and How You Can Too (www.MakingLoveBook.com).
Extra Credit for Love Jocelyn, aged 21, and Brian, aged 25, are students at the University of California, San Diego, where they tried some of the love-generating techniques they learned in the author's class on relationship science. These graphs show changes in feelings of liking (blue), closeness (pink) and loving (red) over six weeks. each week the students tried one exercise. At the outset, they liked each other fairly well but experienced little closeness or love. In the first week, the gazing technique had a big effect on closeness, especially for Brian. By the sixth week, Jocelyn's love for Brian had risen from a 1 to a 6 on a 10-point scale, and Brian's love for Jocelyn had climbed from a 2 to a 7. Brian and Jocelyn might have made progress without the exercises, but both felt the activities had helped.
Further Reading
- An Exploratory Study of Love and Liking and Type of Marriages. Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh in Indian Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 19, pages 92-97; 1982.
- Love Games. Mark Robert Waldman. Tarcher/putnam, 2000. Steps toward the Ripening of Relationship Science. Harry T. Reis in Personal Relationships, Vol. 14, pages 1-23; 2007.
- Handbook of Relationship Initiation. Susan Sprecher, Amy Wenzel and John Harvey. psychology press, 2008. The author's ongoing survey of arranged marriages (including how to participate) is at http://ArrangedMarriageSurvey.com
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Bio: Nancy Fagan, MS is the founder of The Divorce Help Clinic™ (divorce planning & divorce mediation services), a Huffington Post divorce writer and author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Romance" (Macmillan Publishing) and "Desirable Men: How to Find Them" (Prima Publishing). As a nationally recognized divorce and relationship expert, she has appeared on countless television and radio shows, and quoted in national magazines and popular On-line publications since 1997. In addition, she is considered a pioneer in the field of pre- divorce planning and frequently sought out to speak on the topic. Nancy holds a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology with extensive training in divorce mediation and alternative dispute resolution. To learn more, visit TheDivorceHelpClinic.com.
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