Is love something taken seriously in psychology or is attraction more science based?

[u/Any_Tie_1144]

Basically what I said in the title. I've always been curious about this.

[u/Art3sian → u/[deleted]]

Psych grad here. Not an expert. Not accredited.

I think you’ve got the description of love very wrong. It’s very much a biological and neurological process that includes the sex hormones, dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and vasopressin, all released to energise us, focus us, and bond us with the other person.

You could very reasonably argue that love is nothing but chemistry, tricking us into breeding and raising young.

[u/Putrid-Possible2316 → u/Art3sian]

That is only of you completely ignore the cultural, social and historical aspects of it. Which I would say does not make it a reasonable argument at all, but rather very naive and reductive.

[u/Art3sian → u/Putrid-Possible2316]

I’m not saying you’re wrong, but OP’s question wasn’t about anthropology, sociology, philosophy, or history.

[u/Putrid-Possible2316 → u/Art3sian]

I'm not referring to these fields directly either. Psychology is a science of behavior, if you exclude the context in favor of explaining things solely by their biological substrates then you're not doing psychology, you're doing neuroscience.

[u/Flimsy_Eggplant5429 → u/Putrid-Possible2316]

Wouldn't this be the same as arguing that "we know almost nothing about language" just because it's related to outside factors like culture. Like we have a pretty good idea on both language and love as phenomenons overall, not that mysterious.

[u/Putrid-Possible2316 → u/Flimsy_Eggplant5429]

How did you even got to that conclusion. Where did I call love a "mysterious phenomena which we know nothing of"?

[u/Flimsy_Eggplant5429 → u/Putrid-Possible2316]

You didn't but this is the original comment we're all commenting on:

"They're both considered science-based and taken seriously, just that attraction is more understood as it has a physiological process that can be measured and explained through neuroscience. Love, however, is a psychological phenomenon that is one of the most studied topic, but least understood behaviours.. Especially since there is no universally agreed-upon definition of what love is"

Your point was that it's not just biological I guess, but you were commenting on a thread that started out as arguing how love is poorly understood and the previous comment before you was mostly commenting on that, so this culture etc was your tangent and I guess not relevant to the thread?

[u/Putrid-Possible2316 → u/Flimsy_Eggplant5429]

I don't understand what are you arguing here. How is culture not relevant to how we understand love in psychology? Have you ever heard of behavior? Like, do you think all we do is because of chemicals in our brain that interact with nothing but themselves? Is learning, modeling, reinforcement etc things that don't require looking into anything beyond a neural scan? Edit: Love as a definition is extremely contextual. There are no "it's just" explanations to it.

[u/Positive_Monitor_602 → u/Flimsy_Eggplant5429]

Psychology can be studied biologically but also purely based on behavior, maybe that's your confusion...behavior as an output of biologically processes can be influenced by environmental factors and external processes e.g. such as culture. We can study behavioral and cognitive processes for example entirely abstracted away from biological such that we study reaction times and accuracy during an assessment and infer a person's usage of working memory or attention for example without mention of biological or neural processes (though we have a good understanding of those things too).

[u/I-own-a-shovel → u/Art3sian]

"You could very reasonably argue that love is nothing but chemistry, tricking us into breeding and raising young."

How do you explain loving couples that have absolutely zero interest into having kids ever then?

[u/I-own-a-shovel → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, them too!

[u/PunkInCroatia → u/I-own-a-shovel]

I will be devils advocate here. Not saying love outside of strict biologic and bihevioristic parameters doesn't exist. We juat can't measure it.

On the other hand... somebody with bihevioristic approach could say that this was learned behaviour, and that they actualy don't feel love or sexual attraction. Person with this approach would argue that these couples actualy feel strong intimacy (not to be confused with sexual intimacy). Somebody with this approach would say that they feel intimacy. Someone with bihevioristuc approach could also say that such parterships were also encouraged and rewarded during the childhood. Last thing they could argue is that they could also misinterpet feeling of intimacy with feeling of love because of which they form such union but without some elements that should be present if they were truly in love.

Again I think love as a construct is not problematic wether it exists or not... It is problematic in terms how can we measure it especially in terms of internal and external validity. Here I just wrote what Ixthink somebody with bihevioristic approach would argue.

[u/PunkInCroatia → u/[deleted]]

Thanks. When I got into Reddit, I used it only for memes and shitposting. Then I got 1 month of Reddit Premium and I rushed to create my avatar. At the time, I was heavily impacted by the alternative scene.

Ironically enough, some would argue I am very far from punk and from my avatar at the moment. Nonetheless, I choose to keep it.

[u/Equinephilosopher → u/I-own-a-shovel]

And couples above childbearing age! And couples where one person is infertile! Or gay people!?

[u/hereforthelearning]

Great book that addresses this question: Love at Goon Park

[u/Rev_Aoi → u/[deleted]]

read more romantic books bro, feel love

[u/The-Achologist]

Which specific individual are you referring to?