Sweaty palms. Rapid heartbeat. Butterflies in your stomach. Anthropologists say it's caused by an innate instinct to procreate; neuroscientists attribute it to the release of chemicals in the brain. Others claim love cannot be defined so easily and involve certain aspects of the divine. So what's the truth? Why do we fall head over heels in love?
Crazy little thing called love
In 2000, Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki of University College, London, located the areas of the brain activated by romantic love. They took students who said they were madly in love, put them into a brain scanner, and looked at their patterns of brain activity.
Bartels and Zeki noticed that love was activated in the part of the brain that is responsible for gut feelings as well as the area that generates feelings of pleasure associated with ingesting drugs like cocaine.
Helen Fisher, visiting research professor at the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, used functional MRI scans to examine the brains of people in love. She found their brain scans and behavioral patterns were similar to people with obsessive compulsive disorder.
Back at Duke, Christine Drea, an assistant research professor for biological anthropology and anatomy, studies the mating systems and hormonal mechanisms of primates. She said a lot can be taken from them to better understand the romantic relationships of humans.
"After all," Drea said, "humans are nothing more than another type of primate."
She said there are five recognized mating systems among primates, only one of which is monogamy.
Drea explained that "lesser" primates known for their monogamy, such as gibbons, are characterized by similar builds for both males and females, smaller testes, less frequent reproductive cycles and a lower frequency of sex.
These observations have led many scientists like Drea to believe humans in monogamous relationships may be acting against their nature.
"Humans just don't fit the profile of monogamy whether you like what that says politically, culturally or not," Drea said.
Marriage: what's love got to do with it?
William Reddy, Laprade professor of history, said ideas of love and marriage depend on how people view the world. "For example, if you have a Hindu conception of the cosmos you will have its appropriate conception of sexual attachment," Reddy said.
Reddy explained that in the Hindu tradition, there are two words to describe love: rati which is an everyday, general love, and rasa, a spiritual version of love that can be experienced through assistance from the gods. Westerners, however, have a very different conception of love.
"Hindus have no idea [in their concept of love] of a bodily drive or appetite," Reddy added. "It's not very associated with marriage. It has to do with the duty of carrying on the family line."
In addition to having different meanings around the world, love and marriage have had different meanings throughout time, he noted.
"Romantic love in the 12th [century] through 1700 was considered a naughty, adulterous thing," Reddy said. "It wasn't until 1700 or so when people even started entertaining the notion [that] marriage could be based on love."
Love potion number nine?
While some try to figure out love through science or by looking to the past, others are treating it as a math problem.
The recent speed dating events held in the Great Hall are such examples.
Mattia Landoni, a graduate student in public policy studies, matched up each speed dating participant with eight dates for the night. He said he used a point system to create the most compatible matches.
Landoni said each couple filled out a survey, in which they chose 10 characteristics out of 32 to describe themselves, and an additional 10 characteristics they were seeking in another person. He made a spreadsheet to create the schedule.
"It was kind of like Sudoku," Landoni said with a laugh, "only much more difficult."
While several participants were unsure of how effective this method was in creating good matches, some scholars are taking a similar formulaic approach to defining love.
Robert Sternberg, IBM professor of psychology and education at Yale University, devised what he calls the "triangular theory of love" in 1998. According to this theory, there are three components of love: intimacy, passion and commitment.
"You can have one alone, or any combination," Sternberg said. "If you have only intimacy, you have infatuation. If you have only passion, you have empty love. All three of them together is consummate or complete love."
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Dr. Esther Acolatse, visiting assistant professor of pastoral theology and world Christianity at Duke, said it takes much more than common interests to make love and a relationship last.
Acolatse said the best relationships are those that "transcend the two people involved."
She said the worst relationships were often characterized as "companionship relationships," which are defined as couples that split resources and responsibilities 50-50, and other more traditional relationships where roles are assigned.
Acolatse also thought there was truth to the old adage, "Opposite's attract." She cautioned, however, that often what attracts people to their opposites is the characteristic they are lacking in themselves and therefore will not develop it.
"Real love is love for other people," Acolatse said. "If both of you are the same, then one of you is redundant."
Acolatse disagreed with the idea that love could be explained away by science.
"There's a lot in [love] that defies reason. Many times a relationship takes on a life of it's own," Acolatse said. "Of course we know physical things go on in your body and brain when you're in love, but that's the only thing science can touch. It cannot give us reasons for the other components."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.