Love 'really is blind'
2008-02-14 10:41
Washington - Love really is blind, at
least when it comes to looking at others, US researchers
reported on Tuesday.
College students who reported they were in love were less
likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women,
the team at the University of California Los Angeles and dating
website eHarmony found.
"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make
everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work
in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that
tempting other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of
eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and
Human Behaviour.
"It's almost like love puts blinders on people," added
Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology and
communication studies at UCLA.
Gonzaga and Haselton asked 120 heterosexual undergraduates
in committed relationships to examine photographs of attractive
members of the opposite sex from the "Hot or Not" website.
The volunteers were asked to choose the most attractive
photos, and write an essay either about their current romantic
partner, or the subject of their choice.
While writing, the students were asked to forget the
"hotties" from the Web site, but told to put a check in the
margins if they did happen to think of the attractive photos.
The volunteers who wrote about their partners were six
times less likely to admit to thinking of the attractive others
than volunteers who wrote about random subjects.
And later asked to recall the cuties in the pictures, the
students who wrote about their lovers remembered fewer details
about the physical appearance of the attractive strangers.
"These people could remember the colour of a shirt or
whether the photo was taken in New York, but they didn't
remember anything tempting about the person," Gonzaga said.
"It's not like their overall memory was impaired; it's as
if they had selectively screened out things that would make
them think about the how attractive the alternative was."