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Being
In Love Makes Others Less Attractive
by Gloria Liven
Researchers Gonzaga
and Haselton of the University of California have found that being in
love may help you be more faithful-- by making other attractive people
seem less attractive!
"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to work in very specific ways by in enabling you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind," said Gonzaga.
The researchers took 120 college students that had been in long-term monogamous heterosexual relationships, and showed them photos of attractive people as rated by the Hot-Or-Not website.
The students picked the one they felt was most attractive, and then pick to write an essay on different topics: The time they felt the most love for their current partner, the time they felt the most sexual desire for their current partner, or anything they wanted to write on. The first two groups were recalling intense moments of love or sexual desire, while the third was a control group. When writing, the students were asked to not think of the attractive other. If they did, however, they were to put a check mark in the margin of their essay.
When people are asked not to think about something, the "rebound" effect occurs-- they will often think about that subject more than if not asked to think about it (try it; have someone ask you to not think about something, and you'll probably think about it!).
"People in the love group found it easy to push an attractive other out of their mind even though we made those thoughts tempting," said Haselton.
Compared with the control group, those that thought of their lover had fewer thoughts of the attractive alternative, and when tested later, were worse at recalling details of why they thought that person was attractive. The love group tended to recall neutral features of the photo-- such as where the image was taken-- more so than the control group.
"As
predicted, people induced to feel love for their partner were more successful
in suppressing thoughts of attractive others: Those in the love condition
had fewer thoughts of the alternative relative to the
sexual desire and control conditions," states the paper.
So if you're in love and think your partner is the most attractive person around, even if others don't, you may be right. See what other psychology & science love articles we have.
Original
study:
Love,
Desire, and the suppression of thoughts of romantic alternatives
by Gonzaga, Haselton, Smurda, Davies, Poore
University of California, Los Angeles
External
Links:
ScienceDaily:
Hotties not so Hot when you're in love
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