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This
Thing Called Love
People
know it when they feel it, but can scientists tell us why? Two Yale
psychologists are trying.
February
1994
by Bruce Fellman
In the late 1950s, a
rock and roll group known as the Monotones wondered "who wrote
the book of love?" Philosophers, poets, and couples consumed
with passion -- as well as those trying to determine why the flames
went out -- have been asking the same questions for eons. And now,
even scientists have entered the fray, wiring the brain with electrodes
and watching for telltale signs of electrical ecstasy, as well as
searching for the elusive molecules that bind one lover to another.
To be sure, no one has
been entirely successful, but Robert Sternberg '72, Yale's IBM Professor
of Psychology and Education Psychology, has at least come up with
an intriguing answer to the Monotones' plaintive query. "Love
is a story," Sternberg says, "a story each of us is constantly
writing and rewriting. Love develops, grows, and lasts when a person
finds someone else who fits what his or her particular story is
all about."
There
are a number of Yale researchers examining various aspects of love's
mysterious tale.
For example, Laura King, an assistant professor of English, is studying
medieval texts that warned people about the dangers of romantic
love and encouraged them to pursue more spiritually oriented liaisons.
Sociologist Joshua Gamson is investigating the phenomenon of homosexuality
and the social movements that it has spawned. Susan Treggiari, a
visiting professor of history, is looking at love and marriage among
the ancient Romans.
Surprisingly, given
the University's strength in the neurosciences, there are no Yale
physiologists involved in scholarly pursuits of an amorous nature.
"Lab rats don't fall in love" explains Eric J. Nestler,
the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Associate Professor of Psychiatry
and Pharmacology. "There's no appropriate animal model, and
it's difficult enough to look at normal human physiology, let alone
at some subjective human emotion."
As a psychologist, Sternberg
works the middle ground between an approach that would reduce amour
to a wiring diagram and a collection of chemicals, and one that
looks for universal, but fuzzier truths. The psychologist's research
into an area that some feel can't be -- or, at least, ought not
to be -- examined scientifically, is, in part, an offshoot of his
landmark studies of human intelligence, including The
Triarchic Mind: A New Theory of Human Intelligence, published
in 1988. Those studies led him to argue that traditional iq tests
are not accurate predictors of later career success because they
do not take into account such intangible assets as creativity and
"street smarts." (He has since developed an alternative
test that attempts to do that.) "I'm interested in things that
are central to people's lives," he says. "Love is certainly
the thing we crave the most and have the most trouble getting, and
love also involves a kind of intelligence."
When Sternberg started
examining love relationships, in the 1970s, he discovered that ideally
each had three major components: intimacy, passion, and commitment.
Taken together, the three formed the sides of a triangle, which,
when love was mature and balanced, would be of the equilateral variety.
And as love grew, so would the triangle's area, with the three equal
sides lengthening in equal measure. When a couple is in geometric
harmony, the result is what Sternberg calls consummate love.
Of course,
such a blissful state is rare.
All too often, the sides of the triangle are mismatched, and many
times, one of the critical components is missing altogether. There
is, for example, infatuation -- passion without intimacy or commitment -- along
with romantic love -- intimacy and passion, but no commitment -- and fatuous
love -- commitment and passion with no intimacy. There are other possibilities
as well, notes Sternberg, who has explored his triangular theory
of love in several books and numerous scientific papers."Having
compatible triangles matters," says Sternberg. "If one
person, say, wants intimacy, and the other person is a distancer,
that relationship may be intriguing for a while, but then it gets
frustrating. Similarly, if one partner feels commitment is important,
and the other person is seeing people all over the place, that gets
tiresome."
Another Yale researcher,
psychologist Kelly Brownell, has found Sternberg's triangular theory
useful as a framework for examining the shape and building blocks
of love. In his popular course on human sexuality and intimate relationships,
Brownell teaches amour a la Sternberg. "It's pretty
much the dominant theory," Brownell explains.
But dominant or not,
several years ago, Sternberg realized that it left a key question
unanswered. "The triangular theory tells you, almost geometrically,
where you are. It doesn't say how you got there," he says.
"If you really want to understand love, you have to look at
how it develops and evolves."
You have
to look at stories.
"The story is who
you are," says Sternberg, adding that such lifetime tales are
crafted from a wide variety of disparate elements: family experiences,
religion, school, watching television and movies, reading, culture
in general, and time in the back seat, to name some of the more
obvious inputs. "And it's never completed," he says. "Your
personal story is very dynamic."
Although everyone's
personal narrative is as individual as a fingerprint, Sternberg,
by analyzing the thousands of detailed questionnaires he's distributed
in the course of nearly 20 years of studying love, has learned that
the tales can be grouped into roughly two dozen fundamental categories.
Along with the hearts-and-flowers romance, there is what he calls
the police story, the mystery, the gardening tale, and the pornographic
essay. There are humorous stories, with one partner cast as Johnny
Carson and the other playing Ed McMahon, and there are science fiction
thrillers in which the plot line calls for a person to team up with
someone who seems to be as incomprehensible and strange as an alien
from another planet. Some tales are pure Erich Segal; others might
have been written by Franz Kafka -- or Stephen King.
Only
by understanding one's personal literature,
says Sternberg, can a person find a suitable coauthor for an amorous
tale. "You have to know your own story," he says, "and
it has to mesh with your partner's story."
The psychologist has
dubbed one of the fundamental tales "love is an addiction,"
and like all of the narratives, there are two roles. "The partner
who's telling this story needs a mate the way an addict might need
cigarettes or drugs, and when he or she finds someone, there's an
actual high," says Sternberg, pointing out that such a tale
can easily become a tragedy. "If the partner doesn't need to
feel needed all the time, there's a risk of suffocation."
Then there's the war
story. "You see a couple that's always fighting, and an outsider
might wonder, 'what are they doing together?' Well, it works because
to them, love is war," says Sternberg, adding that such a match
wouldn't succeed if a "Rambo" attempted a long-term liaison
with someone whose story was akin to Romeo and Juliet.
"A
story isn't necessarily good or bad," says Sternberg. "The
important thing in determining the outcome of a relationship is
finding someone who fits in as a character in the story you feel
comfortable writing." Even so, some forms of interpersonal
literature are more likely to succeed than others. A couple may,
for instance, be involved in a "love as a fantasy" story,
which has one partner expecting a knight in shining armor and the
other looking for a princess to save. There are advantages to this
way of seeing a relationship -- admiration and respect for each person,
and a willingness to walk the extra mile to keep the knight or the
princess happy. But coupled with the plus side is a potentially
fatal flaw, for reality rarely lives up to anyone's fantasies for
long. Unless the participants in this story can temper their expectations,
the likelihood of the union's lasting is poor, says Sternberg.
On the other hand, those
writing narratives that portray love as gardening, sewing and knitting,
or travel have an "excellent" chance to succeed. Gardeners,
says Sternberg, are forever nurturing their partner and the relationship
(the danger here is overwatering). Knitters continually create and
recreate the pattern of their love lives (and only run into trouble
when they can't agree on the pattern). Travelers see love as a journey
both partners plan and enjoy (a surefire outlook as long as neither
has a change in direction).
Sternberg is quick to
point out that the story idea is not astrology dressed up in psychological
costume. "The acid test is whether or not a theory predicts
behavior," he says. "My astrological sign happens to be
Sagittarius, and as near as I can tell, it has no influence on who
I am. But stories are of great interest to psychologists because
they can predict, explain, and help us understand what people will
do and why they do it."
One might
expect to find an almost ideal source of material in that search
in Yale's pool of 5,000 undergraduates.
But when it comes to matters of the heart, Sternberg reports, students
make disappointing subjects. Most of their stories turn out to be
short ones. "It's a sign of a low commitment to long-term relationships,
which is about what you'd expect on a college campus," he says.
An impromptu survey
conducted last fall during Kelly Brownell's psychology course confirmed
Sternberg's impressions. Brownell posed the following question to
the 200 undergraduates attending his lecture: "Is Yale a good
place in which to fall in love?" Their answer was a resounding
"No!"
Brownell, who in his
class routinely brought up personal issues for discussion -- and received
surprisingly frank answers -- used the responses to the love query
as a springboard to a freewheeling exploration of topics including
fear of feminism, the effects of stress on desire, and performance
anxiety. Throughout, he was low-key, nonjudgmental, authoritative,
and warmly reassuring. He never blushed (a result, he explained,
of his work as a sex therapist).
"There's no part
of a person's life that's more important than intimate relationships,"
says Brownell, accounting for his course's popularity (400 people
showed up to vie for the 200 seats). "We explore issues that
are personally relevant, as well as intellectually interesting."
As to
why the students in the class were living lives more akin to monastic,
or, at best, platonic ideals
than to those of collegiate hedonism, there were complaints about
too much work, too little time, an overabundance of cynicism, too
few social skills, and a pervasive perfectionism that precludes
the give-and-take that is usually necessary for a relationship to
develop and thrive.
All of these may be
true, says Hope Royston, an Ezra Stiles sophomore, but she feels
the main reason for the oft-noted dearth of romance on campus is
a basic fear of rejection. "Love is a personal thing -- and a
risky one," she says. "You're putting yourself on the
line, and there's just not a lot of personal risk-taking here. Failing
at love is very different from failing a test." Accordingly,
most students seem to avoid the issue and instead pursue goals that
are within an individual's ability to accomplish: academic and athletic
success, or achievements in any number of extracurricular activities.
But instead of interpreting
the lack as grounds for despair about the fate of the upcoming generation,
Sternberg explains that the avoidance of commitment can be seen
as an encouraging sign of intelligence and maturity. "When
you're between 18 and 22, you don't really know who you're going
to become, and the kind of relationship that might work on a long-term
basis is not yet clear," he says. "You can look at it
as being realistic." His hope is that when they get ready to
settle down, the question they ask a potential partner won't be,
"What's your sign?" but rather, "What's your story?"  |
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