“Love at first sight” seems like the stuff of romantic comedies — and heart-wrenching dramas. But many say they’ve experienced the sudden jolt of affection and attraction.
Research has shown humans have an intuitive ability to size up a partner in 100 milliseconds. According to a 2016 opinion piece in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, this includes physical traits, personality and identity characteristics such as trustworthiness and sexual orientation, and even possibly intelligence.
Studies have also demonstrated most people prefer someone with a similar appearance and social status, which can be discovered with a glance.
Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, believes strongly in love at first sight. So do millions of others. According to a nationally representative survey of 5,864 single Americans conducted in 2014 by Fisher for Match.com , 41 per cent of men and 29 per cent of women say they’ve experienced the phenomenon.
In the 2017 update to her book, Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray, Fisher argues “love maps” are an important, unconscious pattern of desirable traits developed from early childhood, and that we fall in love when we see someone who fits within the parameters.
The brain system involved in intense romantic love can be triggered at any time: after a few dates, a few years, or instantly — as fast as fear.
“You can get scared in an instant, and you can fall in love in an instant. But the person, to some degree, does have to fit into your love map,” Fisher says in an interview.
What Fisher and her colleagues found through MRI brain scans of 17 people who were deeply in love was an activation in a part of the midbrain that synthesizes the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is associated with focus, craving, motivation and reward. It’s also associated with addiction.
This is located in the ventral tegmental area of the brain, far below the cortex or “thinking” region and even deeper than the limbic, or emotional, system. That may explain the irrational feeling of obsession that sends one checking their phone 200 times in an hour. And this dopamine “factory” lays near brain regions governing hunger and thirst, which helps explain the powerful drive.
It’s the cortex that assembles the love map and ultimately decides if a crush is worth pursuing. Emotions such as anxiety and contentment swirl around, alongside desires for sex and attachment, creating a complex, messy experience.
To the anthropologist, love at first sight has evolutionary roots and may be an adaptive mechanism for passing on DNA. Our hunting and gathering forebears didn’t have many chances to meet potential mates, let alone thousands to choose from on a dating site.
And it’s perhaps unlikely these immediate, intense flings will last. Real life has a way of crashing down.
Love at first sight could be part of what psychologists call “destiny beliefs” that guide those who believe The One is out there and tend to decide quickly whether they are compatible with their date. Those with “growth beliefs” are more likely to take a longer view.
“This is something we are primed to experience, even though we know relationships don’t stay like that forever,” says Sarah Vannier, a post-doctoral fellow in social psychology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, who has studied the impact of idealistic romantic beliefs such as love at first sight on real-life relationships.
She believes “love at first sight” is really referring to a physical, instant response — infatuation — which can’t capture the commitment and intimacy that develop over time.
