Through Rose-Colored Glasses

People who fall in love tend to adopt curious and nerve-racking behaviors: they think and talk about nothing else but their lover and seem unable to concentrate on simple daily tasks. It is as if they see the whole world through rose-colored glasses.

Photo: D Sharon Pruitt

For a neuroscientist, this sounds a lot like impaired cognitive control. It has even been suggested that these behaviors resemble those of patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder [1]. How unsurprising then, that groups of neuroscientists set out to examine this more closely! The group of van Steenbergen et al. [2] studied the effect of passionate love on cognition in 43 students (23 girls, 20 boys) who had recently become involved in a romantic relationship. To test how 'in love' the participants were, the Passionate Love Scale was used (yes, such a scale really exists). For assessment of cognitive control, the flanker task and a Stroop task were performed – both tests measure the ability to filter out distracting and irrelevant information and therefore require cognitive control. Before taking the tests, the participants were asked to imagine romantic events with their lovers and listened to love-related music to elicit a “romantic” mood.

Reduced Cognitive Control in Lovers

The authors were able to show that higher scores on the Passionate Love Scale were associated with an increase in the interference effect on the two cognitive tasks. This effect was independent of gender and not influenced by self-reported affect. Thus, the study showed that cognitive control really is impaired on a measurable level in the initial phase of passionate love. In other words: The rose-colored glasses are real!

Reduced cognitive control has been associated with increased impulsivity in some models and can also be observed to a similar extent in addicts [3]. So from a neuroscientific perspective, passionate lovers in the early phase of their relationship seem to resemble high-impulsivity addicts with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Luckily, for us, this does not last forever. When a passionate relationship evolves into a more committed long-term relationship, cognitive control becomes increasingly important and is eventually reestablished [4].

[1] Tallis et al, Psychologist, 2005

[2] van Steenbergen et al, Motiv Emot, 2013

[3] Burkett & Young, Psychopharmacology, 2012

[4] Pronk et al, J Pers Soc Psychol, 2010

By Ann-Christin Ostwaldt, PhD Student Medical Neurosciences (AG Academic Neuroradiology)

This article originally appeared June 2014 volume 7, issue 02, The Neuroscience of Love