TRIGGER WARNING: This article or section, and a page it links to, contains information about sexual assault and abuse, which may be triggering to survivors. One man put his hand on the head of another, someone took a picture of it, and the image set off a social media frenzy. Yes. An image. This image. … Continue reading »
love
The Honeymoon Mutation
I have been both a practicing obstetrician and a research embryologist. The more I learn about human the evolution of human sexuality the more fascinating it becomes. In a recent study in Science magazine, Stanford scientist Rajiv McCoy and colleagues[i] found evidence of a mutation that may have become more common because in our hunter-gatherer ancestors … Continue reading »
Where to find love on Facebook
This piece was co-authored with Emiliana Simon-Thomas. What’s the most popular emotion in the world? Well, on Facebook at least, the answer is clear: It’s love. How do we know that? Because the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center worked with Facebook to develop a new set of animated emoticons to express a broad range … Continue reading »
Is your marriage losing its luster?
One of the greatest things about our long-term romantic relationships is that they can provide comfort and predictability in this wild world we live in. But let’s face it: Long-term relationships can get a little boring. Within nine to eighteen months, research suggests, 87 percent of couples lose that knee-quaking excitement they felt when they … Continue reading »
Beyond cuddling: Five surprising ways Oxytocin shapes your social life
It’s been called the cuddle hormone, the holiday hormone, the moral molecule, and more—but new research suggests that oxytocin needs some new nicknames. Like maybe the conformity hormone, or perhaps the America-Number-One! molecule. Where does this many-monikered neuropeptide come from? Scientists first found it in mothers, whose bodies flood with oxytocin during childbirth and breastfeeding—which … Continue reading »
Love: What’s the point?
“Valentine’s Day is a commercial sham!” said one friend. “Valentine’s Day propaganda is everywhere!” said another. “Heterosexist!” cried a commentator on our Facebook page. Lots of people hate Valentine’s Day. For some very good reasons: It is commercial; it is heterosexist; it does make involuntary singles weep into their beers. But we at the UC … Continue reading »
How love grows in your body
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,” wrote William Shakespeare in his 116th Sonnet. “O no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.” Nothing could be further from the truth, says the new science of romantic love. Love is, first and foremost, an emotion—but one that … Continue reading »