In this age of science, many people see supernatural forces as illusions rooted in wishful thinking. But love remains a profound exception to humanity’s trend toward rationality.
People are used to seeing romantic love presented as it is on the reality show “The Bachelor” – as a force cosmically bound to one’s destiny. It’s an idea that is at once laughable and uncannily relatable for anyone who has been in love and felt their pairing compellingly “meant to be.” Our research suggests that magical notions of fated love and soulmates are very common and deeply felt.
As psychology researchers interested in why human beings think, feel and behave in the ways they do, we ask a basic question: Why does love feel magical? We hope that answering this question might offer some insight into the quandaries that have long plagued people in love. Should you blindly trust your heart to lead you to happiness, despite the chaos that’s as much part of love as bliss is? Or should you instead regard the tendency to magical thinking about love with skepticism, striving for rationality in the search for a fulfilling relationship?
Romantic love can be all-consuming – and seems to be a human universal across time and societies.
frank mckenna/Unsplash, CC BY
What is love and what does it want from me?
Far from an invention of poets or reality TV producers, romantic love has been a part of human nature for many thousands of years. Love letters written 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia are remarkably similar to those written today, and although cultures differ in their stories and expectations about romantic love, the phenomenon appears to be virtually universal. Moreover, our research suggests that magical notions of fated love and soulmates are very common and deeply felt.
But why is love a part of the human mind? Our research explores this question through the lens of evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary psychology is centered on the idea that people think and act the way they do today because, over hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors with traits that made them think and act that way were more likely to survive and reproduce, passing those helpful, or “adaptive,” traits on to the next generation. Through this process, the human mind evolved to prioritize things that contributed to survival and reproduction, such as highly nutritious foods and potential mates likely to rear healthy offspring.
So how could the dizzying feeling of falling in love and the illogical belief that one’s relationship is “meant to be” have helped our ancestors to survive or reproduce? According to one explanation, the key to love’s ancient purpose lies in the apartment lease agreement.
Love is like signing a lease
Why do people agree to yearslong leases for apartments? After all, the tenant might soon find a better apartment and the landlord could find a better tenant.
The answer is that…