Love at First Sight? It's Probably Just Lust

Can you fall in love with someone the very first time you see them?

We've all seen that movie moment when two strangers meet and feel an instant romantic connection — in fact, "love at first sight" has been a mainstay of literature for thousands of years, and people in real life often claim to experience a similar spark.

But is that feeling actually love? Not quite, according to the authors of a new study.

In the study, researchers investigated whether people feel love at first sight — LAFS — or whether they believe retroactively that they felt that way, once they've already formed an attachment to a romantic partner. The scientists also questioned whether what people call "love" at a first encounter is truly representative of the complex emotions that make up love — or just a powerful physical attraction.

Prior studies have shown that being in love activates certain brain regions, and the location of the activity can vary depending on what type of love the person is feeling, such as emotional, maternal or passionate love. Intense, passionate love activates the same networks in the brain as addiction does, and more long-term love sparked responses in brain regions associated with attachment and reward. 

Researchers have also previously reported that as many as 1 in 3 people in Western countries claim to have experienced LAFS. And that the feeling is associated with more passion and stronger bonds within the relationship, the scientists wrote in the new study. 

But there was little evidence indicating if LAFS occurred when people thought it did — at the moment of their first meeting ― or if they merely remembered it happening that way through the lens of their current romantic feelings, the study authors explained.

The scientists collected data from about 500 encounters between nearly 400 participants, mostly heterosexual Dutch and German students in their mid-20s. Using three stages of data collection — an online survey, a laboratory study and three dating events lasting up to 90 minutes each — the researchers gathered information from their subjects about meeting prospective romantic partners. They noted whether participants said that they felt something akin to LAFS upon a first meeting, and how physically attractive they ranked the person who inspired those feelings. 

To define what qualified as "love," subjects submitted self-analysis of several key components: "eros" (physical attraction), "intimacy," "passion" and "commitment." During the tests, 32 different individuals reported experiencing LAFS a total of 49 times — and that observation wasn't typically accompanied with high ratings for love components such as intimacy and commitment

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Thank you … Sex and romance may seem inextricably linked, but the human brain clearly distinguishes between the two Love is the more powerful emotion.

The results of brain scans speak to longstanding questions of whether the pursuit of love and sex are different emotional endeavours or whether romance is just warmed over sexual arousal.

Everyone knows that relationships are dynamic over time, but we are beginning to track what happens in the brain as a love relationship matures.

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The processing of romantic feelings involves a "constellation of neural systems." The researchers -- neuroscientists, anthropologists and social psychologists -- declare love the clear winner versus sex in terms of its power over the human mind.

"Romantic love is one of the most powerful of all human experiences," said study member Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It is definitely more powerful than the sex drive."

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After bumping into an attractive alternative, women tend to be even more committed to bolstering their present relationship with the love of their life.

Talk about creativity. Professional artists and poets hook up with two or three times as many sex partners as other people, new research indicates.

A study of 425 British men and women found the creative types averaged between four and ten partners, while the less creative folks had typically had three.

The more creative the study participants, the more partners they'd had.

Previous studies have hinted at all this, and anyone mingling seriously with artists might have suspected as much. But this is the first study to provide firm evidence, the researchers say.

What's behind the results? It could be that "very creative types lead a bohemian lifestyle and tend to act on more sexual impulses and opportunities, often purely for experience's sake, than the average person would," said study leader Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at Newcastle University.

"Moreover, it's common to find that this sexual behaviour is tolerated in creative people," Nettle notes. "Partners, even long-term ones, are less likely to expect loyalty and fidelity from them."