The Evolution of Love and LongTerm Bonds（爱的进化和长期债券）.pdf

1 The Evolution of Love and Long-Term Bonds Gian C. Gonzaga Martie G. Haselton eHarmony Labs University of California, Los Angeles To appear in J. Forgas and J. Fitness, Social Relationships: Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Processes (The 10th Sydney Symposium on Social Psychology) NY: Psychology Press Draft : April 10, 2007 Word count: 6523 (with references) Correspondence should be addressed to: Gian Gonzaga, Ph.D. Senior Research Scientist eHarmony Labs 888 East Walnut St. 2nd Floor Pasadena, CA 91101 e-mail: ggonzaga@ 2 The Evolution of Love and Long-Term Bonds The heart has its reasons, that reason knows not of — Blaise Pascal Humans show incredible diversity in their social systems across cultures and even more variation at the individual level—documenting these differences is enough to keep many relationship scientists busy for their entire careers. In the face of this variation, there are also relationship universals, many of which can be understood as adaptations for solving many of the relationship challenges faced by our intensely social species. In this chapter, we will argue for one such universal: romantic love. We make two central claims. First, following Pillsworth and Haselton (2006), we provide evidence that there has been strong selection for the formation of long-term bonds designed to facilitate bi- parental care. Second, we argue that the experience of romantic love likely evolved to assist in the formation and maintenance of long term bonds. We review evidence, including the phenomenology, signaling properties, cognitive effects, and physiological underp