The Science of Love by Glenn Wilson and Chris McLaughlin, Fusion Press,
£9.99, ISBN 1901250547
US Senator William Proxmire once declared, “I believe that some 200 million
Americans want to leave some things in life a mystery, and right at the top of
the list of things we don’t want to know is why a man falls in love with a
woman, and vice versa.” The Science of Love would horrify
Proxmire—arch-enemy of empirical psychology—and for that we should
be grateful.
In just 187 pages this entertaining book covers a sprawling diversity of
research on beauty, love, marriage, sex differences, singles ads, stalkers,
jealousy, and everyone’s favourite pair-bonding hormone, oxytocin.
Unfortunately, the writers fail to distinguish strong, replicated experimental
results from weak, single-study correlations. They also promiscuously mix
different levels of explanation—evolutionary, hormonal, developmental and
sociological.
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It is still a useful resource for behavioural scientists who want to broaden
their knowledge of this exciting but uneven field, although it’s not clear
whether its insights will improve the reader’s own relationships. Should we
care, for example, that Robyn Dawes’s simple equation “marital happiness = rate
of intercourse minus rate of argument” is a potent predictor of divorce? I’m not
sure, but at least it identifies a couple of variables we can aspire to
influence.
