Romance research

Despite its fundamental role in human life, romantic love only became the subject of scientific research within the last 25 years or so. Even the study of human sexuality didn’t become truly professional until the mid-20th century. So, with a Valentine’s weekend ahead, I thought I’d share some of the data with Newsday readers, especially since you are liable to be inundated with loads of romantic rubbish between now and Monday.

First, a global statement: Romantic love is present in all cultures. This might seem a truism to those of us who have grown up within Western civilisation. But even in Trinidad and Tobago we have individuals — mostly Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists — who insist that romantic love is just an artefact of European society. But such propaganda is really an attempt by parents, who have political and economic agendas, to assert control over young people’s mate choices: and even in the most traditional societies, the children are not backward in making their objections known if they disagree with the elders’ choice.

It is therefore not coincidental that the most egalitarian attitudes towards women are found in developed Western nations, while the most repressive attitudes and practices are found in traditional societies. Data from the 1995-2001 World Values Survey show that the nations with greatest gender inequalities are Jordan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria; scoring highest in gender equality are Finland, Sweden, West Germany, Canada and Norway. Of all cultures, Islam is the most repressive towards women. The practice that most sharply exposes such repression is, of course, cliterectomy. (The clinical term does not do full justice to this barbaric custom, which is essentially female castration.) Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, in his book The Mating Mind, argues that cliterectomy is a method of removing female sexual choice.  “From a sexual selection viewpoint, clitorises should respond only to men who demonstrate high fitness, including the physical fitness necessary for long, energetic sex, and the mental fitness necessary to understand what women want and how to deliver it,” he writes.

It therefore seems that the men of Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, where two million girls are genitally mutilated every year, do not meet these criteria. Interestingly, it is likely that female choice drove the evolution of the penis in human males. Of all primates, adult human males have the longest, thickest and most flexible penises (an average of five inches compared to the two-inch erections of orangutans and gorillas). This kind of penis allowed more varied, exciting and intimate copulatory positions. “The large male penis is a product of female choice in evolution,” says Miller. “If it were not, males would never have evolved such a large, floppy, blood-hungry organ. Ancestral females made human males evolve such penises because they liked them.”

From this biological foundation we cross to the psychological research, still on the bridge of orgasm. In her book Survival of the Prettiest, cognitive psychologist Nancy Etcoff notes that women are more likely to have orgasms with a high-symmetry man — i.e. one whose left and right sides match closely. Etcoff writes, “Women with symmetrical partners (as measured by calipers placed on their elbows, feet and so on) had significantly more orgasms during intercourse, as reported by both partners. Fluctuating asymmetry turned out to be a better predictor of female orgasm than the couple’s feeling of love, the investment of either party in the relationship, the male’s potential earnings, or the level of sexual experience or frequency of lovemaking of the couple.”

There is, however, a drawback. “As it turns out, symmetrical men are more unfaithful and invest less in their relationships than asymmetrical men,” says Etcoff. This is the standard pattern with men in all cultures. In an apparent paradox, however, when it comes to which sex is the more romantic, standard wisdom has it wrong. “Survey after survey suggests that women are much more caring and practical in their approach…while men are more drawn towards passionate or game-playing love styles,” says psychologist Glen D Wilson in The Science of Love. Women are also the stronger sex when it comes to ending a relationship and are less likely than men to be depressed or lonely after a break-up.

On that issue, the psychologist John Gottman has developed a method where, after analysing a one-hour tape of a couple conversing on any matter relevant to their relationship, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy if they will be together after 15 years. It doesn’t matter if the topic is about getting a dog, and Gottman has a 90 percent accuracy with even 15 minutes of conversation. He looks for four particular danger signs from one or both persons, which he calls The Four Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, contempt, and criticism. Contempt, in his expert opinion, is the reddest red light. “You would think that criticism would be the worst, because criticism is a global condemnation of a person’s character. Yet contempt is qualitatively different from criticism,” he says in an interview with journalist Malcolm Gladwell in the latter’s book Blink. “It’s trying to put the person on a lower plane than you. It’s hierarchical.”

But what are the signs that predict a successful romantic relationship? “The clich? that opposites attract is often held to be true when it comes to loving relationships,” says Wilson. “While most people could point to examples where this does seem to apply among people they know, the weight of research evidence does not support the idea that relationships based on difference are the most successful.” A relationship is therefore more likely to last if a couple matches on race, religion, social class, intelligence, political attitudes, physical attractiveness, hobbies and interests. Successful couples also rated certain things are very important: companionship, shared hopes and ideals, mutual respect and, especially, the ability to weather bad times. And one more very important finding: couples who share exciting activities keep the romantic spark alive. The problem with romance, though, is that most of this information is probably useless: as the writer Douglas Yates once put it, “People who are sensible about love are incapable of it.”
E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com
Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh