Is there love at first sight?

Is it possible to fall in love with a person literally from the first meeting? Can you immediately realize that this is your destiny? Scientists are skeptical about the theory of the super-fast emergence of such a deep and strong feeling as love. But why do so many of us have no doubt that love can happen at first sight? Probably because they have experienced something similar themselves.

Let's find out what instant (quick) love is, how it arises, and what scientists and psychologists think about it.

What science says about love at first sight

Psychologists from the University of Zurich studied quick love. They conducted a social experiment, the essence of which was to record feelings at the moment of meeting potential suitors. They evaluated both physical attractiveness and sexual attraction. As a result, they found that people can indeed experience strong feelings immediately after meeting – during the first and only meeting.

Beautiful people were more sympathetic – they were noted 9 times more often than others. However, some participants in the experiment could confuse sexual attraction with falling in love.

The unexpected findings were that men reported love at first sight (or at least signs of it) more often than women. The weaker sex was more selective. It also turned out that vivid emotions are not always mutual. Most of the questionnaires were one-sided, so the subjects had very little chance of continuing their acquaintance.

The main conclusion of the European scientists is that the respondents hardly mentioned the feelings that characterize love (intimacy, trust, loyalty, unconditional acceptance). This allowed us to draw a conventional line between infatuation and love. At the start of an acquaintance, only the former can arise.

Helen Fisher's research

American anthropologist Helen Fisher tried to figure out what love is at first sight. According to her observations, it takes people 3 minutes from the moment of the first meeting to understand whether they are ready to continue interacting with a person.

It's all about our ancestors. Their life expectancy was several times shorter than that of their contemporaries. Therefore, the main goal was to find a partner for procreation. They chose him from the point of view of physical health in order to pass on better genes to their offspring. There was little time to search, so the skill of quickly recognizing a potential partner was naturally formed. This is how evolution has "tuned" the human brain to make such decisions quickly.

It is known that different parts of the cerebral cortex are responsible for physical attraction and love. Although they are often activated simultaneously. Nevertheless, at the moment of meeting the "right" partner, different hormones are produced. But the speed of their effect on the brain is the same – it is a fifth of a second. Therefore, when asked whether it is possible to fall in love at first sight, Helen gives an unequivocal answer - a second is enough for this.

How the halo effect manifests itself

Despite the very fine line between the concepts of love, infatuation, and attraction, science believes that infatuation and sexual attraction come first. The stronger they are, the higher the chances of these feelings developing into love. And all this is due to the halo effect – the brain's ability to supplant contradictory information about a person you sincerely like.

The expression "love is blind" is true. We keep in our minds for a long time the image that was formed in the first minutes after meeting a potential partner. And it does not change, even if the behavior or words of this person do not fully meet our criteria of correctness and appropriateness.

The halo effect allows people to form further judgments about their counterparts based on their first impression. To add good qualities to the ideal image and to dismiss the bad ones. How does this affect the emergence of love?

If a person suits us in terms of type and other parameters, we unconsciously advocate for him or her – we turn a blind eye to minor inconsistencies with our ideal image.

Attraction is the basis of love at first sight

Scientists from the University of Groningen have come to interesting conclusions: falling in love and love is almost always preceded by physical attraction. That is, we first consider a partner in sexual terms, and only then in all other ways. Perhaps this explains the fact that male love at first sight is more common than female love.

That is, a person goes through several stages until that bright feeling is born. But the more stages this process has, the higher the likelihood that something will get in the way. American scientists conducted a study on the transformation of infatuation into love. It turned out that only 13% of all cases of falling in love have a chance to continue.

At the same time, according to polls, more than 60% of people have fallen in love at least once from the first meeting. The same Americans (a popular magazine) surveyed about 3 thousand people and found that 72% of men and 61% of women believe in instant love. We can conclude that we realize the fragility of the process of transforming lust into feelings. But there is no doubt that love at first sight exists.

How to understand that a person is in love

As soon as couples in love successfully go through all the stages of forming close feelings, they comment with trepidation on the beginning of their relationship: "It was love at first sight!". It is very pleasant to realize that the choice was made correctly, and everyone is happy. But from the outside, it looks more like an illusion. Like the one when, after an event, people say: "I knew it would happen this way."

Nevertheless, there are a number of signs that will help you understand whether a person has special feelings for a new acquaintance at the stage of the first meeting.

Use these three criteria to help you understand if you have love at first sight:

• a strong desire to learn as much as possible about the person;
• Eye contact with the object of your affection – you literally cannot look away;
• sexual attraction combined with a reasonable hope for the satisfaction of this desire.

It's also good to know the signs of a lack of instant love:

• You easily switch from one person to another – and you like them all;
• you get ahead of yourself, showing possessive feelings – most likely, this is a desire to add another "victory" to your love asset or indulging in complexes;
• your body resists this feeling. Excessive symptoms of stress, allergic reactions, and abdominal discomfort are signs of a lack of love at first sight in men and women.

Unmet needs

Sometimes people confuse the emergence of love with the desire to satisfy a need as quickly as possible at the expense of a nice and pleasant person. For example, a shy guy meets a kind and sweet girl at a party. He is used to the coldness of beauties, but then he encounters charming friendliness and loses his head. It seems to him that this is "the one".

But after a few months or years, the guy realizes that it was not fate, divine providence, or a lucky break. The girl was not "the one." It's just that at the time he met her, he felt the need for communication and attention from the opposite sex.

But that's not all. Unrequited love at first sight can be deeply traumatizing. Therefore, the brain will make every effort to avoid unpleasant shocks. What happens to the guy next? He realizes that this girl meets his criteria for an ideal chosen one. It is she who can give him the sense of inner comfort and balance he seeks. And the brain does a strange but necessary thing: it makes the hero of our story fall in love with the girl. That is, to engage him on the path of love formation.

This explains the mechanism of tender feelings literally at the first meeting. The more pronounced a need is and the better our counterpart fits the conventional criteria for choosing a tool to satisfy it, the faster we will fall in love with him. It doesn't sound too romantic, but it's quite reasonable from an evolutionary perspective.

The question of whether love exists at first sight was answered exhaustively by Russian psychologist M. Pugacheva:

"The attitude towards love and the criteria for a future partner lie deep in the unconscious. And we do not know about them. Therefore, when we meet a person who is similar to our ideas, we instantly "recognize" him or her, "recognize" and accept. And at that moment, it seems to us that "love has suddenly appeared..." and we do not realize that we have been preparing for this feeling all our lives."