Is “Love at First Sight” Really Plausible?
While watching the drama unfold from my daily episode of the UK’s finest reality television show Love Island, I began to question the actually level of “reality” the show holds. Specifically in this episode one contestant was concerned that her partner had confessed his love for her too “soon”, in a matter of hours it seemed. This led me to wonder how is it that this contestant’s emotions can be so strong so early in their relationship. The particular statement of “love at first sight” came to mind. It is seen countless of times in movies, shows, books and plays – a popular example can be seen in Leigh Fallon’s Carrier of the Mark when one character in the book exclaims “This is going to sound crazy, but… from the moment I first set eyes on you I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.” But how many times do we see it in the “real” world? It is these sort of questions that I will address in this essay, as well as more generally is the idea of “love at first sight” psychologically reasonable?
Firstly, it is clearly important that one must define the term “love” in order to accurately discuss how it occurs and how it affects individuals. When you type in “love” into Google the first information that comes up are numerous definitions to do with pleasure, affection and sexual attraction (specifically to do with romantic love). But these are just traits that can just be associated with love. The psychologist Robert Sternberg, I feel, gives a clear explanation of love in his “Triangular Theory of Love”. He said that love is composed of three components: intimacy, passion and commitment. Different combinations of these components results in different types of love. Particularly relevant to this essay is his definition of romantic love as “the combination of passion and intimacy which is characterised by a strong closeness and connection with a powerful physical attraction”. Thus now this definition has been established the question surrounding the plausibility of the idea of loving someone just from a look can be reliably addressed.
Initially, I will consider the possibility of “love at first sight” being probable. As already mentioned this concept has certainly been heavily present in popular fiction for centuries, for example William Shakespeare famously wrote in Twelfth Night “Whoever loves, loves at first sight”. But obviously, information which is fiction cannot be used as credible evidence to support the claim in question thus this leads to whether there are any non-fictional examples of individuals falling in “love at first sight”? The most recent example that immediately came to mind would be the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle when in a BBC interview Harry was asked the question “How did you know she was the one?” And Harry went on to reply “The very first time we met”. Although the problem with these non-fictional examples is that it is just the testimony of individuals and the only credible backing one can accept is the reliability of their person. Therefore we are forced to look if there have been any psychological studies on this aspect of love and if any valuable empirical evidence has been gathered to support the concept. Well, it turns out there has. In 2017 a group of researchers/psychologists in the Netherlands conducted as study which concluded to offer evidence in support of “love at first sight”. The researchers asked nearly 400 men and women to complete surveys about potential romantic partners immediately after first encountering those individuals. This included indicating whether they agree/disagree with the statement, “I am experiencing love at first sight with this person,” as well as reporting how physically attractive they found the person, and how much passion or sexual attraction they felt. Data collection was performed across three contexts: online; in the lab (where pictures of potential partners were shown); and in person (where individuals saw each other face-to-face). The results provided much unknown information about love and how it comes about. For example