Introduction

My goal in writing this peice is to effectively describe the effects of love at first sight in homosexual and heterosexual relationships. I plan to submit this peice to a journal such as the journal of social and personal relationships or another that is based on relationships and how they function.  I plan to aim this for a professional audience as well as a public one so that even students such as myself can understand the piece and gain a better knowledge of love at first sight in their own personal relationship.

Introduction: Love at a Glance and  from all angles; love at first sight for heterosexuals and homosexuals.

Love at first sight is something that has puzzled scientists and lovers a like for many years.  “Inmainstream twentiet-century culture the phenomenon of love at first sight…has resided in the relm of what we might call feminine epistemology”(Matthews).  It is a phenomenon that can be described as essentially one making visual contact with another and having an instant feel of not only attraction but also love. But what is the likelyhood that love at first sight will happen to a homosexual individual versus a heterosexual individual? This is the question that the following peice explores.

 My approach

This has never been officially been described but there are many scientific studies done on the mental and physical states that one must be in to achieve feelings of this nature. My research is not only those mental and physical states but also the effects of homosexuality and heterosexuality on those intense feelings that one gets when he or she feels like they have experienced a love at first sight type of reaction.  Homosexuality in this way has never been explored before butit has been studied that adolescents that are homosexual love in different ways. “adolescents who experience feelings of same-sex  attraction (SSA) differ from those without such feelings in the quality of relationships with parents, peers, and class mentors and in psychosocial functioning (health status and school performance)”(Bos). 

 My methodology

 I plan to conduct interviews as well as use the already conducted research to come up with weather or not there is a difference or greater rate of homosexual or heterosexual individuals experiencing love at first sight. I plan to conduct these interviews on campus at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and also within the communities in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Collegeville, Pennsylvania to get a vast majority of age ranges as well as some societal differences between the two locations. I hope to provide a useful conclusion to help others find out weather or not their love is true and weather or not love at first sight exists or exists for those individuals. This research will benefit all people that are struggling to find their sexual identity and all those who have felt some kins of “love-at-first-sight” emotion.

Hypothesis

  I feel as though heterosexual couples will be more apt to fall in love at first sight because they tend to be the more judgmental of the two groups. “partners who fell in love at first sight, relative to partners who got involved more gradually, entered into intimate relationships more shortly after they met, would have mates with less similar personalities, especially with regard to levels of extraversion, emotional stability and autonomy, and would report relatively low levels of relationship quality”(Barelds).  Homosexual couples tend to rely more on an emotional connection than a strong physical one. My research will prove my prediction either right or wrong but through the interviews that I conduct and the primary research I should be able to come to and adequate conclusion. 

Works cited

Barelds , Dick. “Love at first sight or friends first? Ties among partner personality trait similarity, relationship onset, relationship quality, and love.” University of Groningen 24.4 (2007): 479-496 . Web. 14 Feb 2010. http://spr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/24/4/479.

Matthews, Christopher. “Love at First Sight: The Velocity of Victorian Heterosexuality .” Victorian Studies 46.3 (2004): n. pag. Web. 17 Feb 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3829668?&Search=yes&term=love&term=sight&term=first&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlove%2Bat%2Bfirst%2Bsight%26gw%3Djtx%26prq%3Dlove%2Bat%2Ba%2Bglance%26hp%3D25%26so%3Drel%26wc%3Don&item=14&ttl=71576&returnArticleService=showArticle.

Bos, Henry, Theo sandfort, Eddy Bruyn, and Esther Hakvoort. “Same-Sex Attraction, Social Relationships, Psychosocial Functioning, and.” Developmental Psychology 44.1 (2008): 59–68. Web. 20 Feb 2010. http://dare.uva.nl/document/114179.

I achived my goals in the introduction of this piece by explaining what procedures and methods i would use to conclude my reasearch.  I also used the previous works and journal articles that I found to make this piece legitimate and show that i had done background research.  I put my introduction in simple terms and clearly predicted what was to come from my paper and findings.