Lit Review

My goal in writing this piece is to take reasearch from other sources and apply them to my topic in order for them to make logical sense and help support my ideas.  This will help me by backing up the conclusions and intutions that i have about love at first sight.  This part of my paper will also allow the reader to know that i have done backround research and also give them sources to expole if they wish to know more about a specific topic.

There are few studies that encompass love at first sight but none that i could find explored love at first sight relating to homosexual relationships at all. This sparked an interest in me and I assumed others would have the same interests. In order to fully understand the way that love at first sight works for both couples we must understand three things. the first being how and why heterosexual relationships work.

Obviously the type of relationship that is discussed most is the heterosexual relationship. “Women are predicted to desire characteristics that reliably lead to an increase in women’s reproductive success. These include selecting a mate who (1) is able to invest resources in her and her children, (2) is able to physically protect her and her children, (3) shows promise as a good parent, and (4) will be sufficiently compatible in goals and values to enable strategic alignment without inflicting too many costs on her and her children” (Buss). This proves that first attraction women are attracted to someone that appears muscular so that he will protect her and that he appears to be together in a way that could support a family or children. “Human matings can last a few months, a few weeks, a few days, or even a few minutes. This end of the temporal continuum may be called short-term mating. The temporal dimension turns out to be critical to many components of mating, perhaps none more central than the qualities desired. Furthermore, humans display remarkable creativity in their ability to mix and match mating strategies. It is not uncommon, for example, for a person to engage in one long-term committed mate-ship with heavy investment in children, while simultaneously pursuing an extramarital affair, or series of affairs, on the side”(Buss) This also proves that deep down heterosexual relationships are based on sexual desire and they will, for the most part, always be resorted back to that. Attraction triggers dopamine to be released to the rewards portion of the brain (Fisher). This means that love at first sight or at least attraction at first sight does trigger a reaction in the body, giving the person the feeling of love and purpose. This shows the function and purpose of heterosexual relationships.

The second part one must understand prior to studying the effect of love at first sight on homosexual and heterosexual couples is the basis of homosexual attraction. “Experiencing SSA (same sex attraction) without self-identifying or publicly identifying as LGB (lesbian, gay, bisexual) is usually seen as an initial stage in the sexual identity development of sexual minority youth. Several models have been built to describe this development (e.g., Cass, 1979; Troiden, 1984). These models assume that sexual minority adolescents first recognize that they are different from their peers and then realize that these feelings might be linked to their sexuality. In subsequent stages, adolescents give a name to their feelings, make their sexual status public, and finally are supposed to integrate their same-sex sexuality into their sense of self. It is frequently shown that homosexual adults recall that during their adolescence they indeed felt different from their same-sex peers, partly for the same reasons as other adolescents (e.g., physical appearance, abilities, personality characteristics), but also because of their sex-atypical behavior and interests, including SSA” (Bos). This displays the fact that although physical characteristics are a key portion of homosexual attraction, there is also a mental personality component to the attraction that homosexual couples feel. These couples, however, also have the same mental rush at initial attraction that heterosexual couples feel.

Finally the third aspect that is necessary to have some knowledge of in order to perform the most accurate study methods is how love at first sight occurs and how it effects a persons relationship with another person. Women generally are more infatuated with finding love at first sight because they are the ones who indulge in the fantasies of finding their perfect man and knowing it instantly that he exists (Matthews). Although women may be more concerned with love at first sight or trying to make it happen it is not impossible for men to have this reaction to another person. “In a sample of 137 married or cohabiting couples, it was found that, as predicted, partners who fell in love at first sight became romantically involved more quickly, and showed more dissimilar personalities with regard to levels of extraversion, emotional stability and autonomy. Partners who fell in love at first sight did not report lower relationship quality” (Barelds). This study showed that if a couple felt as though love at first sight was a key portion of their relationship often times there were severe personality, attitude, and opinion differences. This may or may not be a bad thing being that in some cases opposites attract. As for love at first sight according to these articles it does exist and can produce successful relationships.

works cited

Buss, Davis. “The Evolution of Human Mating.” Acta Psychologica Sinica 39.3 (2007): 502-512. Web. 11 Mar 2010. http://www.homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Group/BussLAB/pdffiles/evolution_of_human_mating_2007.pdf.

Fisher, Helen. The New Psychology of Love. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 5-6. Print.

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.

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.

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.

I achived my goals by providing the reader with and adequate amount of information about the three main parts of my study.  I also provided them with extra sources to farther investigate each portion if they wish too.  As for helping me I am not sure if the information I have will back up my points but i certainly hope that it will.  I will add to this after i get my research done.