Seven Sins: Lust can become problematic from a societal or legal standpoint, says Xiaomeng Xu
Down To Earth (DTE) speaks to scientists and authors to take stock of what we know so far about the emotions of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth; the historical debates around them and the critical gaps in our understanding.
In the seventh part, DTE speaks to Xiaomeng Xu, a professor of experimental psychology at Idaho State University, US. Xu’s work focuses on romantic relationships and behavioural health. She has also probed links between romantic relationships and mental health.
Q. Religion has looked at lust as a sin. What is the scientific view on it?
A. I think, for a long time, people just assumed, if you are romantically interested in someone, you are also sexually interested in them, and they just kind of go hand in hand. But that is not the case.
For example, some people might find someone sexual attractive, but not have deeper emotions with them. Then there are folks who fall in love, but may not have a lot of sexual desire, and that can change over time. A lot of people might experience quite high levels of sexual attraction in the beginning, which may modulate over time and commitment might start very low, but might increase over time.
A lot of it also has to do with how the relationship starts. Were you strangers in the beginning? Did you know each other for many years before you started dating? And then the pace at which things change. So, if you are learning about another person and getting close to them very quickly, that feels very intense, usually. And so people, typically, enjoy that kind of intense feeling. But some folks like the pace to be much slower and more gradual.
Lust can become problematic from a societal or legal standpoint. If you are lusting after someone in a way that is harmful to them or to you, that is not great. But oftentimes, what researchers look at is when it is problematic to yourself. If lust is interfering with your day-to-day life, then it becomes problematic. Seeing a therapist can help. Having clear communication with your partner can also be effective.
Q. Why have we started studying love? Do we need to?
A. Love has been scientifically studied since the 1950s. Though there is substantial literature, it is fairly new compared to some other fields and within psychology as well. It is so interesting because of how much it impacts people. It is such an important part of people’s lives. Whether it is the relationships they are in or they want to be in. It can affect so much of people’s emotions and also their health. There is a substantial amount of literature on how impactful close relationships, romantic or otherwise, are on health, disease prognosis, quality of life, and even death.
It is really fascinating to study love using different methodologies. We ask people about love, interview them, put people on scanners and study their brain when people are looking at pictures of their partner versus other people. Science is very experientially based. At the end of the day, it tells us the trends on what leads to healthier relationships, for example. The success of relationships could depend on variables like commitment or trust, or is it because of person A or B or the dynamics? Or is it because of other factors, like time or family or other influences? So trying to parse that apart and look at it almost like a mathematical model of what is contributing to the relationship outcome can be really challenging. This is further complicated by the fact that everyone, based on experiences and media exposure, come with preconceived notions of what relationships need to be.
In the last decade or two, we have started to see a lot of research progress on relationships. For a long time, research focused on heterosexual couples, predominantly white couples, especially in the US. There has been quite a good push to expand that. We need more research in terms of diversity of types of relationships and the people in them. We have seen a huge expansion of that kind of research in the last decade or two, which has been incredibly exciting.
Q. Do we understand what love is in the psychological context?
A. There is a debate around this. I can share my understanding and definition of it, but others would disagree with me. That is good because that is how we know we have a healthy science. I study romantic love, predominantly early-stage intense, passionate love. I belong more to the camp of scientists defining love as a motivated goal state, where you desire union with another person. That may or may not include sexual components. But the idea is that you are very focused on at least one person. And it could be more than one. There is this motivated drive for you to spend time with them, get to know them, and start to include them and their identity into your own sense of self, and vice versa. This is someone that you want to merge with in a way, including your identities and perspectives.
There are other ways to look at love. One of the earliest ways to look at it is to say that it is an emotion. And, I think, there are some good, compelling reasons to think of it that way, predominantly because if you just ask people what love is, that is probably the first thing they will say. But, I think, that is too simplistic because love can prompt so many emotions like joy, sadness or anger, depending on the context. Also, we often think about emotions, in terms of things like facial expressions. Basic emotions tend to be associated with specific facial expressions; but there is none for love. Also, when we talk about regulation, we can regulate emotions, like anger, up and down. It is harder to regulate love. If I told you to look at someone next to you and get really angry at them, you could probably do it if you tried. But falling in love with a stranger right away is much harder. So those are some of the pieces of evidence to suggest that love is more than just a basic emotion. And it has that motivational component and it has all these additional interpersonal components as well.
Q. You studied people’s brains when they saw their partner’s picture. Could you elaborate on what you saw?
A. One thing to keep in mind is that every individual’s scan is going to look a little different. But if you look at people’s overall brain activity while they are looking at a picture of their partner and thinking about them, compared to someone they do not have those special feelings for, you see differences in the mesolimbic dopamine system. This is a system that is very much involved in reward and motivation, and also learning. Some of the areas, like the ventral tegmental area (located in the midbrain controls diverse behavioural repertoire, including reward processing, aversion, stress modulation, drug addiction, learning, and memory) and the nucleus accumbens (plays an important role in motivation and reward processing) are also activated. Interestingly, these are also implicated in drugs of abuse. So this is evidence to a common phrase that “love is like a drug”.
But there are also studies on people who have been in relationships for an average of 20 years. One study recorded reward system activations among people in long relationships. But what is interesting is for those folks, they also have activations in the serotonin-rich areas, which is a potential explanation or a mechanism for why long-term healthy and happy relationships can be helpful for mental health and reduced chances of depression. So, for these longer-term relationships, we see activations in reward regions as well as in attachment regions, suggesting they have built a relationship with and have trusted their partner for a long time.
(as told to Rohini Krishnamurthy)
This is the eighth of an 18-part series.
This was first published as part of the cover story of the 16-31 May, 2024 Print edition of Down To Earth