Brown Cassandra L, Beninger Richard J
Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
Psychol Rep. 2012 Jun;110(3):753-63. doi: 10.2466/07.09.21.27.PR0.110.3.753-763.
Passionate love is associated with increased activity in dopamine-rich regions of the brain. Increased dopamine in these regions is associated with a greater tendency to learn from reward in trial-and-error learning tasks. This study examined the prediction that individuals who were newly in love would be better at responding to reward (positive feedback). In test trials, people who were newly in love selected positive outcomes significantly more often than their single (not in love) counterparts but were no better at the task overall. This suggests that people who are newly in love show a bias toward responding to positive feedback, which may reflect a general bias towards reward-seeking.
