Bode Adam, Kushnick Geoff
Human Behavioural Ecology Research Group, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 12;12:573123. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.573123. eCollection 2021.
Romantic love is a phenomenon of immense interest to the general public as well as to scholars in several disciplines. It is known to be present in almost all human societies and has been studied from a number of perspectives. In this integrative review, we bring together what is known about romantic love using Tinbergen's "four questions" framework originating from evolutionary biology. Under the first question, related to mechanisms, we show that it is caused by social, psychological mate choice, genetic, neural, and endocrine mechanisms. The mechanisms regulating psychopathology, cognitive biases, and animal models provide further insights into the mechanisms that regulate romantic love. Under the second question, related to development, we show that romantic love exists across the human lifespan in both sexes. We summarize what is known about its development and the internal and external factors that influence it. We consider cross-cultural perspectives and raise the issue of evolutionary mismatch. Under the third question, related to function, we discuss the fitness-relevant benefits and costs of romantic love with reference to mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding. We outline three possible selective pressures and contend that romantic love is a suite of adaptions and by-products. Under the fourth question, related to phylogeny, we summarize theories of romantic love's evolutionary history and show that romantic love probably evolved in concert with pair-bonds in our recent ancestors. We describe the mammalian antecedents to romantic love and the contribution of genes and culture to the expression of modern romantic love. We advance four potential scenarios for the evolution of romantic love. We conclude by summarizing what Tinbergen's four questions tell us, highlighting outstanding questions as avenues of potential future research, and suggesting a novel ethologically informed working definition to accommodate the multi-faceted understanding of romantic love advanced in this review.
浪漫爱情是一种既让普通大众感兴趣，又引起多个学科领域学者关注的现象。几乎在所有人类社会中都能发现它的存在，并且人们已从多个角度对其展开研究。在这篇综合性综述中，我们运用源自进化生物学的廷贝亨“四个问题”框架，汇总了关于浪漫爱情的已知信息。在与机制相关的第一个问题下，我们表明浪漫爱情是由社会、心理层面的配偶选择、基因、神经及内分泌机制所引发的。调节精神病理学、认知偏差及动物模型的机制，为调控浪漫爱情的机制提供了进一步的见解。在与发展相关的第二个问题下，我们表明浪漫爱情在人类两性的整个生命周期中都存在。我们总结了关于其发展以及影响它的内部和外部因素的已知情况。我们考虑了跨文化视角，并提出了进化不匹配的问题。在与功能相关的第三个问题下，我们参照配偶选择、求爱、性行为及伴侣关系，讨论了浪漫爱情与适应度相关的益处和代价。我们概述了三种可能的选择压力，并认为浪漫爱情是一系列适应和副产品。在与系统发育相关的第四个问题下，我们总结了浪漫爱情进化史的理论，并表明浪漫爱情可能是在我们近代祖先中与伴侣关系一同进化而来的。我们描述了浪漫爱情在哺乳动物中的前身，以及基因和文化对现代浪漫爱情表达的贡献。我们提出了浪漫爱情进化的四种潜在情景。我们通过总结廷贝亨的四个问题告诉我们的内容来得出结论，强调突出问题作为未来潜在研究的途径，并提出一个新颖的、从行为学角度出发的工作定义，以适应本综述中对浪漫爱情的多方面理解。
