Langeslag Sandra J E, Philippi Carissa L
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Cogn Emot. 2025 Jun;39(4):920-927. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2417840. Epub 2024 Oct 21.
Romantic love is associated with mind wandering about the beloved. We tested associations between mind wandering about the beloved and infatuation, attachment, self-reported distraction, task performance, and enjoyment. Participants who were in love completed self-report measures and a sustained attention response task with thought probes. Participants reported thinking about their beloved for 67% of the time in general and up to 42% of the time during task performance. Thinking about the beloved in general was positively associated with infatuation (passionate love) but not with attachment (companionate love). The more time participants reported thinking about their beloved in general, the more distracting they found it and the less they could withhold a response to no go stimuli. The more participants thought about their beloved during the task, the slower their responses to go stimuli were. In contrast to the negative terminology typically used to describe frequent thoughts about the beloved, such as intrusive or obsessive thinking, participants overwhelmingly enjoyed thinking about their beloved. The findings suggest that romantic love impairs cognitive task performance because people are thinking about their beloved instead, which may negatively impact performance at school and work. Nevertheless, people seem to greatly enjoy thinking about their beloved.
浪漫爱情与对所爱之人的思绪飘荡有关。我们测试了对所爱之人的思绪飘荡与迷恋、依恋、自我报告的分心程度、任务表现及愉悦感之间的关联。恋爱中的参与者完成了自我报告测量以及一项带有思维探测的持续注意力反应任务。参与者报告称，总体上他们有67%的时间在思念所爱之人，在任务执行过程中这一比例高达42%。总体上思念所爱之人与迷恋（激情之爱）呈正相关，但与依恋（伴侣之爱）无关。参与者报告称，总体上思念所爱之人的时间越多，他们就觉得越分心，而且他们对“不执行”刺激做出反应的抑制能力就越弱。在任务过程中，参与者思念所爱之人的时间越多，他们对“执行”刺激的反应就越慢。与通常用于描述对所爱之人频繁思念的负面术语（如侵入性或强迫性思维）不同，参与者绝大多数都很享受思念所爱之人的过程。研究结果表明，浪漫爱情会损害认知任务表现，因为人们会转而思念所爱之人，这可能会对学业和工作表现产生负面影响。然而，人们似乎非常享受思念所爱之人的过程。
