"The Meaning of Love"

Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. Depending on context, love can have a wide variety of intended meanings. It is commonly conceived of romantically, as a deep, ineffable feeling of intense and tender attraction shared in passionate or intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships. Love can also be conceived of as Platonic love, religious love, familial love, and, more casually, anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, including activities and foods.This diverse range of meanings in the singular word love is often contrasted with the plurality of Greek words for love, reflecting the concept's depth, versatility, and complexity.


The definition of love is the subject of considerable debate, enduring speculation, and thoughtful introspection. In ordinary use, love usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience felt by a person for another person. Love often involves caring for or identifying with a person or thing, including oneself (cf. narcissism). Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness. In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favored definitions of love involve altruism, selflessness, friendship, union, family, and bonding or connecting with another.

The different aspects of love can be roughly illustrated by comparing their corollaries and opposites. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more mutual and "pure" form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is commonly contrasted with friendship, although other connotations of love may be applied to close friendships as well.

The very existence of love is sometimes subject to debate. Some categorically reject the notion as false or meaningless.[citation needed] Others call it a recently-invented abstraction, sometimes dating the "invention" to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages.

Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, etc. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept,[citation needed] easier to experience than to explain. Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All you need is love".

Scientific views

Biology of love

Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive,[citation needed] much like hunger or thirst. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the topic of love, divides the experience of love into three partly-overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment.

Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.

Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding which promotes relationships that last for many years, and even decades. Attachment is generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or on mutual friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin than short-term relationships have.

Psychology of love
Further information: Human bonding

Psychology depicts love as a cognitive and social phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: Intimacy, Commitment, and Passion. Intimacy is a form by which two people can share secrets and various details of their personal lives. Intimacy is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is going to last forever. The last and most common form of love is sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love. This led researchers such as Yela[citation needed] to further refine the model by separating Passion into two independents components: Erotic Passion and Romantic Passion.

Following developments in electrical theories, such as Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed, such as "opposites attract". Over the last century, research on the nature of human mating, such as in evolutionary psychology, agree that pairs unite or attract to each other owing to a combination of opposites attract, e.g. people with dissimilar immune systems tend to attract, and likes attract, such as similarities of personality, character, views, etc. In recent years, various human bonding theories have been developed described in terms of attachments, ties, bonds, and or affinities.

Some Western authorities disaggregate into two main components, the altruistic and the narcissistic. This view is represented in the works of Scott Peck, whose works in the field of applied psychology explored the definitions of love and evil. Peck maintains that love is a combination of the"'concern for the spiritual growth of another", and simple narcissism. In combination, love is an activity, not simply a feeling.

ELEMENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY

1G Greek words---Psyche—Mind and Logos---knowledge or study.

2) Myers defines psychology as the science of behaviour and mental process. To Coon and Atkinson, et al, psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental process. Lahey also defines the subject as the science of behaviour and mental processes.

3) Other definitions----science of behaviour, scientific study of human and animal behaviour, scientific study of organisms and their behaviour.

4) Overt behaviour is any activity, action or responds which can be seen by others

5) Para psychology is about events which cannot be verified by a second or third party or through any of the known scientific methods.

6) Clairvoyance is the ability to see what is happening at a particular place at a certain time without having prior knowledge of the event.

7) Telepathy is thought transfer from one person to another without the mediation of any known channel of communication.

8) Precognition is the ability to perceive and accurately predict or foretell future events without having any prior knowledge.

9) Psycho kinesis is the ability of an individual to exert influence over animate and inanimate objects by will power.

10) Extra sensory perception.

11) Pseudo Psychology means false Psychology. They are practices which are giving the semblance of psychology but which in the real sense of the word are not. Egs. Graphology, palmistry, phrenology.

12) Graphology is the belief that an individual’s handwriting reveals his or her personality and that it could be used to predict one’s performance on the job.

13) Palmistry is the belief that the nature and pattern of the lines in an individual palm can be used to tell his destiny since it has something to do with his personality.

14) Phrenology is the believe that the bumps on one’s head and the shape of one’s skull determine one’s personality, intelligence, and other individual characteristics.

15) Greek Philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle in the 4^th and 5^th century debated fundamental questions about human nature, mental life, perception and consciousness.

16) Plato believed that one could understand human nature and behaviour by asking the relevant questions and employing rational argument to arrive at conclusions.

17) Aristotle believed that observation, rather than mere logical argument is of critical importance in an attempt to understand human behaviour.

18) Description usually proceeded by observation and involves naming, classification and the provision of other details and characteristics of a given behaviour or phenomenon.

19) Understand means the ability to explain the factor/s of a given behaviour after a careful description.

20) Prediction is another goal with is the ability to foretell the occurrence of an event or behaviour on the basis of established principles or facts.

21) Control means changing the circumstance which influence behaviours or the occurrence of any given phenomenon.

22) Measurement

23) Six methods of acquiring knowledge----tenacity, intuition, rationalism, empiricism, authority and science.

24) Intuition occurs in the right hemisphere of the brain while logical thinking occurs in the left hemisphere. Intuition is the process of coming to direct knowledge or certainty without reasoning or inferring.

25) Rationalism refers to the use of thinking and logic to arrive at an answer.

26) Empiricism assumes that if something is experienced, then that thing exists hence the experience is valid and true and must be accepted. Seeing believes.

27) In Science empiricism refers to the collection of data using scientific methods.

28) CHARACTERISTICS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD

29) Objectivity, free for bias, prejudice, personal expectation ect

30) Operational Definition means the procedure followed in measuring a concept must be clearly defined so as to allow concepts to be tested in real world terms.

31) Control

32) Replication is about the possibility of reproducing the same or similar result as arrived at by another person in his or her previous work----following the same steps, resulting in the same answers.

SCIENTIFIC ASSUPTIONS

33) Uniformity or Regularity---means there is order in nature and natural occurrences follow a certain known pattern and principles

34) Skinner asserted that science is a search for order, for uniformities and for lawful relations among events in nature.

35) Reality----there is a logical and rational basis for the existence of everything in nature

36) Rationality events which occur in nature could be understood through logical thinking since the is a rational basis for almost everything that occurs in nature.

37) Causation and Discoverability ----everything in nature has a cause and does not just happen. Discoverability is a natural sequence of the assumption of causation.

SCIENTIFIC STEPS OR PROCEEDURE.

38) Problem Identification which is preceded by observation

39) Review of Literature and hypothesis formulation-----a hypothesis usually expresses a relation between an independent and a dependent variable.

40) Study design----serves as a guide

41) Data collection and Data analysis-----the researcher makes observations and collects relevant data according to the procedure prescribed in the design.

42) Interpretation, Discussion and Conclusions---raw data does not make much sense and thus has to be analysed. Analysis however may take the form of simple data representation

FIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY

43) Basic psychology deals with research and the accumulation of knowledge whereas applied psychology deals with application of psychologically knowledge in tackling practical problems.

44) Industrial or organisational psychology

45) Ergonomics-----deals with designing work tools, machines and equipment in line with human physiology and the demand of specific jobs with aim of facilitating higher productivity.

46) Environmental Psychology deals on the impact of human act on the environment and how the environment affects human behaviour.

47) Clinical psychology deals with diagnosis, classification, prevention and treatment of psychological disorders. It also helps peoples to make decision about life transmissions such as marriage, career ECT.

48) Counselling psychology deals with helping people to understand themselves and plan their lives as well as make informed decisions on issues of everyday life including education, career, and marriage. Ect

49) Community psychology deals with how communities could be assisted to promote their wellbeing.

50) Consumer Psychology deals with finding out the characteristics of product users, their needs, and preferences and how to satisfy them.

SUB AREAS OF UNDER FIELDS

51) Educational psychology deal with the dev. And evaluation of educational curriculum and programs, teaching and learning materials and the training of teachers.

52) School psychology deals with helping primary and secondary school students make informed decisions about life

53) Developmental Psychology is concerned about human development in terms of growth from birth to old age.

54) Comparative Psychology deals with studying animal behaviour focusing on its similar and differences as compared to human behaviour and primates.

55) Personality psychology studies individual unique characteristics and other factors that make a person different in many ways from others.

56) Social Psychology focuses on human interactions and behaviour in group setting.

57) Cultural Psychology deals with how ones cultural background deals with his behaviour in general

58) Experimental psychology relies solely on experiments in gathering information regards areas as sensation, emotion, communication, learning ECT.

59) Medical Psychology studies the relationship between stress, personality type, susceptibility to emotional breakdown and diseases as heart attacks, high blood pressure and ulcers. It deals with prevention and control.

IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH

60) Provision of information

61) Input for projects and policy decisions.

CHALLENGES OF RESEARCH

62) Funding----expertise, financial resources

63) Attitude of the Public

64) Lack of Professionalism----Professionalism means going about duty as the dictates of one’s profession requires

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

65) Zimney (1961) defines a psychological experiment as objective observation of phenomena which are made to occur in a strictly controlled situation in which one or more factors are varied and the others kept constant.

Name of school	Subject Matter	Methodology`	Personality
Structuralism	Structure of the mind	Introspection	Edward Titchener, Wilhelm Wundt
Functionalism	Function of the mind	Observation Experimentation	William James, Charles Darwin
Behaviourism Gestalt	Observable behaviour,(stimulus and response	Observation	J B Watson I Pavlov D. F Skinner Thorndike
	The whole organism, object.	Feature analysis, demonstration	W kohler K. Koffka M. Wertheimer
Psychoanalytic	Unconsciousness	Interviews Observation	Sigmund Freud
Empiricism	Personal experiences	Data collections, Interviews	Aristotle, john Locke

66) Manipulate the independent variable under study to find its effect on the dependent variable.

67) Experiment-----two or more groups of study, objective, systematic, hold constant all variables.

CONTROL OF EXTRAEOUS VARIABLES.

68) Remove, generalise among groups, randomization----is a technique that gives equal chance to a population as being included in a selected as participants for a study. Random assignment places the participant into groups by chance.

LONGITUDINAL STUDY AND CROSS SECTIONAL STUDY

69) Longitudinal study is a developmental field study that repeatedly measures the same characteristics in a single sample of individuals at selected time intervals

70) Cross sectional is a developmental field study that measures the same characteristics in representative samples of individuals at different levels or age.

SURVEY

71) Survey is a method of collecting standardised information by interviewing a representative sample of a given population

72) Survey process---identify the population, sample size,---ages, educational level sexes---- selection of respondents

73) Valid---able to tap information, reliable---the consistency in measurement over a period of time