Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, US
researchers reported on
Tuesday. College students who
reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other
attractive men or women, the team at the University of California Los Angeles
and dating website eHarmony
found.

"Feeling love for your
romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion
appears to work in very specific ways in enabling you to push thoughts of that
tempting other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is
published in the journal

Evolution and Human
Behaviour

.

"It’s
almost like love puts blinders on people," added Martie Haselton, an associate
professor of psychology and communication studies at
UCLA.

Gonzaga and Haselton
asked 120 heterosexual undergraduates in committed relationships to examine
photographs of attractive members of the opposite sex from an

eHarmony

website.

The volunteers were
asked to choose the most attractive photos, and write an essay either about
their current romantic partner, or the subject of their
choice.

While writing, the
students were asked to forget the “hotties” from the website, but
told to put a check in the margins if they did happen to think of the attractive
photos. The volunteers who wrote about their partners were six times less likely
to admit to thinking of the attractive others than volunteers who wrote about
random subjects.

And later
asked to recall the cuties in the pictures, the students who wrote about their
lovers remembered fewer details about the physical appearance of the attractive
strangers. “These people could remember the colour of a shirt or whether
the photo was taken in New York, but they didn’t remember anything
tempting about the person,” Gonzaga
said.

"It’s not like
their overall memory was impaired; it’s as if they had selectively
screened out things that would make
them think about the how attractive the alternative was."

Via Times of India