WHEN LOVE CAPTURES THE MIND: TESTING THE MEANING ACCELERATION HYPOTHESIS

• Authors: Lamy M.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The main aim of this article was to investigate the impact of love on cognitive processing. More specifically, we hypothesized that a) love provides a great sense of meaning in life, b) when love is present in his/her mind, the subject will reduce his/her motivation to retrieve memories unrelated to love. Study 1 (N = 160 students) provided evidence that autobiographical memory retrieval is negatively connected to the state of love - but only for those students who had not initially induced thoughts of love in themselves, when they retrieved a love episode. It also provided evidence of the greater emotional intensity associated with love memories, compared with other memories. In Study 2 (N = 146 students) we tested the impact of semantically induced love on cognitive processing. Results showed that reduced processing occurred when love was induced.

Keywords

EN

COGNITIVE PROCESSING   LOVE   MEANING IN LIFE   MEMORY RETRIEVAL  

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Studia Psychologica
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 50
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 311-321
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Lamy M.,

• L. Lamy, Universite Paris-Sud, IUT de Sceaux 8, avenue Cauchy, 92330 Sceaux, France

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08SKAAAA05199863