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