Love at First Sight – Believe in the Possibility

Love at First Sight – Believe in the possibility

Caryn Moya Block

I’ve written about my personal experiences of “Love at First Sight” in previous articles, but as I prepare to release the Special Anniversary Extended Edition of Alpha’s Mate, I wanted to visit the topic again. Some people think love at first sight is a ridiculous fairy tale. So, I wanted to find some statistics and dive a little deeper to find the truth.

According to statisticbrain.com, 71% of Americans believe in love at first sight and on postyour.info/statistics, 34 % of people who responded believed. Wow, that is a huge number of people, but that is just those who believe in love at first sight. These statistic do not address if there really is such a thing.

Dr. Earl Naumann, author of Love at First Sight, interviewed and surveyed 1,500 individuals of all races, religions, and backgrounds all across America, and concluded that love at first sight is not a rare experience. What’s more, Dr. Naumann theorizes that if you believe in love at first sight, there’s roughly a 60 % chance it will happen to you. Here’s what led him to that conclusion:

• Nearly two thirds of the population believes in love at first sight.
• Of the believers, more than half have experienced it.
• 55 % of those who experienced it married the object of their affection.
• Three quarters of these married couples stayed married.

Okay, now we’re talking numbers. What about science?

According to an article on pychologytoday.com, after changing the wording to “love at first acquaintance”, Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D concluded that yes, love at first sight does exist and there was no reason to suppose otherwise.

Then I found an article about the really interesting scientific study that published in the Nov. 7 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Jeffrey Cooper, a psychology researcher who conducted the study while he was a postdoctoral student at Trinity College was able to map the specific areas in the brain that were involved in our love at first sight decision processes.

In the first few milliseconds of seeing a new face, we’re evaluating physical attractiveness using one specific region of the medial prefrontal cortex, called the paracingulate cortex. But the rostromedial prefrontal cortex goes a bit deeper, very quickly asking, “Yeah, but are they compatible with me?”

“These really are separate processes,” Cooper said. “But they really are both happening in your head as you make those initial evaluations.”

It seems that the truth of “love at first sight” is that our brains are wired to make that evaluation in milliseconds and believing it’s possible is the beginning. So, I invite you to believe in love at first sight, it might happen to you or someone you know.