• Question: What part of the brain says whether you love or hate someone?

    Asked by anon-204628 to James, Dan on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: James Munro

      James Munro answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      Excellent question Elm – I also like that your dream job is sports psychology. Right now I’m working with sports scientists to eye-track female downhill mountain biker athletes. It’s so cool.

      Scientists have different definitions of “love” – but an easy one to understand is that it is a mix of libido (desire for sex), attachment (becoming sort of dependent on someone) and partner preference (men, women, other, anything). When a person wants to have sex with and becomes attached to a person they like – their brain starts releasing chemical signals. These signals, in the form of dopamine and hormones like testosterone, make the body and mind feel good about that person. Scientists think at least two parts of the brain control this – the insula (which helps us do things on instinct) and the anterior cingulate cortex (which makes us feel really amazing). So when we fall in love, these brain areas reward us for spending more time with, or thinking about our love interest. NOTE: This is just one broad explanation of love. Love is perfectly possible without sexual desire, attachment or partner preference. It is complex and different for everyone.

      Hate is actually pretty similar to love in many ways. Just like love we think about the person we hate a lot. Just like love it makes our body change a bit (heartbeat gets faster, blood pressure up, pupils dilate in our eyes and so on). Just like love, the insula is involved in the brain. Hate is a bit weird because it doesn’t necessarily feel bad to hate someone. Sometimes, for some people, it actually feels good. So your body sometimes rewards you for hating and sometimes punishes you by making you feel bad or guilty.

      The reasons behind love and hate are very different though. Hate is thought to have evolved to make us ready to face a threat. Hate makes people able to do pretty bad things and feel justified (which is awful for society and for relationships – but pretty good for fighting off an attack by a bear).

      Great question!

    • Photo: Dan Taylor

      Dan Taylor answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      Hi Elm – I’d also agree with James in that this is a fab question! Certainly wasn’t expecting to answer anything like this today!
      I’d also agree with James on a lot of the brainy bits – I won’t spend too much going back over it because it’s not an area I spend a lot of time in and I think he’s done a better job than I could do. But I can mention a bit on the neurotransmitter and hormone aspect of the research though!
      We know that the limbic system is important in love which is associated with pain and pleasure (or reward/punishment) systems, which means we know that dopamine (gives you a “feel good hit”) is a big part of love. And we know that serotonin (the hormone that makes you feel happy) is also really important, because love makes you feel good (mostly). Oxytocin is also really important, this is what we call the bonding hormone. Mother’s produce it when they give birth and is important in facilitating the mother-child bond, so it’s not just important in romantic or sexual love. In some ways oxytocin could be considered the most important hormone in the sense it distinguishes between love and lust, sex is really associated with chemicals like dopamine in particular (sex feels good and therefore releases dopamine) but oxytocin in the chemical that allows for long term relationships to form – regardless of if those people are having sex or not!
      I saw James mentioned testosterone too, what I think is really interesting is that there is some evidence to say a man’s testosterone levels are higher when he is single, when he gets into a long term relationship these levels go down, evolutionary psychology might suggest this is because the man is ready to begin investing in his children as opposed to attracting new mates. We know testosterone is important in things like facial attractiveness (for a lot of women) and we also know that high levels of it are associated with a high sex drive (wanting to have a lot of sex) so when these levels start decreasing it might suggest that the man is focusing more on looking after his children than trying to have more. The role of oxytocin may be important here too as men release far less oxytocin when they have sex (compared to women) but they release an awful lot when they have children, it might suggest that oxytocin and testosterone are antagonistic (when one hormone goes up, the other goes down).
      Hate is quite interesting and I think the amygdala probably has a lot to do with it, it’s associated with negative emotion and stress – which might also mean that cortisol (the stress hormone) plays a large role in hate also!

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