Why People Fall in Love, According To Science

It's hard to provide an all-inclusive answer to the question "Why do we fall in love?" That is because there are a multitude of possible reasons. Knowing what makes love happen is an interesting study in biochemistry, psychology and neuroscience. Dopamine, dubbed the pleasure hormone, alongside testosterone, oxytocin, norepinephrine, and phenylethylamine, work hand-in-glove to create a feedback loop of love. These chemicals cause you to pay attention to their source, and push you to seek for more of the same chemicals. However, love is not just chemicals, it takes into consideration preferences and personal history as well.

Getting to know a person can cause you to fall in love with them. If the other person answers as little as 36 questions about themselves, in as little as 2 hours, and you find their revelations interesting, it is possible that you fall in love with them. When you fall in love with the idea of someone, the attraction grows as your impression of them improves. However, falling in love with the idea of a person means you fall in love with their potential, and not who they really are. This would cause a problem were these feelings lead to a relationship.

Identification could be the reason you fall in love with a person. Identification was first discussed by Sigmund Freud in his early writings. It is a psychological process where you unconsciously assimilate or adopt an aspect of another person. There are two important categories of identification - narcissistic identification and attachment identification. Narcissistic identification causes you to fall in love with someone who is like you now, or like you in the past. Narcissistic identification could also cause you to fall in love with someone who has a characteristic you always longed for but never had. With attachment identification, you rather fall in love with someone who reminds you of a person you loved and admired, such as a parent.

The homogamy theory propones that you tend to be attracted to people who have similar life circumstances like you - age, education, social class, race, religion, values, looks, amongst others. Research has proven that couples who share more similar traits report more satisfaction, and the relationship tends to last longer. Opposites may attract, but similarities are what keep people together.

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Princess Qajar - The Revolutionary Persian Princess

Zahra Khanom Tadj es-Saltaneh commonly referred to as Princess Qajar was a princess and memoirist of the Qajar Dynasty. Princess Tadj was one of the best known daughters of the Persian king, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar who ruled Persia from 1848 to May 1896. The Persian princess was born on February 4, 1883 and died on January 25, 1936, in Tehran, at the age of 52. Princess Qajar revolutionized beauty standards with her full look and ragged unibrow, and her unmistakably evident mustache. She was a true epitome of beauty at her time. Princess Qajar was declared a symbol of beauty in Persia and was coveted by many men. Thousands of men wanted to marry her, 13 of whom committed suicide upon being rejected by the princess. Princess Qajar eventually married Amir Hussein Khan Shoja'-al Saltaneh and had they had four children - two boys and two girls. They later got divorced in 1907 after enduring an unloving arranged marriage - she married Khan when she was 13. The princess argued f

The Lehman Brothers Scandal (2008)

Company Background : Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a firm specialized in the provision of global financial services. It was founded in Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States of America. The company had headquarters in New York City, New York, in the U.S. It ceased operations in 2008. The founders were: Henry Lehman, Emmanuel Lehman and Mayer Lehman. What Happened? Lehman Brothers hid over $50 billion in loans disguised as sales. They allegedly sold toxic assets [1] to Cayman Island Banks with the understanding that they would eventually be rebought. How they were caught : Their bankruptcy led to the discovery of the fraud. They filed for bankruptcy in 2008, which is the largest bankruptcy ever recorded. Their case was larger than that of Enron, Washington Mutual, WorldCom and GM combined. On September 15, 2008, Lehman brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (Montgomery, n.d.) . Their bankruptcy filing came in as a blow to the financial industry as i

The finger-cutting tradition of Indonesia's Dani tribe

The death of a loved one is always an extremely painful thing to bear, and people of different cultures grieve in diverse ways, some more unique than others. A typically unique way of grieving is that of the Dani (an Indonesian tribe). Finger-cutting is a fundamental part of grieving for women of the Dani tribe, and pertains to their women only. According to The Globe and Mail, an estimated 250,000 Dani tribe members live in a town named Wamena, in the extremely remote central highland area of Papua Province. Wamena is only accessible by plane. Upon the death of a loved one, the top joint of one of a woman's fingers would be amputated, and smear ashes and clay across their faces. Prior to amputation, a string would be firmly tied to the upper half of the woman's finger for 30 minutes, to cause numbness. This was to reduce the pain from amputating the tip. In most cases, the responsibility of cutting off the top joint of the finger is assigned to one of the woman's

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