SOCIETY tells us that romance is responsible for relationships.
The truth is, it’s all down to science: a captivating cocktail of chemistry, genetics, biology and evolution.
So when do you know if you fancy someone? Do opposites attract? What does love do to your brain chemicals; and is falling in love just nature's way of keeping our species alive?
Someone who has scientifically researched the answers to all things love-related is 24-year-old Co Tyrone girl Emer Maguire. The speech therapist and clinical anatomy student was the 2015 UK Famelab winner, a science communications competition where contestants have just three minutes to convey a scientific concept of their choice.
Her talks on kissing, love and flirting have attracted much attention and she is much in demand as a stand-up scientist – a remarkable feat for someone who confesses she didn't even enjoy science as a teenager.
A talented musician, who is planning to record her own indie-folk album in the near future, Emer has written a number of scientifically accurate love songs for her Sexy Science lecture at this month's Northern Ireland Science Festival.
Why did humans start kissing?
There are a few different theories with evolution and kissing. One of them is that kissing came about by humans feeding each other mouth-to-mouth like birds do and from that that act of pressing lips together and providing nourishment became a symbol for an act of love. Further back, the colour red was influential as millions of years ago our ancestors developed the ability to seek out ripe red fruit amongst green leaves when foraging trees. Since then red was associated with reward and humans sought out all things red. Our lips then evolved to become red so that we could attract mates.
Why do we fall in love with certain people?
There is a psychology theory that from childhood we develop a lovemap, formed by the positive characteristics of the people around us. As we grow up we realise that nobody is perfect and not everyone we meet is going to fit that lovemap and we start to score things off and compromise. If you meet someone that meets most of your lovemap and it's the right time and place and they are similar to you in a level of attractiveness, that can give you the same chemical rush you experience during a kiss. The area in the brain that is stimulated when you find someone intensely attractive is the same area of the brain stimulated when someone takes a drug such as cocaine. So that's why people talk about love being a drug because it is as addictive as drugs.
Is plenty of kissing the secret to a lasting relationship?
It might help, but over time if you are continuously doing the same thing the receptors might dull down a bit. The scientific secret to a happy relationship is doing things that are going to keep releasing the happy hormone dopamine – the same chemical that is released when you are kissing. To get high levels of dopamine you do novel things you wouldn't usually do. For example one of the times you get the highest release of dopamine is after skydived out of an aeroplane – the perfect date!
How does smell affect attraction?
Putting on a nice perfume is a pleasing smell to everyone, but your major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes give out a natural smell that is pleasing to some people in particular. Those MHC genes are also building blocks of your immune system. So if you meet someone and unconsciously you sense that they smell opposite to you and go on to have a relationship with that person your genes would complement each other. If you go on to have a child together, your child would be the best version theoretically of both of yourself, so your child comes out as evolutionary as good as possible and with a good immune system. We are constantly trying to keep our line of DNA going and trying to improve ourselves.
Can online relationships be successful when smell and body language aren’t visible?
The popularity of the Tinder dating app at the minute is huge and I do know quite a few who are in the middle of long term Tinder relationships – so they obviously do work to a certain extent. But if you are on Tinder and you are swiping, all you are looking at is the person’s picture. Level of attractiveness is a good indicator if you are going to fancy someone, but not towards a long-term relationship. It can work out but it's a bit of a risky way of doing it because you could be swiping to reject a lot of people that if you met them in real life they would be complementary to you and you could be attracted to them by their smell.
Is it possible to make someone you fancy fall in love with you?
You could definitely make yourself more attractive to people from things we know from science like wearing red lipstick and red clothes and using your body language to appear confident. But there is a bit of evidence in terms of psychology that you may not fall in love with someone, regardless of who it is, if it's not the right time.
What is your advice to someone looking for love?
Literature used to focus on body language with men having to appear very masculine with big body movements and women appearing feminine and youthful to show they are fertile. But now what's coming out is that the best thing you can do for someone to find you attractive is not how you look, but how good you look and a lot of that comes from being confident and feeling good about yourself.
Do aphrodisiacs work?
I haven't researched them as much because I have always thought of them as a bit of a myth myself. But I can understand how some things like chocolate, which I just think is good any time, enhances the feel-good factor as chocolate contains a chemical called PEA that acts as a character for the signalling of dopamine. So theoretically it should be a bit of an aphrodisiac.
Finally, is science sexy?
Definitely. At school I was more interested in music and English. But science is all around us and I'm delighted to be able to communicate science to people in a way they can relate to and that is fun. People might have this idea that science is quite dry, but I think events like the NI Science Festival make people realise it's for everyone and science can be cool.
Emer Maguire presents Sexy Science at Belfast's Black Box on Sunday February 28 from 3pm as part of the NI Science Festival. Suitable for 16+. She will also be giving a talk on Hilarious Humans and Amazing Animals during the family event Curious Communities in Derry tomorrow from 5pm. For further information and tickets visit nisciencefestival.com
