Love, in all its forms, has fascinated scientists for a long time. Now, researchers from Aalto University in Finland have presented for the first time a "map" of love, showing which parts of the body and how intensely we feel different types of love. We used ChatGPT to get around the new map.
The research team, led by philosopher Fratoli Rinna and professor emeritus Miko Sams and including doctoral student Mika Tawast and researcher Enrico Galerian, asked the participants of the online survey, most of whom were young women in higher education, to mark on a sketch of the human body which parts of their body and at what physical and mental strengths they feel love of 27 different types – from romantic and sexual love, through love for parents and other relatives, Love for friends, love for strangers, to love for nature and God.
The results, recently published in Philosophical Psychology, revealed a surprising spectrum of love, with all types of love causing strong sensations in the head, while the sensations they evoke in the rest of the body vary; Some types of love were localized, felt mainly in the chest, while others reverberated throughout the body, and the stronger the love, the more body parts it was felt.
Rina notes that the most surprising finding is the fact that all forms of love are prominently felt in the head. As researchers progressed from strong types of love to less intense types, sensations in the chest area decreased. This may be because more distant types of love are mental rather than emotional. He acknowledged that more studies are needed to test this conclusion.
Another interesting discovery was the strong correlation between the physical and mental intensity of love and its general pleasantness. The more intensely a type of love was felt in the body, the stronger it resonated in the soul, and the more enjoyable it became—a testament to the complex interplay between physical and emotional experiences.
Rina emphasized that there may be other discoveries on the subject that this study did not discover, such as whether in religious communities love for God ranks higher on the intensity scale, and whether in parent communities love for their children is strongest.
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