It’s something that people love to imagine happening for themselves, something that we read about all the time in romance novels, and something that gets used over and over again in the movies, but is love at first actually a real thing? If you have experienced it, then you are adamant that it’s real, but if you have never been in love, you can’t imagine something so instant and overwhelming like that ever happening! This is what science has to say about love at first sight!
Looks like Roxy Music have been right this whole time! When you fall for someone, a chemical reaction occurs in your brain that releases lots of dopamine and serotonin, so much so that a scan of your brain can actually look the same as someone who is high on heroin! This initial effect can last as long as four days, so it is easy to see how a first meeting with someone you are incredibly attracted to can feel like love at first sight.
This is a concept that involves taking such a shine to one particular element of someone at first glance that you then proceed to unconsciously ignore all of the things that you might not like about them. There is a strong case for this cognitive bias being what some people think is love at first sight when really a better description might be that they were blinded by their own attraction and could only see the positives to begin with!
The very notion of the words ‘love at first sight’ can be very powerful in a relationship, to the point where your brain actually makes you want to feel more for your partner than you actually do because you become invested in living up to the thing that you tell everyone, namely, that you fell for them the moment you saw them! It’s almost like you are recreating the past and trying to love up to your own prophecy.
Did you know that the first impression you get of someone is created in your brain within the first seven seconds of meeting them? In some ways, then, this can be identified as something like love at first sight, because if you spend those first seven seconds developing an attraction to them, then that is what is going to stick most strongly in your mind.
The power and influence of eye contact is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. There is a line of scientific opinion that argues that love at first sight is much more likely to be a case of you spending your first moments with someone looking each other in the eyes, rather than scanning their body in a more superficial way. It basically hints at the difference between plain old fashioned lust and something much deeper, with a more meaningful connection.