Agora: Red Deer Polytechnic Undergraduate Journal
Volume 15:1 2024 Agora Conference Proceedings

Use of EEG Technology for Assessment of Love Regulation
Techniques
Jocelyn Wynnychuk
Love can evoke a number of emotions, ranging from feelings of euphoria, all the way to
feelings of depression (Langeslag & Van Strien, 2016). Because of this, love deeply impacts an
individual's life, and has a profound impact on well-being and mental state (Langeslag & Van
Strien, 2016). For these reasons, it is important that love is studied scientifically. Oftentimes, love
refers to a secure attachment, meaning it can occur in many different forms. Romantic love, however, is typically characterized as feelings of both attachment and infatuation (Langeslag & Surti,
2022). Infatuation is typically thought to be an intense amorous feeling, whereas attachment tends
to refer to a deep sense of comfort and bonding with an individual (Langeslag et al., 2013). Typically, infatuation tends to be at its highest levels in the beginning stage of a relationship, and decreases quickly, whereas attachment tends to increase as the relationship progresses, but may still
decrease with time in long-term relationships (Langeslag et al., 2013). There is debate around the
conceptualization of love, with some considering love itself to be an emotion (Fehr & Russell,
1991), while others argue that love is more complex and involves a wide range of emotions
(Langeslag & Sanchez, 2017). For many reasons, Langeslag and Sanchez (2017) argue that love
is conceptually different from our understanding of emotion. They argue this because of the many
different types of love, including romantic love and its many facets, as previously addressed. Additionally, Langeslag and Sanchez (2017) argue this because the same type of love can elicit different emotions depending on the context. For example, love consisting of high levels of infatuation may evoke feelings of euphoria if the love is reciprocated, but it may also elicit the emotion
of sadness if it is unreciprocated. Additionally, emotions tend to be short-lived, whereas infatuation

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and attachment can last for months or years, respectively, as previously mentioned. For these reasons, Langeslag and Sanchez (2017) argue that love should instead be considered an attitude, and
that love more closely resembles a motivation (similar to hunger or thirst). The term love feelings
is used in relevant studies in place of the word love, as love has no plural form and love feelings
more accurately refers to the different types of love, however, it is important to note that here, the
word feelings is not synonymous with emotions. (Langeslag and Sanchez, 2017).
The question arises then, how can individuals increase their feelings of love if they so
desire to? Many individuals have the preconceived notion that people do not have control over
their feelings of love (Langeslag & Van Strien, 2016). Langeslag and Van Strein (2016) conducted
a study in which the participants were individuals in long-term, committed relationships, as well
as participants who had recently gone through a breakup, but who had all reported being in love.
The study involved participants first completing two questionnaires that assessed their feelings of
love. These questionnaires were the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) and the Infatuation and Attachment Scale (IAS). The participants then answered 17 questions that assessed their perceived control over their own and other people’s love feelings. It was found that participants tended to feel
that feelings of love were neither controllable, nor uncontrollable. Although the results were not
significantly different from neutral, responses did lean towards the uncontrollable side of the scale,
indicating that, if anything, participants felt as though love feelings were uncontrollable
(Langeslag & Van Strien, 2016). Being able to control feelings of love would have positive impacts
for a variety of reasons. Being able to increase feelings of love may save relationships that are
affected by declining feelings of love, which is a common reason for divorce (Langeslag & Surti,
2022). Inversely, being able to decrease feelings of love may aid individuals attempting to recover
from heartbreak (Langeslag & Sanchez, 2017).

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Although Langeslag and van Strien (2016) do not conceptualize love to be an emotion,
they do apply emotion regulation techniques to love. Emotion regulation can look like many different things, but one common method is cognitive reappraisal which involves reframing the
thought process regarding a certain situation to better deal with the emotions associated with that
situation (Langeslag and Sanchez, 2017). Similar techniques can be used to regulate motivations,
such as the desire to smoke a cigarette (Littel & Franken, 2011), and therefore using cognitive
reappraisal regarding love feelings aligns with the conceptualization of love as a motivation while
allowing the idea that cognitive reappraisal may be used to regulate love feelings.
Although people feel as though feelings of love are neither controllable nor uncontrollable,
Langeslag and van Strien (2016) demonstrated that similarly to how we are able to regulate our
emotions, we may be able to regulate our love feelings. In this study, techniques similar to emotion
regulation were used to regulate the feelings of love, now referred to as love regulation. Techniques
to increase love feelings (referred to as up-regulation), as well as techniques used to decrease love
feelings (referred to as down-regulation) were used. Here, love regulation was defined as “the use
of behavioural or cognitive strategies to change the intensity of current feelings of romantic love”
(Langeslag & Van Strien, 2016, p. 2). Langeslag and Van Strien measured participants who reported being in love using an electroencephalogram (EEG) and had participants gaze at an image
of their beloved passively, and then viewed the image while employing a love regulation technique.
The love up-regulation technique was reappraisal by way of thinking of either positive aspects of
the partner, the relationship, or future scenarios. The same technique was used for the down-regulation condition, but instead used negative reappraisal. Here, the researchers analyzed the participants' Late Positive Potential (LPP) response. The LPP is an event related potential (ERP) which
“reflects multiple, overlapping positivities over the posterior scalp beginning around 300 ms after

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stimulus onset” (Langeslag & Surti, 2022, p. 200). The LPP is modulated by both positive, and
negative emotionally arousing stimuli when compared to neutral stimuli (Langeslag & Surti,
2022). It was found that participants had an enhanced LPP while employing the love regulation
techniques “[indicating] that love up-regulation enhances the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to the [partner]” (Langeslag & van Strien, 2016, p.
23). Previous studies that similarly measure LPP in response to images of beloved partners controlled for familiarity by using images of close friends of the participants and controlled for objective beauty by using images of beautiful strangers. These studies found an increased LPP response
to images of beloved partners in comparison to the other images, demonstrating that the enhanced
emotional response is not due to familiarity or objective beauty (Langeslag, 2022).
As demonstrated by Langeslag and Van Strien (2016), love regulation is feasible. However, their study only demonstrated the short-term effects of love regulation and did not address
the ability to use love regulation as a technique to provide a sustained increase in love feelings,
even when not actively employing the love regulation techniques. Future research should be conducted to determine if these techniques can be used to provide individuals with a continual increase
in love feelings. Providing research can demonstrate this, the techniques used by Langeslag and
Van Strien may then be implemented as a therapeutic practice for couples experiencing decreasing
feelings of love.

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References
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