Is there a special someone you just can't get out of your head? Do you find yourself daydreaming about them when you should be working or studying? Does it feel different this time?

Well, you might be in love — but how can you be sure? Interestingly, scientists have made a lot of progress in understanding what love is and have started to pin down what it means to "fall in love." They have even pinpointed what love looks like in the brain and shown that the related cell activity looks very different from that tied to friendship or lust.

Studies led by Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and other researchers have identified both psychological and physical characteristics often associated with being in love.

Several signs can indicate a person is in love, scientifically speaking. And though studies have historically focused on monogamous, heterosexual relationships, a small 2010 study published in the journal PLOS One suggested that romantic love is indistinguishable in the brains of straight and homosexual people.

Related: Why does heartbreak hurt so much? Science has the answer

Unique brain activity

Thinking about your romantic partner can trigger brain activity that looks very different from other forms of love, a study suggests.

In 2024, Finnish researchers asked 55 parents who were in committed, loving relationships to listen to recordings of scenarios involving love for six things: romantic partners, children, friends, strangers, pets and nature. They then asked the participants to imagine themselves in these situations while recording their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As a point of comparison, several scenarios involved not love but mundane, everyday situations, such as looking at an unremarkable view from a bus window.

Thinking about love for others generated higher levels of activity in areas of the participants' brains related to social cognition than did love for pets or nature, the team found. These brain regions included the temporoparietal junction at the sides of the back of the head, as well as structures along the midline of the forehead. Overall, the most intense brain activity was induced by thoughts of the participants' children, closely followed by those about a romantic partner.

Special meaning

When you're in love, you begin to think your beloved is special. Fisher told Wired in 2022 that the first thing to happen when you fall in love is that the person takes on special meaning, contrary to a platonic — meaning nonromantic — relationship. Everything about the person you're in love with becomes special, such as their car, house or taste in music.

"When you're madly in love with somebody in a romantic attraction, you are obsessed, and in a platonic attraction, you don't think about them night and day," Fisher said.

Focus on the positive

People who are in love tend to idealize their partners, focusing on the positive qualities of their beloved while overlooking their partner's negative traits. It's not clear whether this is necessarily a good thing in long-term partnerships. A 2011 study published in the Journal of Family Theory & Review looked at studies about idealization in relationships and couldn't determine whether it was a good predictor of marital satisfaction.

Fisher's research has suggested that those who are in love also focus on trivial events and objects that remind them of their loved one. She found that most men and women reported recalling trivial things that their partners said and did, and they would also replay these moments in their heads.

This focused attention is also thought to result from elevated levels of the chemical messenger dopamine in the brain and spinal cord, as well as a spike in norepinephrine, a chemical associated with increased memory in the presence of new stimuli, particularly emotionally arousing stimuli.

Emotional instability

As is well known, falling in love can lead to wild swings in mood. When extreme, these swings can somewhat parallel the behavior of people with substance use disorders, in that the need to seek out and be with the person can prompt harmful behaviors, according to a 2017 article in the journal Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology.

Fisher has argued that romantic love should be considered akin to an addiction — but that "love addiction" is positive when the love is reciprocated, nontoxic and appropriate, and negative when the opposite is true. "Symptoms" of love addiction include cravings, withdrawals and relapses, similar to drug dependence, she argues. That said, not everyone agrees with comparing love to addiction, even in a metaphorical sense, as doing so can downplay the seriousness of substance use disorders.

Intensifying attraction

Going through adversity in a relationship can intensify romantic attraction, according to Fisher's research. For example, separated lovers may experience anxiety if they aren't able to see each other, and they show elevated dopamine levels when reunited. That's because when a reward of dopamine in the brain is delayed — in this case, through separation — the dopamine-producing neurons in the so-called midbrain become more productive. In other words, absence really can make the heart grow fonder.

Related: Brain signature of desire uncovered in lovesick rodents, and it may be in people, too

Intrusive thinking

People who are in love can spend a lot of time thinking about their partners. One small study of 10 women and seven men who reported having recently fallen madly in love reported spending more than 85% of their waking hours musing over their beloved, according to a 2016 study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Being in love also prevents people from focusing on other information, according to a study published in 2013 in the journal Motivation and Emotion. The researchers found that passionate love among students correlated with decreased efficiency and worse performance on tasks provided by the researchers.

Emotional dependency

People in love regularly exhibit signs of emotional dependency, including possessiveness, jealousy and fear of rejection. For instance, Fisher and her colleagues looked at the brains of individuals viewing photos of someone they were still in love with despite being rejected by that person.

The study involved only a small sample of rejectees, but brain scans taken using fMRI showed activation in several brain areas, including forebrain areas such as the cingulate gyrus, that have been shown to play a role in cravings in people addicted to cocaine. Broadly speaking, the brain's reward system lights up in anticipation of a variety of rewarding stimuli — from food to social interactions to sex — so this overlap isn't necessarily surprising.

"Activation of areas involved in cocaine addiction may help explain the obsessive behaviors associated with rejection in love," the researchers wrote in 2010 in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Planning a future

Longing for an emotional union with a beloved, seeking out ways to get closer, and daydreaming about a future together are also signs of love. According to an article in The Harvard Gazette, when the brain's serotonin levels begin to return to normal levels after spiking at the start of a relationship, the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin increases in the body. This chemical messenger is associated with more mature relationships and helps cement pairings, research suggests.

Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, told Live Science in 2011 that the drive to be with another person is sort of like our drive toward water and other things we need to survive.

"Functional MRI studies show that primitive neural systems underlying drive, reward recognition and euphoria are active in almost everyone when they look at the face of their beloved and think loving thoughts," Brown said. "This puts romantic love in the company of survival systems, like those that make us hungry or thirsty.

"I think of romantic love as part of the human reproductive strategy," she added. "It helps us form pair-bonds, which help us survive. We were built to experience the magic of love and to be driven toward another."

Feelings of empathy

People who are in love have a great deal of empathy for their partner, feeling the other person's pain as their own and being prepared to sacrifice anything for the other person, according to Fisher's research.

That empathy can benefit the relationship. For example, empathy can motivate supportive behaviors that help alleviate a partner's suffering during difficult times, as well as help a partner celebrate their successes, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Related: Humans can 'smell' each other's emotions — but we don't know how

Aligning interests

Falling in love can result in someone reordering their daily priorities to align with those of their partner.

While some people may attempt to be more like a loved one, another of Fisher's studies, presented in 2013 at the "Being Human" conference, found that people can be attracted to their opposites, personality-wise.

For instance, her research found that people who were highly analytical, competitive and emotionally contained were often drawn to mates with personalities who tended to be "empathetic, nurturing, trusting and prosocial, and introspective, seeking meaning and identity," Fisher said at the time.

Still, most evidence shows that people aren't really attracted to opposites in the context of relationships. Rather, like attracts like. And data suggest those who perceive themselves to be more like their partners are likelier to stay together, and be happier, than people who see themselves as very different from their partners.

Craving an emotional union

While research suggests that the desire for sexual union is important to many people in love, it's not the be-all and end-all. In fact, Fisher's 2002 study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior found that 64% of people in love — the same percentage for men and women — disagreed with the statement "Sex is the most important part of my relationship with [my partner]."

The longing for an emotional union is often reported as the most important factor in relationships and appears to supersede sex.

Out-of-control feelings

Fisher and her colleagues found that individuals who report being in love commonly say their passion is involuntary and uncontrollable. For her book "Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love" (Scarborough House, 1998), psychologist Dorothy Tennov asked 400 men and women in Connecticut to respond to 200 statements on romantic love. Many participants expressed feelings of helplessness, saying their obsession was irrational and involuntary.

Loss of the spark

The initial state of being in love doesn't always last. It may withers and die or evolve into a long-term relationship that psychologists call "attachment." When this happens, your cortisol and serotonin levels return to normal, and the negative, stressful aspects of love, such as anxiety, tend to go away, according to Harvard Medical School.

If there are physical or social barriers inhibiting partners from seeing one another regularly — for example, if the relationship is long-distance — then the intense romantic love phase generally lasts longer than it would otherwise.

Fisher and colleagues published a 2012 study in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience that found that, for some individuals, the activation in reward pathways in the brain seen in new love may even be sustained in long-term relationships coupled with attachment. In other words, you can be madly in love with someone for decades, if you're lucky.

Hypomania

Several studies have found that the early stages of intense romantic love are associated with hypomania, a period of elevated mood levels where people can also experience things like increased energy and confidence, as well as increased irritability and disinhibition, all while sleeping less. (This is not to be confused with hypermania, which ramps this up to a higher intensity and has additional effects.)

A 2007 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that young lovers scored higher on a scale of hypomania, with increased positive-mood states in the mornings and evenings, compared with those who were uncoupled. A 2015 study in the International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice suggested romantic love was not entirely joyful, though, and also came with the darker sides of hypomania, including poor sleep quality.

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February 14th, the day of chocolates, roses and heart-festooned greeting cards, is upon us once again.

If that sentence made you groan, you're not alone. Almost half of Americans describe Valentine's Day as "overrated," according to a 2017 survey. Still, another 43 percent called it "romantic," indicating some serious polarization surrounding this day celebrating love.

Valentine's Day itself does not get a lot of love in the scientific literature, but a few scattered studies hint at why it inspires hate. See if any of the reasons to hate Valentine's Day ring true for you.

1. You're a rebel

In marketing, there's a notion called "resistance theory." Basically, if people feel like they're being asked to comply with a prescribed, prepackaged behavior, they're unlikely to do so.

Valentine's Day is ripe for resistance, according to a 2008 study in the Journal of Business Research. It's not a religious holiday, so it's perceived as corporate and consumerist, a way for businesses to stick their money-grubbing noses in your personal romantic business. According to surveys, diaries and e-diaries collected between 2000 and 2006, people feel a strong sense of gift-giving resistance surrounding Valentine's Day, even as they feel obligated to get something for their significant other. The sense of obligation killed any sense of meaning that came with the gift-giving. In response, many participants enacted monetary limits on gift-giving. But 88 percent of men in relationships and 75 percent of women did still gift something, the researchers found, though often the gift was a handmade item or home-cooked dinner. [13 Scientifically Proven Signs You're in Love]

Valentine's seemed to bum out those in new relationships and single people the most. Eight-one percent of men and 50 percent of women in brand-new partnerships reported feeling obligated to give gifts. Meanwhile, some singles became particularly incensed with the marketing surrounding Valentine's Day.

"I would like to extend a warm thanks to Hallmark, the official sponsor of Valentine's Day, for reminding me that without a significant other, how truly worthless my life is," one single participant wrote, as the researchers recorded in their study.

Notably, Valentine's Day isn't the only holiday that fills people with angst over obligatory gift-giving. A 2013 Pew Research survey about Christmas found that the top things Americans dislike about Christmas all have to do with consumerism: A third (33 percent) hate the materialism; 22 percent hate the expense; and 10 percent loathe the crowded stores.

2. You're not comfortable in relationships

Regardless of relationship status, Valentine's Day may be particularly cringe-worthy for those who avoid intimacy. A 2014 study surveyed coupled-up individuals online about how Valentine's Day impacted their assessments of their own relationships. The researchers focused on a concept called "attachment," which is rooted in research on parent-child interactions. People who are attachment-avoidant try not to become too intimate with their partners and tend not to offer much emotional support.

Attachment avoidance turned out to be key for how people experience their relationships in the context of Valentine's Day. The researchers had people take online surveys on Valentine's Day and on a random day in April about their relationships. Some of the surveys were accompanied by banner ads with romantic (though not explicitly Valentine-y) themes. The people who were both low in attachment avoidance and reminded of romance with a banner ad reported a boost in relationship satisfaction and investment in their relationships on Valentine's Day.

Without all of those ingredients, meh.

"One of the main messages from the paper is that Valentine's Day actually doesn't make a difference" for most people, study author William Chopik, a social scientist at Michigan State University, told Live Science.

And for people high in attachment avoidance, even throwing Valentine's Day and reminders of romance at them didn't make them feel more into their relationships.

For the researchers, these findings explained some previous conundrums surrounding Valentine's Day. Some previous research had found that anniversaries, holidays and birthdays helped glue couples together, they wrote. However, other studies had suggested that, on the contrary, weak relationships are especially prone to go down in flames around Valentine's Day, Chopik said. A person's individual attachment style could determine whether V-Day casts a rosy light on a relationship or sinks the whole thing. [The 6 Most Tragic Love Stories in History]

"For better or for worse, recurring relationship events provide opportunities for people to think about their relationships," the researchers concluded.

3. You're being a little melodramatic right now

Then again, maybe Valentine's isn't such a big deal after all. Whatever you're feeling about it right now might simply evaporate come Feb. 14.

A 2010 study of emotional anticipation asked participants to report how they were likely to feel about Valentine's Day in mid-January. On Feb. 16, the same participants were again asked about Valentine's Day, this time reporting how they actually felt about the holiday.

Across the board, participants overestimated how intensely they'd feel about the holiday. Daters believed they'd feel more positive about Valentine's than they actually did. Non-daters thought they'd feel more negative. In fact, after the day passed, it turned out that both daters and singles felt about the same on Valentine's.

Your personality might clue you in about whether your pre-V-Day emotions are likely to track with how you'll really feel. The researchers found that extroverts tended to view their future emotions through a rosier light, while people with anxious, neurotic tendencies tended to expect to feel particularly bad about Valentine's (especially if they were single). It turned out to be true that extroverts did report feeling better about Valentine's after the fact than neurotic individuals did, but both groups still overestimated their emotional response.

So the next time you pass a display of roses or see a commercial hawking diamond rings, take a deep breath and remember: This Valentine's Day, too, shall pass.

• 5 Ways Love Affects the Brain
• How Do I Love Thee? Experts Count 8 Ways
• 5 Ways Relationships Are Bad for Your Health

Originally published on Live Science.

A resurgence of syphilis in the United States has led to a dramatic spike in cases of the disease among newborns, according to a new report.

The report found that in recent years, cases of syphilis among newborns — a condition known as congenital syphilis — more than doubled in the U.S., from 362 cases in 2013 to 918 cases in 2017. The latter is the highest number of congenital syphilis cases reported in the U.S. in 20 years, according to the report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The rise parallels recent increases in syphilis rates among U.S. adults. For nearly two decades, rates of the disease have increased among men, and rates are now rising among women as well. From 2016 to 2017, cases of syphilis increased 21 percent among U.S. women, the report said.

In 2017, congenital syphilis cases were reported in 37 states, but five states accounted for 70 percent of those cases, the CDC said. The five states were California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana and Florida.

Congenital syphilis can lead to a number of complications, including miscarriage or premature birth, as well as blindness, deafness or even death in newborns, according to the CDC.

The report highlighted the need for all pregnant women to receive early prenatal care, including a syphilis test at their first pregnancy-related doctor's visit. [Quiz: Test Your STD Smarts]

"Early testing and prompt treatment to cure any infections are critical first steps, but too many women are falling through the cracks of the system," Dr. Gail Bolan, director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention, said in a statement. "If we're going to reverse the resurgence of congenital syphilis, that has to change."

Syphilis, which is caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum, is a sexually transmitted disease, but it can also pass from mother to baby during pregnancy or delivery. If left untreated, a pregnant woman with syphilis has up to an 80 percent chance of passing the disease to her baby, the CDC said. But the good news is that the infection is easily cured during pregnancy with the right antibiotics.

However, for some women, one test for syphilis during pregnancy may not be enough; the CDC report found that some pregnant women who initially tested negative for syphilis later acquired the infection after their first test. For this reason, women who are at high risk for syphilis or who live in areas with higher rates of the disease should be tested at the first prenatal visit as well as during the third trimester and at delivery, the CDC said. Anyone, including pregnant women, can lower their risk of syphilis by using condoms properly every time they have sex and by making sure that their partner has also been tested for syphilis, the CDC said.

Originally published on Live Science.

More than 100 years ago, a Russian soldier held captive in a prisoner-of-war camp engraved a beautiful scene on an aluminum canteen showing two people, deeply in love, snuggling together.

The soldier engraved the moving scene in Czersk, in modern-day Poland while World War I (also called the Great War) raged in Europe. Germany controlled much of what is now Poland and was at war with Russia.

"The front face of the Czersk canteen displays a scene of a man and a woman embracing and holding hands," Dawid Kobiałka, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, at the Polish Academy of Sciences, wrote in a study published online today (June 28) in the journal Antiquity. "The man has big and detailed eyes; the moustache is small but evidently cultivated. The woman is huddled close to the man." [The Great War: World War I, 1914-1918]

The man is wearing a long robe along with "a coat and a tall, furry hat, and his shoes seem to be made of leather," Kobiałka wrote. The woman is also wearing robes and "her neck is decorated with three rows of large beads. She has thick, long hair and, in contrast to her lover, she is barefoot," Kobiałka wrote. "Behind them is a landscape of arable fields, with a bushy tree growing to the right. The scene is surrounded by floral motifs and a zig-zag carving."

This "scene might be a material, and sentimental, memory depicting the owner of the artifact and his sweetheart, perhaps his fiancée or his wife," Kobiałka wrote in the study.

There is an inscription on the back of the canteen written in Cyrillic. It contains the intertwining letters "O" and "R," which may be the owner's initials, Kobiałka noted. The inscription also says (in translation) "For the memory of the European War 1914–15–16–1917" and "As a memento of being taken into captivity at Korajanowo on 15 April 1915."

There is also an image of a flying bird above the inscription, which, judging by the design of the drawing, was likely engraved by a different individual than the person who engraved the love scene on the front of the flask. "Questions thus arise: were all of the carvings completed by the same prisoner at the Czersk camp? Was the bird image added later or earlier by another soldier who was detained at the POW camp?" Kobiałka asked.

Place of Death

Thousands of prisoners died in captivity at Czersk. The fact that this canteen was left in the POW camp indicates that the person who engraved the love scene was among them, Kobiałka said.

Nearly 1,200 prisoners "died at the Czersk camp just in 1918 because of typhus and Spanish flu epidemics, among others," Kobiałka told Live Science.

"It is probable that the owner could [have] died in 1918. The personal belongings of prisoners who died because of infectious diseases were not reused. They were perceived as 'dangerous,' 'contagious' and, as a consequence, thrown away [and] buried in trash pits. This is the most probable interpretation [of] why such [a] beautiful object like the canteen was thrown away," Kobialka said.

The lost love scene wasn't rediscovered until 2006, when a local man named Piotr Szulc found it in the forest. The canteen is now part of an Exhibition of Nature of the Tuchola Forest and the River Wda being held in the Polish town of Czarna Woda.

Original article on Live Science.

HIV has been caught on camera: A new video shows the virus passing from an infected cell into a new host, as it would during sexual transmission.

The real-time video offers a new glimpse of exactly how HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus, infects cells during intercourse.

"We had this global idea of how HIV infects this tissue [of the genital tract]; but following something live is completely different," Morgane Bomsel, a molecular biologist at the Institut Cochin in Paris and a senior author of the study, said in a statement. "The precise sequence of events can be defined."

For the video, the researchers created a model of genital tissue in a lab dish, which included the cells that line the genital mucous membranes, known as epithelial cells. The virus, which infects cells of the immune system, is labeled with a green fluorescent protein.

In the video, a type of immune cell called a T cell is infected with HIV, and this cell comes into contact with epithelial cells. Once these cells are in contact, a pocket called a virological synapse forms, allowing viral particles to travel from the infected cell to the uninfected cell.

In what looks like a shooting ray gun from a sci-fi movie, the HIV spurts from the T cell into the epithelial cell. The HIV doesn't actually infect the epithelial cell, but instead travels across the cell and is later gobbled up by macrophages, another type of immune cell that HIV targets.

After about 20 days, HIV enters a latent or "dormant" stage, but it's still inside the macrophages, which makes the virus harder to target with drugs. A goal for new HIV prevention strategies would be "to act extremely early upon infection to avoid this reservoir formation" in the macrophages, Bomsel said. By shedding light on the early steps of HIV transmission, the new study may help researchers take steps toward this goal. One idea would be to make a vaccine that's active at the genital mucous membranes, "because you can't wait" to stop the spread of HIV, Bomsel said.

The findings were described in a study published today (May 8) in the journal Cell Reports.

Original article on Live Science.

To bae or not to bae? That is the question of dating. And while you might believe the answer hinges mostly on "chemistry" or mutual interests, a team of psychology researchers from McGill University in Montreal suggests that there's an unlikely judge ultimately making the call: your behavioral immune system.

Unlike your physiological immune system — that collection of cells, organs and lymph nodes that defends your body from invading pathogens and sweeps up the microscopic debris cluttering your tissues — your behavioral immune system relies on subconscious sensory impulses to steer you away from potential germ-ridden danger. (While the concept of a second immune system is only about 10 years old, the notion that humans and other animals noticeably change their behavior to avoid communicable diseases has been demonstrated in hundreds of studies.) This system may be the reason you feel compelled to switch bus seats when the person sitting next to you is constantly hacking up phlegm, why you feel disgusted by certain smells and why you balk at pimple-popping videos on YouTube.

Your reactions to gross stimuli like these can prime your white blood cells for action. And this immune response may also ruin your hot date, according to the researcher's study in February 2018 issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. [Love Is Scary: 12 Weird Phobias]

"We found that when the behavioral immune system was activated, it seemed to put the brakes on our drive to connect with our peers socially," study author Natsumi Sawada, a psychologist and former student at McGill University, said in a statement.

Immune to romance?

In the study, Sawada and her colleagues recruited several hundred people ages 18 to 35, who were single and heterosexual, to participate in either an in-person or online speed-dating experiment. Before the dating events began, each participant answered a questionnaire to measure what the researchers called "perceived vulnerability to disease" (PVD) — basically, how germ- and disease-conscious the person was. (Sample prompt: "I avoid using public telephones because of the risk that I may catch something from a previous user.")

Next, participants either sat down for a 20-minute conversation with an attractive student, ran a gauntlet of 3-minute speed dates or rated a series of online dating profiles custom-made for the study. After each dating encounter, the singles rated their potential partner's attractiveness, "dateability," and how friendly or withdrawn they seemed. Across every trial, daters who were more concerned with germs and infection (measured by higher PVD scores) were consistently rated as less friendly than daters who weren't. Germophobes also reported feeling less romantic interest in their partners than the less-finicky participants did.

To make sure this correlation was more than a coincidence, the researchers ran a final speed-dating experiment in which half of the participants first watched a 2-minute video called "Top 10 Revolting Hygiene Facts," while the other half watched a control video about words with no English equivalents. During the following speed-dating game, participants primed with the gross-out video reported "significantly less romantic interest" than the control group did, according to the study.

"The results suggest that, beyond how we consciously or unconsciously think and feel about each other, there are additional factors that we may not be consciously aware of — such as a fear of disease — that may influence how we connect with others," Sawada said.

If this resonates with your own love life, consider that kissing itself may have evolved as an immunological tool. Every time you swap saliva, you also swap pheromones, hormones and millions of bacteria that may contain important genetic information about your partner. Whether you'd prefer to learn that information this way is up to you — and your immune system, of course.

Originally published on Live Science.

The U.K. man who caught the "worst ever" case of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea has been cured, according to news reports.

The man was "very lucky" that his treatment worked, sexual-health experts told the BBC today (April 20).

The man's infection was resistant to the two antibiotics recommended as the first-choice treatment for gonorrhea, called azithromycin and ceftriaxone. This was the first report in the world of a case of gonorrhea that was found to be resistant to both of these antibiotics, according to Public Health England (PHE), the U.K. health agency that investigated the man's case. However, two similar cases have since been reported in Australia.

The U.K. man acquired the infection from a sexual encounter with a woman in Southeast Asia, the BBC reported. He was treated with an antibiotic called ertapenem, which was administered intravenously for three days, according to the PHE. This treatment apparently did the trick.

"We are pleased to report that the case of multi-drug resistant gonorrhea has been successfully treated," Dr. Gwenda Hughes, head of the Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Section at the PHE, said in a statement.

The U.K. case and the new cases in Australia "serve as a timely reminder that we expect to see further cases of multi-drug-resistant gonorrhea in the future," Hughes said. "We urge the public to avoid getting or passing on gonorrhea by using condoms consistently and correctly with all new and casual partners. If you think you have been at risk, you should seek an STI [test] at a sexual health clinic."

Original article on Live Science.

A man in the United Kingdom caught an STD with a dubious distinction: It could be the "worst ever" case of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea that doctors have seen.

The man's infection is resistant to the two antibiotics recommended as the first-choice treatment for gonorrhea, called azithromycin and ceftriaxone. This is the first report in the world of a case of gonorrhea that's resistant to both of these antibiotics, according to researchers at Public Health England, the U.K. health agency investigating the case. The World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control agreed that the case is a first, according to the BBC.

The man acquired the infection from a sexual encounter with a woman in Southeast Asia, the BBC reported.

Doctors have warned for years about the risk of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, as this STD is increasingly developing resistance to all of the drugs available to treat it.

The U.K. man is currently being treated with an antibiotic called ertapenem, and preliminary tests suggest it may be working, researchers at Public Health England said. Doctors will follow up with the man next month to determine whether the treatment was successful, according to the BBC.

An investigation is still underway to determine if any other people caught this infection, but so far, no other cases have been reported.

Gonorrhea is caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae and is spread through sexual activity. Individuals with gonorrhea often show no symptoms, but the disease can lead to serious complications, including infertility and chronic pelvic pain in women. In men, it can cause epididymitis, a painful condition of the ducts attached to the testicles that may cause infertility if left untreated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If the bacteria spread to the blood or joints, the condition can be life-threatening, the CDC says.

Original article on Live Science.

Herpes infections have declined in the United States in recent years, according to a new report. However, about half of teens and adults under age 50 are still infected with the oral herpes virus, and about 1 in 8 have an infection with the genital herpes virus.

The new report, published today (Feb. 7) by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), analyzed information from people in the U.S. ages 14 to 49 who had been screened for herpes in 2015 and 2016, as part of a national survey. The screening involved a blood test that looked for antibodies against two types of herpes viruses: herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), which most commonly causes oral herpes (cold sores), and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), which causes genital herpes.

The results showed that, overall, about 48 percent of people in this age group had HVS-1, and about 12 percent had HSV-2. Infections were more common among older age groups — for example, 60 percent of people ages 40 to 49 had HVS-1, and 21 percent had HVS-2, while 27 percent of people ages 14 to 19 had HVS-1, and 0.8 percent had HVS-2, the report said. [Quiz: Test Your STD Smarts]

The study also found that the rates of both infections decreased over the period from 1999-2000 to 2015-2016. During this 16-year period, HSV-1 infection rates dropped by 11 percentage points, and HSV-2 infection rates dropped by 6 percentage points, the report said.

The decrease in HVS-1 and HSV-2 infections is good news, said lead author Geraldine McQuillan, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the CDC.

"Once an individual is infected with HSV, they remain infected for life," McQuillan told Live Science. "Therefore, the only way we would see a decrease in our estimates is if there was a decrease in new infections."

The new report cannot determine the precise reason for this decline, however, the researchers said. An upcoming study, set to be published later this year, looks at risk factors for herpes, and that study will be better able to investigate the reason for the decline, McQuillan said.

But several previous studies have found declines in HVS-1 infections in other industrialized countries. In those studies, researchers attributed the decline in HSV-1 to improved living conditions, better hygiene and less crowding, McQuillan said. HSV-1 is a highly contagious virus that is often contracted in childhood; it spreads through contact with the saliva or skin of an infected person, or by touching objects handled by an infected person, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

For HSV-2, "other studies that have seen a decline in HSV-2 in their populations have suggested that the increase in safe-sex practices in the post-AIDS-pandemic [period] may contribute to the decline in this virus, which is sexually transmitted," McQuillan said. (Previously, researchers documented a 19 percent drop in HSV-2 infections among Americans ages 14 to 49 from 1988 to 2004.)

Although herpes infections are lifelong, people with infections may not always have symptoms, because the virus can remain "dormant" for long periods, with symptoms flaring up from time to time, according to the National Institutes of Health. Symptoms of herpes infection can include sores in the mouth (for HSV-1) or genitals (for HSV-2). These sores can turn into blisters that become itchy and painful before healing, the NIH says.

Original article on Live Science.

If you're feeling stressed, a whiff of your romantic partner's shirt may help you feel more relaxed, a new study shows.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) found that smelling a romantic partner’s clothing was associated with lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in women's blood, according to the study, published Jan. 3  in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Many people wear their partner's shirt or sleep on their partner's side of the bed when their partner is away, but may not realize why they engage in these behaviors," lead study author Marlise Hofer, a graduate student in the UBC Department of Psychology, said in a statement. "Our findings suggest that a partner's scent alone, even without their physical presence, can be a powerful tool to help reduce stress." [11 Tips to Lower Stress]

The researchers included 96 opposite-sex couples in the study. The men were asked to wear T-shirts for 24 hours, without wearing any deodorant or scented body products. They were also asked to not smoke and to eat only foods that wouldn't affect their body scent. After the T-shirts had been worn for a day, they were frozen to preserve their smells.

Then, the women were given two T-shirts to smell: an unworn T-shirt and one that belonged to either a stranger or the woman's own partner. (In other words, women were either given an unworn T-shirt and their partner's shirt to smell, or an unworn T-shirt and a stranger's shirt to smell.) In both groups, the women were not told whether either shirt was worn, or who wore the shirt.

Women tend to have a better sense of smell than men, which is why they were chosen to be the "smellers" in the study, the researchers said.

After smelling the two shirts, the women participated in a mock job interview and a mental math task; this was done to raise their stress levels. To measure stress, the researchers asked the women questions about how much stress they felt and collected saliva samples to measure cortisol levels, according to the statement.

In the experiment, the women who received a T-shirt worn by their partners, rather than strangers, had lower cortisol levels, the researchers found.

Among the women who received their partner's shirt, plus an unworn shirt, smelling the partners' T-shirts was linked to a significant reduction cortisol levels, compared with smelling the unworn shirts. In addition, the women who smelled their partners' shirts said they felt less stress both before and after the interview and math test, the researchers said.

Furthermore, the effect was greater in women who recognized that the scents belonged to their partners, suggesting the benefits of a loved one's scent are strongest when women know what they are smelling, according to the study.

However, smelling a stranger's T-shirt had the opposite effect: It resulted in higher levels of cortisol throughout the stress test compared with smelling the unworn T-shirt, the researchers said in the statement.

"From a young age, humans fear strangers, especially strange males, so it is possible that a strange male scent triggers the 'fight or flight' response that leads to elevated cortisol," Hofer said in the statement. "This could happen without us being fully aware of it."

The findings could be used to help people cope with stressful situations when they're separated from loved ones, the researchers said.

"With globalization, people are increasingly traveling for work and moving to new cities," senior study author Frances Chen, an assistant professor in the UBC Department of Psychology, said in the statement. "Our research suggests that something as simple as taking an article of clothing that was worn by your loved one could help lower stress levels when you're far from home."

Originally published on Live Science.

We've all seen that movie moment when two strangers meet and feel an instant romantic connection — in fact, "love at first sight" has been a mainstay of literature for thousands of years, and people in real life often claim to experience a similar spark.

But is that feeling actually love? Not quite, according to the authors of a new study.

In the study, researchers investigated whether people feel love at first sight — LAFS — or whether they believe retroactively that they felt that way, once they've already formed an attachment to a romantic partner. The scientists also questioned whether what people call "love" at a first encounter is truly representative of the complex emotions that make up love — or just a powerful physical attraction.

Read more: 12 scientifically proven signs of love

Prior studies have shown that being in love activates certain brain regions, and the location of the activity can vary depending on what type of love the person is feeling, such as emotional, maternal or passionate love. Intense, passionate love activates the same networks in the brain as addiction does, and more long-term love sparked responses in brain regions associated with attachment and reward. 

Researchers have also previously reported that as many as 1 in 3 people in Western countries claim to have experienced LAFS. And that the feeling is associated with more passion and stronger bonds within the relationship, the scientists wrote in the new study.  

But there was little evidence indicating if LAFS occurred when people thought it did — at the moment of their first meeting ― or if they merely remembered it happening that way through the lens of their current romantic feelings, the study authors explained.

The scientists collected data from about 500 encounters between nearly 400 participants, mostly heterosexual Dutch and German students in their mid-20s. Using three stages of data collection — an online survey, a laboratory study and three dating events lasting up to 90 minutes each — the researchers gathered information from their subjects about meeting prospective romantic partners. They noted whether participants said that they felt something akin to LAFS upon a first meeting, and how physically attractive they ranked the person who inspired those feelings. 

To define what qualified as "love," subjects submitted self-analysis of several key components: "eros" (physical attraction), "intimacy," "passion" and "commitment." During the tests, 32 different individuals reported experiencing LAFS a total of 49 times — and that observation wasn't typically accompanied with high ratings for love components such as intimacy and commitment.

However, reports of LAFS did correspond with a potential partner scoring higher as physically attractive, the researchers discovered. About 60 percent of the study participants were women, but men were more likely to report feeling LAFS "on the spot," the study authors reported. And in every case, their experience of LAFS was unreciprocated, suggesting that mutual, instantaneous LAFS "might generally be rare," according to the study.

The authors determined that LAFS was, in fact, merely "a strong initial attraction" that people identified as love, either at the moment they felt it, or in retrospect. And though some study subjects who were already involved with someone reported that they fell in love at first glance, it's hard to say for sure if that happened the way they remembered. Answering this question would require further investigation into romantic relationships, to see how those initial, powerful feelings of instantaneous love play out over time, the scientists wrote.   

The findings were published online Nov. 17 in the Journal of the International Association for Relationship Research.

Original article on Live Science.

In Americans, cases of three common sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) — chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis — have together reached an all-time high, according to a new report.

In 2016, a total of more than 2 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported in the United States, according to the report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's the highest number of cases ever reported for these three STDs combined since the agency began tracking STDs in 1941.

Of these STDs, chlamydia is the most common, with 1.6 million new diagnoses in the U.S. in 2016, the CDC said. In addition, about 470,000 people were diagnosed with gonorrhea, and 28,000 people were diagnosed with either primary or secondary syphilis, the most contagious stages of the disease, in 2016.

All three STDs can be cured with antibiotics, but if left untreated, they can result in serious health effects, including infertility, stillbirths, life-threatening pregnancy complications and an increased risk of contracting HIV, the agency said. (Having an STD may allow HIV to more easily enter the body.) [Quiz: Test Your STD Smarts]

"Increases in STDs are a clear warning of a growing threat," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, said in a statement. "STDs are a persistent enemy, growing in number, and outpacing our ability to respond."

Just 17 years ago, cases of syphilis reached record lows, with only about 6,000 reported cases, or about 2 cases per 100,000 people in the United States, in 2000. But both cases and rates of syphilis infections have climbed every year since 2001, reaching 27,800 cases last year, or about 9 cases per 100,000 people, according to the CDC.

From 2015 to 2016, syphilis rates increased by about 18 percent, with the majority of cases occurring in men who have sex with men. But there was also a 36 percent increase in the rates of syphilis among women over this time period, the CDC said. In addition, there were about 630 cases of syphilis among newborns in 2016 — a 28 percent increase from the year before. Syphilis can be passed from mother to baby during pregnancy, and can cause serious complications, including stillbirth, premature birth, and brain and nerve problems in infants. It's recommended that all pregnant women get tested for syphilis at their first prenatal visit, according to the CDC.

"Every baby born with syphilis represents a tragic systems failure," said Gail Bolan, director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention. "All it takes is a simple STD test and antibiotic treatment to prevent this enormous heartache and help assure a healthy start for the next generation of Americans."

Cases of gonorrhea also increased by about 18 percent from 2015 to 2016, with a larger rise among men than in women. The rise in gonorrhea cases is particularly alarming in light of this STD's increasing resistance to available antibiotics, the CDC said.

The rates of chlamydia increased by about 5 percent from 2015 to 2016, and this STD remains most common among adolescent and young adult females, the CDC said.

Reducing the number of STD cases in the United States will require efforts from many players, including state and local health departments, doctors and patients, the CDC said. For example, doctors and other health care providers should make STD screening and treatment a standard part of medical care, especially for pregnant women, and for men who have sex with men. In addition, everyone can talk openly about STDs, get tested regularly and wear condoms or practice monogamy to reduce their risk of acquiring an STD, the agency said.

Original article on Live Science.

More than one-third of adult men in the United States now say they use condoms during sex, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report authors surveyed more than 20,000 men and women ages 15 to 44 from 2011 to 2015, and compared their responses to those from a similar survey in 2002. The researchers asked the participants about their use of male condoms and other methods of contraception during intercourse with a partner of the opposite sex within the past year.

About one-third of the men, or 33.7 percent, said they used a condom the last time they had sex. That's up from 29.5 percent in 2002, the report said.

Among the women in the 2011-2015 survey, 23.8 percent said the guy they had sex with used a condom the last time they had sex. That's nearly identical to the finding from the 2002 survey, in which 23.4 percent of the women said the man used a condom the last time they had sex.

"The increase in condom use among men … is 'good news' because it is a positive step toward reducing sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the United States," study author Casey E. Copen, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Live Science in an email. [The 10 Most Surprising Sex Statistics]

However, although condom use is increasing overall among men (ages 15 to 44), there was not an increase in use among U.S. teens, who have one of the highest rates of STIs, Copen said. (The rate of condom use among male teens ages 15 to 19 has remained around 55 percent since 2002.)

Considering there's been an increase in STIs — including chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis infections — in recent years in the United States, "there is still more work to do to reduce the spread of these infections," Copen said.

The higher rate of condom use reported by men compared with women may be due, in part, to the greater number of contraceptive choices available to women, including birth control pills, implants and intrauterine devices (IUDs), Copen said. "Women have more choices [than men] when it comes to contraceptive methods that can be used to prevent pregnancy," Copen said.

 In addition, women may be more likely to have male partners who are older (over 44) and less likely to use condoms, compared with men in the study, Copen said.

Although women's reports of male condom use in the study did not show an increase compared with reports in 2002, previous studies found a rise in other types of female contraception, including a fivefold increase in IUDs and subdermal implants over the past decade, Copen said. Although those devices are meant to prevent pregnancy, they don't shield against STIs.

The study also found that, for both men and women, reports of condom use within the past month varied depending on the respondent's number of sexual partners and their relationship status.

For example, among the women who were engaged, married or cohabiting with their partner, 12 percent said their male partner always used a condom during sex. But among the women who had "just met" their partner, or only went out with their partner "once in a while," 43 percent indicated condom use.

For men, 14 percent of those who were engaged, married or cohabiting said they always used a condom when they had sex, compared with 60 percent of those who had "just met" their partner.

However, even if condoms are used, they are often used inconsistently, the study found. Among the women who said their partner used a condom in the past month, one-quarter (25.8 percent) said the condom was used for only part of the time during sex, meaning it was put on after they started having sex or taken off before ejaculation. Future surveys will examine condom use problems in more detail, the researchers said.

The report was published today (Aug. 10) by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

Original article on Live Science.

WASHINGTON — Swiping through Tinder may be taking a toll on your mental health and self-esteem: A new study finds that Tinder users had lower levels of self-esteem and more body dissatisfaction than people who didn't use the dating app.

The reason may have to do with the fact that a person's looks play a major role in Tinder. People accept or reject potential matches based primarily on photos, and sometimes, a short description. And this type of judgment can take a toll, the study found.

Both male and female Tinder users in the study experienced low self-esteem, body shame and negative moods, said lead study author Jessica Strubel, an assistant professor of textiles, merchandising and design at the University of Rhode Island, whose research includes looking at the effects of body image on decision-making. [13 Scientifically Proven Signs You're in Love]

Strubel has studied the links between Tinder and self-esteem before. In a study published online earlier this year, she found that male Tinder users had lower self-esteem than men who weren't on the app.

In the new study, which was presented here today (Aug. 3) at the American Psychological Association's annual meeting, Strubel and her team again looked at college-age Tinder users — more than 700 female and 120 male students.

Ultimately, they found the same thing as the previous study, with one difference, Strubel told Live Science: Both men and women had similar negative responses, she said. The new study also looked at more factors, including whether Tinder use was associated with a person's mood and eating habits.

In addition to providing information about their Tinder use, the people in the study also answered questions about their mood, level of body satisfaction, self-esteem, perceived societal pressures to look a certain way and body shame.

About 17 percent of the people in the study used Tinder. Compared with those who didn't use the app, Tinder users were more likely to report negative feelings. For example, relative to nonusers, Tinder users were more likely to compare themselves to others, feel pressures to look a certain way and experience negative moods.

The researchers also looked at whether Tinder users were more likely to change their eating habits, or "dietary intent." Here, however, they found no difference between users and nonusers. Dietary intent is related to a person's body satisfaction, Strubel said. If a person isn't happy with their body, what will the subsequent behaviors be? she said. But in this case, the findings showed that just because a person is dissatisfied doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to change their eating habits.

Still, Strubel stressed that she's not telling people to stop using Tinder. "I understand … this is the dating world now," she said. "But we can't deny what the science says: There are some psychological ramifications to this."

To limit the possible negative effects of using Tinder, Strubel recommended keeping things in perspective when using the app. For example, keep in mind that the photos you see of others don't always represent reality; instead, they show a person at their very best.

And don't use the app as a means of self-validation, Strubel said. There are other things that you should use to judge your value than whether you're getting enough likes on Tinder, she said

The findings have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Originally published on Live Science.

New cases of hepatitis C have tripled over a five-year period, and the exploding opioid crisis may be largely to blame. 

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 2,436 cases were diagnosed in 2015, compared with just 850 cases in 2010. However, that estimate may largely underestimate the toll from hepatitis C, as many people who are newly infected have no symptoms and do not get diagnosed with the disease. The true number of people who contracted hepatitis C in 2015 may be as high as 34,000, the CDC estimates.

Hepatitis C kills more people in the U.S. than any other infectious disease that the CDC tracks. In 2015, 20,000 Americans died due to hepatitis C. People contract hepatitis C through infected blood or by using contaminated needles.

"By testing, curing and preventing hepatitis C, we can protect generations of Americans from needless suffering and death," Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, said in a statement. "We must reach the hardest-hit communities with a range of prevention and treatment services that can diagnose people with hepatitis C and link them to treatment. This wide range of services can also prevent the misuse of prescription drugs and ultimately stop drug use — which can also prevent others from getting hepatitis C in the first place."

The new data reveal that new hepatitis C cases are rising the fastest in younger people ages 20 to 29 years old. The likeliest cause of this increase is a rise in injection-drug use tied to the opioid epidemic, according to the CDC. Most of the people who are already infected with hepatitis C in the United States are baby boomers between the ages of 52 and 72. This older generation is six times likelier to be infected with hepatitis C than younger generations.

Another trend in the data shows that women of childbearing age also have rising rates of hepatitis C, increasing the risk that infants will become infected with the disease, according to another CDC study.

Hepatitis C is deadly, in part, because it can lead to liver cancer or liver failure. New medicines are available that can cure people of hepatitis C, according to the CDC. However, these drugs are very expensive, making it difficult for some people to get access to them in the early stages of the disease, Amy Nunn, of the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island, previously told Live Science.

Originally published on Live Science.

The 21st century is the age of living single.

Today, the number of single adults in the U.S. – and many other nations around the world – is unprecedented. And the numbers don't just say people are staying single longer before settling down. More are staying single for life. A 2014 Pew Report estimates that by the time today's young adults reach the age of 50, about one in four of them will have never married.

The ascendancy of single living has left some in a panic. US News & World Report, for example, cautioned that Americans think the country's moral values are bad and getting worse, and one of the top reasons for their concern is the large number of people remaining single.

But instead of fretting, maybe we should celebrate.

I'm a social scientist, and I've spent the past two decades researching and writing about single people. I've found that the rise of single living is a boon to our cities and towns and communities, our relatives and friends and neighbors. This trend has the chance to redefine the traditional meaning – and confines – of home, family and community.

Ties that bind

For years, communities across the country have been organized by clusters of nuclear families living in suburban homes. But there are some signs that this arrangement isn't working out so well.

These houses are often too isolating – too far from work and from one another. According to a national survey ongoing since 1974, Americans have never been less likely to be friends with their neighbors than they are now, with neighborliness lowest in the suburbs.

But studies have also shown that single people are bucking those trends. For example, they are more likely than married people to encourage, help and socialize with their friends and neighbors. They are also more likely to visit, support, advise and stay in touch with their siblings and parents.

In fact, people who live alone are often the life of their cities and towns. They tend to participate in more civic groups and public events, enroll in more art and music classes, and go out to dinner more often than people who live with others. Single people, regardless of whether they live alone or with others, also volunteer more for social service organizations, educational groups, hospitals and organizations devoted to the arts than people who are married.

In contrast, when couples move in together or get married, they tend to become more insular, even if they don't have children.

Building strength and resilience

Unfortunately, single life continues to be stigmatized, with single people routinely stereotyped as less secure and more self-centered than married people. They're said to die sooner, alone and sad.

Yet studies of people who live alone typically find that most are doing just fine; they don't feel isolated, nor are they sad and lonely.

Reports of the early death of single people have also been greatly exaggerated, as have claims that marriage transforms miserable, sickly single people into happy and healthy spouses.

In some significant ways, it's the single people who are doing particularly well.

For example, people with more diversified relationship portfolios tend to be more satisfied with their lives. In contrast, the insularity of couples who move in together or get married can leave them vulnerable to poorer mental health.

Studies have shown that people who stay single develop more confidence in their own opinions and undergo more personal growth and development than people who marry. For example, they value meaningful work more than married people do. They may also have more opportunities to enjoy the solitude that many of them savor.

Redefining the family and home

Married people often put their spouse (and, for some, kids) at the center of their lives. That's what they're expected to do, and often it's also what they want to do.

But single people are expanding the traditional boundaries of family. The people they care about the most might include family in the traditional sense. But they'll also loop in friends, ex-partners and mentors. It's a bigger, more inclusive family of people who matter.

For many single people, single-family suburban homes aren't going to offer them the balance between sociability and solitude that they crave. They are instead finding or creating a variety of different lifespaces.

Sometimes you'll see 21st-century variations of traditional arrangements, like multi-generational households that allow for privacy and independence as well as social interaction. Others – and not just the very young – are living with their friends or other families of choice.

Those who cherish their alone time will often choose to live alone. Some have committed romantic relationships but choose to live in places of their own, a lifestyle of "living apart together."

Some of the most fascinating innovations are pursued by people who seek both solitude and easy sociability. These individuals might move into their own apartment, but it's in a building or neighborhood where friends and family are already living. They might buy a duplex with a close friend, or explore cohousing communities or pocket neighborhoods, which are communities of small homes clustered around shared spaces such as courtyards or gardens.

Single parents are also innovating. Single mothers, for example, can go to CoAbode to try to find other single mothers with whom they can share a home and a life. Other single people might want to raise children with the full support of another parent. Now they can look for a partner in parenting – with no expectations for romance or marriage – at websites such as Family by Design and Modamily.

As the potential for living a full and meaningful single life becomes more widely known, living single will become more of a genuine choice. And when living single is a real choice, then getting married will be, too. Fewer people will marry as a way of fleeing single life or simply doing what they are expected to do, and more will choose it because it's what they really want.

If current trends continue, successive generations will have unprecedented opportunities to pursue the life that suits them best, rather than the one that is prescribed.

Bella DePaulo, Project Scientist, University of California, Santa Barbara

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Being someone's BFF is a big deal – you don't hand over the other half of your "Best Friends" necklace to just anyone. Having a romantic partner who is also your best friend potentially sounds perfect. With your BFF as your romantic partner, you get the best of both worlds, someone with whom you can laugh, share your life and cuddle. When you look at seemingly happy celebrity couples like Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, or Leslie Mann and Judd Apatow, not only do they appear to be in love, but they also seem to genuinely enjoy hanging out together.

How many people feel as though they have attained that type of ideal? And do psychologists confirm this new paradigm is a good one to strive for? I enlisted the help of Monmouth University Polling Institute to investigate.

How many have two-in-one relationships?

To help figure out how many best-friend couples are out there, we asked 801 adults across the United States the following question: “Do you consider your partner to be your best friend or do you call somebody else your best friend?”

Among adults currently in a romantic relationship, the vast majority (83 percent) considered their current partner to be their best friend. For those who are currently married, the rate was even higher. Men and women had similar rates, while younger respondents were slightly less likely than older respondents to view their partner as their best friend.

The overall numbers from this recent poll dwarf the earlier reported rate of best-friend romantic partners. In a 1993 study, only 44 percent of college students indicated their romantic partner was also their best bud. The difference in best-friend/love rates – almost doubling over the past 20 years – could just be an artifact of the published research's college student sample.

But expectations for modern relationships have evolved in the intervening years. Compared to previous generations, today's heterosexual men and women are more accustomed to thinking of each other as friends on equal footing, even outside of the romantic realm. Once a romantic couple forms, we're more likely to look for more egalatarian splits of power and divisions of labor. We hold our relationships to higher standards than we have in previous decades.

In particular, couples now expect their relationships to promote personal growth and help individuals fulfill their own goals. For example, your partner should help you become a better person by teaching you new things like how to make the perfect creme brulee, taking you places like the cool new trampoline park and opening your eyes to new perspectives such as the benefits of eating a more vegetarian-based diet. Although this expectation for growth could conceivably place an unwieldy burden on your relationship, researchers believe that modern relationships are up to the task. In fact, the idea that a relationship can help an individual become a better person, a phenomenon that researchers call self-expansion, is a useful one; relationships that provide more expansion are also of higher quality.

In order to hit all these self-improvement targets, you may need more from a spouse or romantic partner than was expected in years past – and a partner who is also your best friend may be a step in the right direction.

To see if those who consider their partner their best friend also expect more from them, the Monmouth University Poll asked, “For an ideal relationship, how much should you expect your partner to help you grow and expand as a person?” Our poll results indicated generally high expectations overall, and individuals with best-friend romantic partners expected a bit more from them.

Of course, while individuals can expect more, that won't automatically translate into better results. Think of it this way: Simply because you want more from your job, it doesn't guarantee you're going to get what you want.

Are best-friend partners better partners?

We wanted to see if these best-friend romances were really better. To do that, we asked poll respondents, “How satisfied are you with your current relationship – extremely, very, somewhat, not too, or not at all satisfied?” We then compared those who said their partner was their best friend to those who responded it was someone else.

Those who considered their partner their best friend were indeed much more satisfied in their relationship than those who didn't. This finding is consistent with research showing that relationships with more companionate love – based on friendship, feelings of affection, comfort and shared interests – last longer and are more satisfying. In fact, companionate love is more closely associated with relationship satisfaction than is passionate love – the type of romantic love based on intense feelings of attraction and preoccupation with one's partner.

Other research shows that those in friendship-based love relationships feel they have a highly likable partner, and that shared companionship is an important part of the love. A study of 622 married individuals revealed that those with higher scores on the friendship-based love scale also reported more relationship satisfaction, greater perceived importance of the relationship, greater respect for their spouse, and felt closer to their spouse. More recently, across two studies with nearly 400 participants in relationships, those who place more value on the friendship aspect of their relationship also report more commitment, more love and greater sexual gratification. In addition, valuing friendship also decreased the chances of the couple breaking up. Best-friend love is starting to sound better and better.

All of these benefits are backed up by accounts from a special type of relationship expert: couples who've been happily married for over 15 years. When researchers asked over 350 of these couples about their secret to relationship success and longevity, what was the number one reason? Simple: their partner was their best friend. The second most common response was liking their spouse as a person, another key facet of friendship-based love.

Why are best-friend partners so beneficial?

These findings demonstrating the benefits of dating or marrying your best friend make perfect sense when you consider the type of relationship best friends share. Friends enjoy spending time together, share similar interests, take care of each other, trust each other and feel a lasting bond between them. It isn't a coincidence that these all happen to be qualities that also define successful intimate relationships.

By recognizing the parallels between best friends and romantic partners, you can benefit from holding both types of relationships to the same standards. All too often it seems individuals are overly forgiving of a relationship partner's bad behavior, when they would never accept similar behaviors from a friend. For example, if your friend was mean, rude, perpetually grumpy, nagging, dishonest, argumentative, emotionally unstable, ignored your texts, called you names or didn't want to have meaningful conversations with you, would you still want to be friends? If not, it's fair to hold similar expectations for your romantic partner. Take the time to find a romantic partner who truly is your best friend.

To be clear, the argument here isn't that you should try to convert an existing best friend into a romantic partner. You may not want to run the risk of compromising that friendship, anyway. Rather, the data here point out the importance of your romantic partner also being one of your best friends.

Ultimately, the best way to have true love forever may be to be best friends forever first.

Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., Chair and Professor of Psychology, Monmouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

In America, 60 percent of digital media consumption now occurs on mobile or tablet devices instead of desktop computers.

As people and technology have become increasingly mobile, so have their efforts to find love and sex. According to app analytics website AppAnnie, the dating application Tinder is one of the most popular tools to pursue modern romance and has been ranked as the most downloaded lifestyle app in America for nearly two years.

As a social psychologist, I've focused my research on exploring why Tinder – as one of my interview participants put it – is so "evilly satisfying." While completing my dissertation exploring sexual conflict on Tinder, I've analyzed hundreds of surveys, interviews and internet posts from Tinder users describing their experiences with the app. My preliminary results suggest Tinder users do, in fact, have different outcomes than those who either use online dating websites or don't use any dating technologies at all.

Specifically, Tinder may be causing what researchers call "a feedback loop," in which men use less strict criteria for finding a mate by serially swiping, and women use more discerning criteria in response to the deluge of matches. But we shouldn't sound the alarms just yet, as swiping may reflect more about our cognitive shortcuts than our more nuanced romantic desires.

Like a game

While most online dating websites such as Match or eHarmony attempt to connect similar users based on carefully constructed algorithms, Tinder does nothing of the sort. Using geo-location, Tinder generates a stream of photos from potential mates who are in or around the user's location. Users then "swipe right" on profiles that they like or "swipe left" on those they don't. If two individuals both "swipe right" after viewing the other's profile, they will be alerted that a "match" has been made, and they'll be allowed to message one another. According to Tinder, the app boasts 1.4 billion "swipes" a day and is available in over 196 countries, from France to Burundi.

Tinder's approach to romance is straightforward, yet brutally effective. Matches are made using sparse criteria: Looks, availability and location. Because people can gauge someone's attractiveness after just a one-second glance, Tinder users often churn through profiles at astounding speeds.

In terms of psychological conditioning, Tinder's interface is perfectly constructed to encourage this rapid swiping. Since users don't know which swipe will bring the "reward" of a match, Tinder uses a variable ratio reward schedule, which means that potential matches will be randomly dispersed. It's the same reward system used in slot machines, video games and even during animal experiments where researchers train pigeons to continuously peck at a light on the wall.

In a study on the brains of drug addicts, researchers found that the expectation of the drug caused more release of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine than the actual drug itself. Similarly, for those who may be expecting the next swipe on Tinder to lead to reward, serial swiping can start to look and feel a lot like addiction. Not surprisingly, in 2015 Tinder began to limit the amount of daily right swipes to around 100 for users who don't buy into their premium service, TinderPlus. And yes, there have already been reports of Tinder withdrawal for those who have tried to break up with their Tinder account.

So when it comes to finding a mate, Tinder's rapid pace appeals to the simplest of our cognitive shortcuts: Are they nearby? Are they available? Are they attractive? If so, swipe right.

For short-term hookups, that may be good enough.

A gender disconnect

But is that really all Tinder is good for? Research has shown that men and women may have different motivations for using the app.

While women do frequently engage in short-term mating strategies, men repeatedly demonstrate more desire for short-term mating. In addition, studies suggest men are more likely to pursue romantic partners using direct and quick methods of approach and proposition, and they spend more time and energy looking for short-term mating opportunities than women. And since Tinder users often use the app when they're alone and can reject or express interest without receiving any social backlash, males may be especially drawn to rapid swiping.

As a result, women and gay men receive more matches than heterosexual men. In one of the first quantitative studies conducted on Tinder, researchers created an equally attractive fake male and fake female Tinder profile and then "swiped right" on everyone who appeared in the app. They then recorded the number of swipe matches and messages each of the fake profiles received in return. While the female profile had a matching rate of 10.5 percent, the match rate for the male profile was a minuscule 0.6 percent, with most matches coming from gay or bisexual men.

But while women get more matches, they don't necessarily enjoy an all-you-can-eat buffet of the most desirable mates. Researchers from the fake-Tinder study found that women were three times more likely to send a message following a match than men, and their messages were nearly 10 times longer in length (122 characters compared to a paltry 12 for men, which is barely enough to squeak out "Hi, how are you?").

As such, men send out more messages, to more potential partners, but tend to put in less effort or are less committed to their matches. Women may feel flattered by the frequency of matches, but they may also feel disappointed when trying to follow up and have deeper conversations.

Love in a hopeless place?

This doesn't mean you can't find love on Tinder. A 2017 qualitative study of motivations for using Tinder found that love was a more common motivation for using Tinder than casual sex. My own preliminary data (still subject to peer review) mirrors this finding. I distributed a survey to hundreds of Tinder users, online dating users, and those who don't use any kind of dating technology and compared their experiences with deception, sex and romantic satisfaction.

While I found no statistical difference between Tinder users and the other two groups in regards to desired relationship length and likelihood to have sex on the first date, Tinder users did report experiencing frustration with their romantic encounters. Tinder users were more likely to report being deceived by romantic partners met through the app, and they had lower overall satisfaction with their last "first date" than the other two groups. In other words, motivations for using Tinder may not be as different as we thought, but the outcomes suggest the fun users have while swiping may not always translate to the same kind of enjoyable experiences in real-world settings.

Though love and sex have historically been relegated to the proverbial bedroom, data from matching systems like Tinder provide fruitful insight into human mating behavior. While some suggest Tinder has caused a "dating apocalypse," it doesn't appear to cause any new patterns of human sexual behavior we haven't encountered before. In fact, it may just cause men and women to act in more gender-stereotypical ways, which could be thought of as a step backwards.

But if people become increasingly disinterested in conventional relationships and more comfortable with technology in their personal lives, the allure of swiping may be too evilly satisfying to quit.

Jeanette Purvis, Ph.D. Student in Psychology, University of Hawaii

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Looking for love? If you're living in Virginia, you may be in the wrong state.

In a study of positive relationships in all 50 U.S. states, researchers found that Virginia ― despite its slogan ― is not "for lovers." That travel slogan should belong to Mississippi, Utah or Wisconsin, which topped the rankings. Not interested in love? North Dakota fared the worst in the study.

Lead author William Chopik, an assistant psychology professor at Michigan State University, said the study results fit many state's stereotypes. [Find Out How Your State Ranked in the Complete List]

"When I think of New York, I think of the anxious Woody Allen type, and New York had one of the highest scores for attachment anxiety," which was one of the factors included in the rankings, Chopik said in a statement. "California, on the other hand, seems like a romantic place with beautiful sunsets, oceans and warm weather. And Utah residents are known to be very nice, warm and generous, which many people attribute to the large Mormon population."

Utah and California both landed in the top 10 list. As for New York, when it comes to romance, fuhgeddaboudit! The Empire State was the ninth worst state for lovers.

To determine which states had the most positive romantic relationships, the researchers used measurements of both attachment anxiety — clinginess and feelings of fear of being abandoned by a partner — and attachment avoidance — a discomfort with intimacy. Both of these traits, Chopik said, can weigh on relationships. So he and co-study researcher Matt Motyl of the University of Illinois at Chicago looked for states that scored low on those measures.

The study's rankings were based on survey data from 127,070 adults across all states. Participants were asked to self-measure their attachment anxiety and avoidance, rating the extent to which they agreed with statements such as "I don't feel comfortable opening up to romantic partners" (avoidance), and "I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me" (anxiety).

By averaging the measurements of each attachment type, the state's rankings were determind. As predicted, the researchers found that people in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions showed the highest scores for the anxiety measure, with the exception of Vermont, one of the 10 least-anxious states in the study.  

The researchers also compared the attachment meaurements of other state data on relationships. For instance, they looked at U.S. Census information on relationships — number of individuals never married, married couples, divorced couples, etc. — as well as each state's mortality rates. The researchers also studied the state's level of well-being, as measured by the 2013 Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index. Even factors like the temperature and weather in a region can affect relationships, the study researchers said.

The study's authors concluded that while their research provided valuable information for how states, and their residents, vary in relationship attachments, "positive relationships are found everywhere and transcend time and place."

Their research is detailed in a study published online Dec. 21 in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Original article on Live Science.

Two researchers looked at a slew of demographic and survey data to come up with rankings for all U.S. states regarding positive relationships. Their findings, detailed online Dec. 21 in the Journal of Research in Personality, revealed that Virginia, for instance, may not be for lovers, as its state slogan would suggest.

The survey data was based on information from 127,070 adults who answered questions about fear of abandonment (attachment anxiety) and discomfort with intimacy, called attachment avoidance. Participants answered questions on a 7-point scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree), such as "I don't feel comfortable opening up to romantic partners," (avoidance); and "I often worry that my partner doesn't really love me," (anxiety). 

The lower the overall score, the better those people are likely to fare in relationships, the researchers suggested. [Read the full story on the survey]

Here's a table of the overall rankings, from best to worst:

Member of the British royal family Prince Harry took an HIV test this week, with the goal of destigmatizing testing for the virus. But exactly who should get screened for HIV, and how often?

The prince's test, which was broadcasted on Facebook Live yesterday (July 14), took just a few minutes, and the results were negative.

"If you're a man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, whatever — even ginger — why wouldn't you come and have a test?" Prince Harry said. "If we're trying to destigmatize the testing, my understanding is … to normalize this situation, surely it's better that everybody goes and gets tested," he said.

Prince Harry is correct that everyone should get an HIV test at some point; in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people ages 13 to 64 get tested for HIV at least once as part of their routine health care, regardless of their risk of contracting the virus.

About one in eight people with HIV in the U.S. don't know they're infected with the virus, according to the CDC.

Even people in monogamous relationships should find out for sure if either they or their partners are infected with HIV by getting tested once, the CDC said. [Quiz: Test Your STD Smarts]

People should be tested more often if they have certain risk factors. For example, people should get tested for HIV at least once a year if:

• They had sex with more than one partner since their last HIV test
• They had sex with an HIV-positive person
• They are a man who had sex with another man
• They injected drugs and shared needles with others
• They were diagnosed with or sought treatment for another sexually transmitted disease
• They were diagnosed with or treated for hepatitis or tuberculosis

Gay and bisexual men who are sexually active may benefit from more frequent HIV testing, about every three to six months, because this population is at higher risk of contracting HIV, the CDC said.

Women who are pregnant should also be tested for HIV, the CDC said. Doctors can then take precautions to reduce the risk that the virus will be passed from the mother to the child during pregnancy or childbirth, the CDC said.

Original article on Live Science.

A male adult film star in California who underwent regular HIV testing still ended up contracting the virus and infecting two other men before the disease was detected, according to a new report of the case.

The case underscores the need for adult film workers, and others at risk for HIV infection, to take multiple precautions to prevent HIV transmission, the researchers said. HIV testing cannot detect the virus in very early stages of infection, leaving a window when a person can unknowingly transmit the virus to others.

"Adult film performers and production companies, medical providers and all persons at risk for HIV should be aware that testing alone is not sufficient to prevent HIV transmission," the researchers said.

In the new case, a period of 22 days elapsed between the adult film star's last negative HIV test and his positive HIV test. During that time, the man (referred to as "patient A") had sex with 12 other adult film workers, and three nonwork partners, without using a condom. Of these contacts, one adult film worker and one nonwork partner both tested positive for HIV less than a month after their sexual contact with patient A.

All three men had a genetically similar strain of HIV, suggesting that patient A transmitted the virus to the other two men, the report said. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases]

The researchers note that the production companies that hired patient A directed him to have sex without a condom. Since employers are required by law to ensure a safe working environment, the adult film industry should consider using multiple strategies to prevent HIV transmission, including use of condoms, regular HIV testing and use of antiviral drugs, even for people who don't have HIV. (Some antiviral drugs are now approved for use by people who don't have HIV but are at high risk for infection, a treatment known as "pre-exposure prophylaxis" or PrEP.)

"Combined with condoms, PrEP remains an important approach for preventing HIV infection among persons at high risk for HIV infection, including adult film industry performers," the researchers said.

The report, from researchers at the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is published today (Feb. 11) in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Is he or she the one? You know… the one to introduce to my parents, the one to move in with, the one to start a family with, the one to marry? At some point in every dating relationship, you ask yourself some version of these questions.

Of course you’re invested in predicting the fate of your own relationship. Psychology researchers are interested as well. Are there recognizable signs that can foretell where a relationship is headed? Typically researchers have tried to puzzle out this question by measuring some aspect of a relationship at one moment in time and then seeing how that measurement coincides with relationship outcomes months or years later. For example, one group found that greater boredom now predicts less relationship satisfaction nine years later.

These types of one-shot measurements are useful, but how you feel about any facet of your relationship fluctuates over time. Some researchers, including Ximena Arriaga at Purdue University, have suggested that the typical method of measuring a single moment in time may not fully capture the relationship experience; it might be more revealing to look at patterns of change as the relationship develops.

To know your relationship’s fate, the ups and downs may matter more than its quality at one specific moment. A newly published study examined this question by tracking how relationships progressed over time via people’s own changing senses of where things were headed.

Charting the course of love, true or otherwise

Some days your relationship feels like it will be happily ever after, while other days it feels more like happily never after. Researchers call your sense of whether your relationship will eventually result in marriage your commitment to wed.

If you could chart the story of your relationship, what would it look like? Maybe a straight, ascending line showing steady progress? Or maybe a curvy line showing that you’ve hit some bumps along the way? It’s this trajectory that may influence how your story will end.

In the recent study, researcher Brian Ogolsky and colleagues hypothesized that how individuals’ commitment to wed fluctuated over time would predict future relationship outcomes. To test the idea, interviewers had 376 dating couples in their mid-20’s chart out graphs of how their sense of marriage likelihood (the vertical axis ranged from 0% to 100%) changed over time (time in months appeared on the horizontal axis).

The interviewer plotted key dates, noting where the likelihood of marriage changed, for better or worse. For example, spending too much time with friends, fighting or just being too different could nudge commitment to wed down. Conversely, meeting the partner’s family, spending a lot of time together, having a lot in common and receiving positive feedback from friends or family could make commitment to wed rise.

Participants updated their graphs via short interviews for each of the next seven months, concluding with a final interview nine months after the start of the study. Participants also provided information about changes in relationship status – such as transitioning from dating to broken up, from casual to serious dating, from serious dating to engaged, and so on.

Researchers analyzed the graphs for the number of turning points or changes in commitment to wed, particularly noting any downturns or times when chances of marriage decreased. They also examined the slope or degree of change during turning points to see if things were escalating quickly, slowly eroding or following any of the other trajectories a relationship can take.

Breaking commitment types into four groups

Using participants' monthly feedback, the researchers identified four distinct commitment patterns.

• Dramatic (34% of the sample) – This group had an “up and down” type of relationship, with more downturns and steeper changes in commitment than other groups. These individuals spent more time apart and had lower opinions of the relationship, and their families and friends were less supportive of their relationship.
• Partner-focused (30% of the sample) – This group had a “my partner is the center of my universe” approach to commitment and experienced very few downturns. Their changes in commitment hinged on how much time they could spend together.
• Socially involved (19% of the sample) – This group experienced very little variability, and fewer downturns than those in the dramatic and conflict-ridden groups. When changes occurred, they were largely determined by the amount of interaction with their social network and what those friends and family thought of the relationship.
• Conflict-ridden (12% of the sample) – This group includes the fighters. Like the dramatic group, this group had a large number of downturns. The sizes of the changes were not as steep, but they were disproportionately due to conflict in the relationship. Those in this cluster also reported fewer positive things to say about the relationship than those in the partner-focused group, and less support from family and friends than the socially involved group.

Much like boiling your entire personality down into a color or series of letters, fitting your relationship into one of four tidy categories has intuitive appeal. Yet classification is simplification. Our relationships and psychological experiences are complex in a way that defies basic categories or groups; every relationship cannot fit neatly within these four categories. However, they provide one framework for understanding how relationships progress.

So is my relationship doomed?

Importantly, knowing how commitment to wed changed over time was a better predictor of relationship outcomes than the basic measure of relationship quality at the first interview.

Individuals in the dramatic group were more than twice as likely to break up than any of the other three groups. Those in the partner-focused group were more likely to have their relationship progress (for instance, advancing from casual to serious dating) than those in the dramatic group, while the conflict-ridden group was more likely to keep their relationship status stable compared to the dramatic group.

Taken together, these results suggest it is good to be partner-focused, but not dramatic. In other words, those who frequently experience substantial fluctuations in their commitment should have concerns about the relationship’s long-term sustainability. The dramatic group may be particularly susceptible to breakup because they maintain so much contact with their social network. Some of these pals may serve as “backburner” relationships in which the person maintains contact for the possibility of starting a later relationship.

Relationships move at difference paces and in different patterns. Whether your relationship is moving quickly or slowly, smoothly or has been a bit rocky, this research demonstrates how your relationship’s past trajectory can offer a glimpse into its future.

Gary W Lewandowski Jr, Chair/Professor of Psychology , Monmouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter or Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science .

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, many gays and lesbians celebrated. A new study suggests another reason for the community to cheer: Subconscious attitudes toward lesbian and gay people are improving.

A quick glance at most public opinion polls reveals that explicit attitudes toward gays and lesbians have been on the upswing for some time. For example, more than half of Americans — 53 percent — told the Gallup organization that they supported same-sex marriage in 2011, up from 27 percent in 1996. Another Gallup poll found that moral approval of homosexuality rose from 44 percent in 2006 to 59 percent in 2013.

But were these attitude changes genuine, or were people just feeling less free to air their prejudices publicly? To find out, researchers turned to a measure of implicit, or subconscious, attitudes toward gays and lesbians. They found a 13.4 percent drop in subconscious bias toward those groups between 2006 and 2013. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

The finding is surprising, because implicit attitudes are notoriously hard — some would say nearly impossible — to budge, said study researcher Erin Westgate, a doctoral student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

"Attitude change is real," Westgate told Live Science. "It's not just that people feel more pressure to say the politically correct thing."

Hidden bias

Westgate and her colleagues used a measure called the Implicit Association Test, which asks people to make snap judgments on how to categorize a person or concept. For example, the words "gay people" and "bad" might appear on one side of a computer screen, with the categories "straight people" and "good" on the other side. Images of straight or gay couples, or positive and negative words, would then flash on-screen to be categorized.

If a person holds implicit negative attitudes toward gay people, they'll be quicker to correctly sort words and images into the "gay" and "bad" categories than if "gay" and "good" appear on the same side of the screen, the researchers said. The Project Implicit website has examples (and actual studies that anyone can try).

Between Feb. 6, 2006, and Aug. 10, 2013, 683,976 people took the Project Implicit test on attitudes toward gays and lesbians — that's seven and a half years of daily data. The recorded attitudes showed a definite shift in implicit attitudes, toward greater positivity. And that shift became faster with time, the researchers said.

"It has a slow, slow downward slope that then begins accelerating around 2010," Westgate said, referring to the drop in subconscious bias.

Survey respondents also reported their explicit attitudes toward gays and lesbians. These became more positive over time, too, with anti-gay bias dropping by 26 percent since 2006. The gap between the 26-percent drop in explicit bias and the 13.4-percent drop in implicit bias is a bit of a mystery, Westgate said. One of the possible reasons for the gap is likely that some people said what they thought they should be saying, to be perceived as socially acceptable, she said. [10 Milestones in Gay Rights History]

But another possibility is that people change their conscious minds first, and their subconscious takes some time to catch up, Westgate said.

"People may change their minds explicitly first and decide, for instance, to be more tolerant and egalitarian in their attitudes, but it may take a while for it to trickle down into gut feeling," Westgate said.

Surprising change

This notion fits another quirk in the data. Hispanic, white, female, liberal and young adult participants showed the biggest drop in implicit bias over the time period. Meanwhile, blacks, Asians, men, conservatives and older participants showed a smaller drop in implicit bias — but these groups reported the biggest changes in their explicit attitudes. The finding highlights how implicit and explicit attitudes don't always line up, Westgate said.

"It does have implications for, if you want to change people's minds, how do you start?" Westgate said. Is it worth trying to change people's implicit attitudes directly, or might it work better just to target their explicit attitudes and hope the change trickles down?

A blockbuster study on attempts to change attitudes about gay marriage was recently retracted after one of the authors noted irregularities in the data. The doctoral candidate who led the study later admitted misrepresenting some of the data and lying about the study's funding, but denied charges that he had faked data outright. However, he said he had destroyed the raw data that would exonerate him from those changes.

The exciting thing about the new research, published July 23 in the open-access journal Collabra, is that cultural shifts on implicit attitudes just aren't common, Westgate said. For example, the election of Barack Obama as president didn't alter implicit racial attitudes at all, according to a 2010 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

But gays and lesbians may be a special case, Westgate said, because representation of these groups and their issues has increased across the media and in high-profile legal cases.

"All of this may be accumulating into a larger sense of a cultural shift," she said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Although it's easy to list all the qualities you'd like your ideal romantic partner to have, a new study finds that settling for someone who is good enough has advantages, at least evolutionarily, over waiting for the perfect match.

In the study, researchers used a computer model to look, over thousands of generations of evolution, at risk-taking behaviors in gambles that potentially have a high payoff, such as choosing a mate. In an evolutionary sense, holding out for perfection can be considered a risky behavior.

"Primitive humans were likely forced to bet on whether or not they could find a better mate," study author Chris Adami, a microbiologist at Michigan State University, said in a statement. "They could either choose to mate with the first, potentially inferior, companion and risk inferior offspring, or they could wait for Mr. or Ms. Perfect to come around," Adami said, adding, "If they chose to wait, they risk never mating." [The 6 Most Tragic Love Stories in History]

In the study, Adami and his colleagues were interested in finding out which circumstances might affect people's decisions in making once-in-a-lifetime decisions that have a high future payoff, like the chances of having offspring. 

The results suggest that people's mating strategy is linked to the size of the group in which they are raised. Those raised in a small group (of fewer than 150 people) were much more like to be averse to the risk that comes with waiting for perfection than those who were raised in a larger group. In smaller groups especially, "an individual might hold out to find the perfect mate, but run the risk of coming up empty and leaving no progeny," Adami said.

In a small group, you're at an advantage if you settle for a "sure bet" early on, he added.

A general tendency to play it safe may have its roots in the fact that primitive humans lived in small groups, where mates were scarce, the researchers said. The evolution of risk aversion may have had more to do with the size of a people's immediate groups rather than the size of the whole human population, they added.

Nevertheless, not all people develop the same amount of risk aversion. The whole population may have benefited from the fact that a range of behaviors evolved, with some people willing to take more risks, and others less so, Adami said.

The findings were published Feb. 4 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

There may be something to the cliché of lovebirds gazing into each other's eyes, new research suggests. A glance at a person's face tends to indicate romantic love, whereas looking at a person's body is associated with feelings of sexual desire, according to a new study.

These telling glances can last less than half a second, lead study author Stephanie Cacioppo, director of the University of Chicago High-Performance Electrical NeuroImaging Laboratory, said in a statement.  

"Although little is currently known about the science of love at first sight or how people fall in love, these patterns of response provide the first clues regarding how automatic attentional processes, such as eye gaze, may differentiate feelings of love from feelings of desire toward strangers," Cacioppo said. [5 Ways Love Affects the Brain]

Feelings of romantic love and sexual desire activate different areas of the human brain, according to a 2012 review Cacioppo and her colleagues published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. The new study examined whether researchers could identify the difference between feelings of love and lust, based on eye-tracking data.

In the first of two tests, the researchers showed 16 heterosexual students at the University of Geneva, in Switzerland, 120 black-and-white photographs. Each photograph pictured a young heterosexual couple interacting with one another. In the second test, the students looked at 40 photographs of attractive people of the opposite gender. The researchers did not use any nude or erotic pictures in the experiments.

In both tests, the participants had to quickly and precisely report whether they felt lust or love after looking at the pictures. Glances associated with both love and lust took about the same amount of time, which highlights the brain's ability to rapidly process the two emotions, the researchers said.

However, an analysis of the eye-tracking data showed that those who looked at people's faces tended to report feelings of romantic love. In contrast, those whose gazes lingered on a person's body tended to report sexual desire. The results were the same for both men and women.

"An eye-tracking paradigm may eventually offer a new avenue of diagnosis in clinicians' daily practice or for routine clinical exams in psychiatry and/or couple therapy," said co-author John Cacioppo, professor and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.

The researchers published their findings July 16 in the journal Psychological Science.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel and Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

That red dress may be more than a fashion choice. New research suggests that when women see a lady in red, they become more protective of their boyfriends.

It sounds a bit like a bad romantic comedy plot point, but color really can influence people's emotions and behavior, said study researcher Adam Pazda, a graduate student in psychology at the University of Rochester.

"You see that there is a huge reluctance to introduce or let a boyfriend spend time alone [with a woman in red]," Pazda told Live Science. "Essentially, you see this defensive behavior intention, like, 'I don't want my boyfriend anywhere near this girl.'" [How 8 Colors Got Their Symbolic Meanings]

Wearing red

Red is inextricably linked with romance and sex in Western culture — think of Valentine's Day hearts, red lipstick and even red-light districts. Psychologists have found, in multiple studies, that whatever a woman's intentions when she dons a red outfit, men respond.

Men "find women in red more attractive, they want to spend more money on dates with women wearing red, waitresses wearing red get more tips," Pazda said. A 2010 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology also revealed that women found guys wearing redmore appealing than men in other colors.

Pazda and his colleagues were interested in understanding how women might respond to a lady in red, given that most previous research focused on men. So the researchers set up three simple experiments.

In the first, 196 women recruited online were shown a picture. Both were of a young, moderately attractive woman wearing a dress. In one image, seen by half the participants, the dress was white. In the other, seen by the other half, it was red. [Your Color Red Really Could Be My Blue]

The researchers asked the participants to rank how interested in sex the woman in the picture was, on a scale of 1 to 100 (greatest interest). They found that when the woman was wearing red, her fellow women ranked her as more interested in sex— 49.26 versus 41.06 in the white dress.

A second study used the same photos, but this time half of the female participants were asked to imagine they were competing for a man with the woman in the photo. A total of 327 women participated. Again, the woman in red was seen as more interested in sex (by 46.02 on the 100-point scale compared with 38.23 for the woman in white). And women were more likely to say that the woman in red would be more likely to cheat on her boyfriend, compared with the woman in white. This effect did not extend to general negative judgments about the woman — for example, color did not influence participants' chances of believing the women to be poor.

Color of jealousy

The researchers contrasted the red dress with white because they worried that another color would show up skewed on people's computer monitors, Pazda said. In the third study, women saw the photographs in person, so the researchers changed the alternate color to green — a color that, unlike white, has no links to virginity or purity.

This time, 143 Slovakian women, all university students who were in heterosexual relationships, looked at photographs of the same woman wearing either a red or green shirt; participants indicated how interested in sex they thought the photographed woman was, how willing they would be to introduce their boyfriend to her, and how comfortable they'd feel if their boyfriend spent time alone with her, all on a scale of 1 to 9.

Despite the switch from white to green, participants still saw red as provocative. The woman in red was rated as more interested in sex (4.11 out of 9) than the woman in green (3.4 out of 9). And women were less likely to want the red-clad woman around their boyfriends.

Padza cautioned that the results are based on what people say, not what they actually do.

"I really can't stress enough the point that I wouldn't say that this applies to every single woman all the time," he said. "The results in our study are just average tendencies. It's certainly not the case that anytime a woman wears red, she is going to be isolated or excluded by other women."

It's not clear what red would mean outside of the romantic context, either, Padza said. A red work blouse might have a very different context than a slinky vermillion club dress.

"The next step is to get women into the same room where one is wearing red and one is not, and see if there is face-to-face derogation," he said. "Extending it beyond intentions to actual behavior would definitely be a first step."

The findings are detailed today (July 11) in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Gay men who hook up by using smartphone apps may be at higher risk for some sexually transmitted infections than men who find sexual partners through online dating, or in bars and clubs, a new study suggests.

In the study, which involved gay and bisexual men, those who used smartphone apps (such as Grindr and Recon) to find sexual partners were 23 percent more likely to be infected with gonorrhea, and 35 percent more likely to be infected with chlamydia, compared with men who met sexual partners in bars, clubs and other in-person venues.

Men who used smartphone apps for hook ups were also about 40 percent more likely to be infected with gonorrhea compared with those who used Internet websites (such as Manhunt and Adam4Adam) to meet sexual partners. [Sexy Tech: 6 Apps That May Stimulate Your Love Life]

The smartphone apps — which use a phone's GPS to locate nearby users — may allow people to meet sexual partners more quickly and easily than other methods, and so increase the chances of hooking up with strangers and acquiring sexually transmitted diseases, the researchers said.

"Technological advances which improve the efficiency of meeting anonymous sexual partners may have the unintended effect of creating networks of individuals where users may be more likely to have sexually transmissible infections," the researchers, from the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center in Los Angeles, wrote in a paper published online today (June 12) in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.

But public health workers may be able to use the same technologies to encourage STD testing, the researchers said. There is already an app called Hula that allows users to find STD testing centers and share their results with potential sex partners.

"Technology is redefining sex on demand — prevention programs must learn how to effectively exploit the same technology," the researchers said.

Previous studies have found that gay and bisexual men who use the Internet to meet sex partners are more likely to engage in unprotected sex and have a higher number of sex partners than those who meet sex partners in more traditional ways.

The new study involved more than 7,100 gay and bisexual men who were tested for STDs at a sexual health center in Los Angeles between 2011 and 2013, and who answered questions about their use of social networking to meet sexual partners.

About one-third of the participants, 34 percent, met sex partners only in real life (at bars, clubs, etc.); 30 percent met sex partners both in real life and through Internet websites; and 36 percent met sex partners through smartphone apps as well as other methods.

There was no link between smartphone app use and the risk of some other STDs, such as HIV and syphilis, according to the study.

Because the study involved men who visited a sexual health clinic, and who lived in a big city, the results may not necessarily apply to other populations, such as those in rural areas, the researchers said.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Thinking your partner hung the moon may not help your relationship.

New research finds that when people feel put on a pedestal by their romantic partner, their relationship satisfaction suffers. The best-case scenario is a delicate balance, said study researcher Jennifer Tomlinson, a psychologist at Colgate University in New York.

"While it may be tempting to provide effusive praise, I think it's also important to communicate understanding and validation of a person's core identity," Tomlinson told Live Science. [6 Scientific Tips for a Successful Marriage]

Tearing down the pedestal

Earlier work had found that when people think their partner is the bee's knees, they're very happy in their relationship — no surprise, because they think they've found quite a catch. But perceptions of a partner's regard are also very important for relationship satisfaction, Tomlinson said.

She and her colleagues suspected that it might be possible to have too much of a good thing. So they developed three experiments to determine whether there is an optimal level of idealization of a partner.

In the first, 99 couples (all heterosexual, except for one lesbian couple) came to the psychology lab and sat in the same room, filling out what they believed to be identical questionnaires about their relationship.

In half of the cases, the questionnaires were identical. But the other half of the couples were secretly given questionnaires with two different questions. In one, participants were asked to list all of the "extremely valuable and positive" qualities of their partners, and told to limit it to just one if that was all they could think of. Meanwhile, their partners got a question asking them to list 30 objects in their bedroom.

The persons asked to list objects would immediately start scribbling away, creating the impression that they could barely contain what their partners believed to be effusive praise for them.

Afterward, the researchers had the partners sit on a couch with a striped blanket over it. They surreptitiously counted the stripes between the two, which allowed them to measure how far apart the two sat. They found that those who believed their partner had over-idealized them put more space between the two of them, an average of 8.44 centimeters more than the partners who'd gotten the same surveys.

Idealization sweet spot

Next, the researchers recruited 89 married couples, with an average age in the mid-30s, as well as 153 college students who were in relationships. The participants filled out surveys expressing how they felt about themselves and how they believed their partners felt about them.

The results revealed that, up to a point, it's a good thing to think your partner idealizes you. People were happiest with their relationship when they believed that their partner saw them as slightly better than they saw themselves, Tomlinson and her colleagues report in the May issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

But after that sweet spot, more fawning is not a good thing. To find out why satisfaction dropped with a greater perception of idealization, the researchers tested a few variables. They found that people who see themselves as over-idealized by their partners experience a threat to their sense of self. They feel that their partner doesn't know them, and that he or she has expectations they can't or don't want to meet, Tomlinson said.

People who feel over-idealized are also less likely to make accommodations for their relationships, the results showed.

"People who are feeling over-idealized may feel like they have more power in the relationship, so they may be less willing to put their partner first," Tomlinson said.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

An experimental device could protect women from HIV and herpes while also preventing pregnancy, studies in animals suggest.

The device, a flexible plastic ring that is inserted into the vagina, delivers three months of both an antiretroviral drug and a contraceptive drug. So far, the ring has been tested only in sheep and rabbits. But if it is shown to be effective in humans, it could provide a way for women in the developing world to avoid unwanted pregnancies while also shielding them from sexually transmitted diseases.

"In many ways, you can think about this functioning similarly to a condom," said study co-author Patrick Kiser, a biomedical engineer at Northwestern University. "It prevents STI [sexually transmitted infection] transmission, and it would prevent unwanted pregnancy, but it's woman-controlled." [Quiz: Test Your STD Smarts]

Long road

The hunt for a female-controlled method to protect against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has a long history littered with failures. In the developing world, many women are infected with HIV by their husbands, who may resist wearing condoms.  And convenient contraception isn't always available, Kiser said.

"The unmet need for HIV protection technology and family planning technology really coincide in low-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where HIV infection rates among young women can be as high as 20 percent, even higher," Kiser told Live Science.

One approach to giving women an option to protect themselves against HIV was vaginal gels. Although early gels actually increased the virus's rate of transmission, a 2010 trial in South Africa found that a gel containing the antiretroviral drug tenofovir reduced HIV transmission by 39 percent, and herpes infections by 51 percent.

However, the gel had to be inserted before and after sex, and as a result, many women didn't use it consistently. Follow-up studies to confirm the gel's effectiveness are still in progress, Kiser said.

Multipurpose device

In search of a method that was easier to use, Kiser and his colleagues designed a vaginal ring that released a steady dose of levonorgestrel, the hormone found in the emergency contraceptive pill Plan-B and hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs), as well as tenofovir, which lowers the risk of HIV transmission.

The problem the researches ran into was that the device had to deliver nearly 1 gram (0.03 ounces) of water-soluble tenofovir over 90 days, but just a tiny fraction of that, or "not much more than a couple of specks of dust," of the hormonal contraceptive, Kiser said.

To get around this problem, they used an electromagnetic field to weld together two different segments of the plastic polyurethane. (Polyurethane is widely used in medical devices such as catheters.) One segment has contraceptive at its core, covered by a sheath that slowly releases minute doses of the drug. The other segment is filled with the water-soluble antiretroviral. It swells when it comes in contact with vaginal fluids, releasing the antiretroviral drug in the amounts needed.

More options

The team hopes the device will be easier than tenofovir gel for women to use consistently because once it is inserted, it needs to be changed only every three months.

"Most women can't feel that it's there, it can literally just be forgotten about," Kiser said.

The team has also developed a ring that delivers only the antiretroviral drug, which would not prevent pregnancy, as well as two separate contraceptive-only rings in  different doses.

In animals, the device delivered the appropriate amounts of each drug, but it has yet to be tested in women.

The new ring was described Wednesday (Mar. 5) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Love in the brain

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind," as Shakespeare's Helena said in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" — and perhaps neuroscientists would agree.

Love might seem to move in mysterious ways, but scientists actually have a pretty good idea of what love does to the brain. Being in love floods the brain with chemicals and hormones that produce feelings of pleasure, obsession and attachment. Here's a look at five ways love affects the brain.

Read more: 12 scientifically proven signs of love

Hormones go haywire

Neuroscientists divide love into three phases: lust, attraction and attachment. During the lust phase, hormones flood the body with feelings of intense desire. Adrenaline and norepinephrine make the heart race and the palms sweat, while the brain chemical dopamine creates feelings of euphoria. The brain releases dopamine in response to other pleasurable stimuli too, including drugs, which explains the so-called lovers' high. [How Do I Love Thee? Experts Count 8 Ways]

Works like a drug

Even before people fall in love, seeing an attractive face activates the same part of the brain as do painkillers such as morphine: the opioid system. This part of the brain is responsible for feelings of "liking." A recent study showed that men who were given small doses of morphine rated photographs of women's faces as more attractive than did men who didn't get any morphine, suggesting the opioid system can be "primed" to perceive attractiveness.

Makes the blood pump

Being in love increases blood flow to the brain's pleasure center, the nucleus accumbens. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans show this region lights up when people are in love. The surge in blood flow usually happens during the attraction phase, when partners become fixated on each other.

Makes brain a little 'OCD'

Love lowers levels of the brain chemical serotonin, a common attribute of obsessive-compulsive disorders. The serotonin drop could explain why lovers display such single-minded concentration on the object of their affection. These feelings can also cause lovers to be blind to their partner's undesirable traits in the early stages of a relationship, choosing to focus only on their partner's good qualities.

Hormones create attachment

After people have been in love for some time, the body develops a tolerance to the pleasurable chemicals. The attraction phase gives way to the attachment phase, when the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin permeate the brain and create feelings of well-being and security.

Couples who meet on social networking sites such as Facebook are more likely to be satisfied with their marriages than those who meet in other ways, new research suggests.

The study, which drew from a representative sample of Americans who were married between 2005 and 2012, also found that 7 percent of people found love through social media sites.

Though most researchers haven't looked at "social networking as an avenue for dating, this study suggests it's a pretty safe and good avenue for finding a partner," said study author Jeffrey Hall, a communications researcher at Kansas University.

Online love

As the Internet has become ubiquitous, more and more people are finding love online. A Pew study found that about 1 in 10 people have tried online dating, with most of those people finding significant others in the process.

Other studies suggest that people who meet online tend to be happier than those who meet offline.

But relatively little attention has been paid to online social networks in particular.

Friendster matchmaker?

To remedy that, Hall looked at survey data from 18,527 married individuals who were nationally representative in terms of age, demographics and socioeconomics of the United States.

Given the timeframe, it's likely many of those people met on now-eclipsed social  networks such as Friendster, Classmates.com and MySpace, Hall said. Facebook was much less popular during the early years of the survey, before the site was opened up to anyone over age 13 in 2006. [Facebook 10 Years Later: A Look Back (Infographic)]

The survey asked people about their marital status, how they met their partners and how satisfied they were with their marriages.

About 5 percent of the people had been divorced in the survey's time frame, with no real difference between those who had met through social media versus more traditional routes such as through friends.

The people who met through social media networks also tended to be more satisfied with their relationships than those who met in other ways, the study found.

It's not clear why this online dating strategy seems to work, but past research shows that a person's profile on Facebook "tends to be a pretty honest representation of who they are," Hall said.

That may make it more probable that someone with an appealing Facebook profile will be a good fit in real life, he said.

Finding love

Also, the study covered a period of time when social networking was a new technology dominated by early adopters. Now almost everybody has at least a Facebook profile, so it's likely even more people are finding love this way, Hall said.

The findings suggest that social networking sites may be an overlooked way for winning the love lottery, Hall said.

But like all things, you can't win if you don't play.

"You can't meet somebody using social networking unless you accept friend requests from people you don't know," Hall told Live Science.

The findings were published this month in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Physical emotion

Emotions matter. Happiness, sadness, anxiety and anger all color our days and have a huge impact on how we feel about our lives.

But emotion reaches beyond the realm of feeling and influences people in ways far less obvious than might be expected. In this realm of "embodied cognition," social scientists are finding that the body influences the mind and the mind influences the body. Even the words people use to describe an experience have physical consequences.

Here are a few examples of how the physical and the mental influence one another.

Love is sweet

The sugar explosion around Valentine's Day is no coincidence. Research published in January 2014 finds that being in love makes food and drink — even tasteless distilled water — seem sweeter.

The finding illustrates how some rhetorical flourishes ("sweetheart," for example) have roots in the body. Study researcher Kai Qin Chan, a doctoral candidate at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, suspects that the association between sweetness and love starts early, when babies learn to associate their parents' love with formula or breast milk.

Importance is heavy

Giving someone a heavy clipboard can make them think job candidates are more serious than someone holding a light clipboard, according to a 2010 study. The seriousness-heaviness link works the other way around, too. In research published in January 2011, psychologists told people a book was full of either important information or fluff. When asked to judge the weight of the book, participants thought it was heavier if they'd been told it was full of important writing.

Powerlessness is, too

Importance isn't the only thing that makes objects feel heavy. Powerlessness does, too.

People induced to feel powerless, either by writing about a vulnerable experience or assuming a weak physical pose, are more likely to feel like objects are heavier than people who don't feel powerless, researchers reported in February 2014 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. The effect may keep powerless people from overextending themselves, given that they don't control resources like a powerful person does, study researcher Eun Hee Lee of the University of Cambridge told Live Science.

Loneliness is cold

"I've been frozen out at work." "She greeted me with warmth." It's clear that English-speakers link social interaction with warmth, and loneliness and isolation with cold. Turns out, people feel it in their very bones.

In research published in 2008, scientists induced loneliness or feelings of acceptance in volunteers by asking them to remember a time they'd been excluded or included. They then asked them to estimate the temperature in the room.

Those induced to feel loneliness estimated the room to be 4 degrees Fahrenheit colder, on average, than those who were feeling accepted. In a follow-up study, researchers found that people excluded from a game were more drawn to warm foods like soup, presumably trying to warm their bodies in compensation for the chill of loneliness.

Black-and-white makes you judgmental

Sometimes the metaphor influences the emotions. Studies show, for example, that holding a warm beverage makes people see strangers as warmer and more friendly.

In an even weirder example, seeing information in black-and-white can literally make people's judgments more black-and-white, researchers reported in 2012. When given a moral dilemma printed with a black-and-white border, people were more likely to make a strong judgment of morality or immorality. When the border was gray or colorful, participants were more likely to see both sides of the story.

Well, the Japanese have done it again. Apparently this tech-laden bra made by the lingerie company Ravijour will only unhook for “true love.”

Stealth Clothing Averts Government Snoopers: Photos

The “True Love Tester” bra can’t be masterfully unhooked by some skeevy player who hit on the wearer at a club. No, this bra only comes undone when sensors embedded inside it that are connected wirelessly to a smartphone app detect a particular heart rate (video, safe for work).

According to the Victoria’s Secret-like company that made the bra, Ravijour, a particular heart rate over time indicates “love.” And what do you know, they even have a graph comparing the effects of jogging, shopping, eating spicy food and watching a horror movie with “flirting” and “surprise gift” on a lady’s heart. What better way to acknowledge being “in love” than having your glittery bra fly open?

BuzzFeed’s Rachel Zarrell put the whole thing into a series of awesome GIFs to illustrate the ridiculousness of it all. Ravijour’s slogan is “We do anything for women.” Apparently they do anything to free the girls, too.

Bra Dryer Gets Delicates Ready Fast

Might not want to wear this thing around in public, though. The dude-designed bra cups pop open pretty dramatically.

This story was provided by Discovery News.

The recently dumped and broken-hearted friend on the prowl for some confidence-boosting sex is a romantic-comedy staple. Now, research finds that rebound sex is no movie invention.

In a study that may not surprise anyone who has ever experienced a breakup, researchers found that up to one-third of college students who had recently been in a breakup had sex to "rebound" from their relationship within a month of the split. People who had been dumped were especially likely to feel angry and distressed, and to seek out rebound sex, researchers reported online Dec. 20 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

"People really do use sex as a way to get over or get back at their ex-partner in the aftermath of a breakup," said study researcher Lynne Cooper, a psychologist at the University of Missouri. [50 Sultry Facts About Sex]

On the rebound

Cooper became interested in studying rebound sex because of the overwhelming number of anecdotes about the phenomenon.

"Google 'rebound' or 'revenge sex,'" she told LiveScience. "You wouldn't believe how much stuff is on the Internet about it. It's really striking."

And yet there was next to no scientific data on rebound sex. That made Cooper want to look deeper — were the stereotypes about rebound sex true? Why do people decide to have sex after a breakup? Does rebound sex really help?

"I've always been interested in how people cope with adverse events in their lives, and how the ways they choose to cope with these adverse events affects their recovery and, ultimately, their well-being," Cooper said.

She and Lindsay Barber, a master's student in psychology, recruited 170 college students who had been through a breakup in the last eight months. (The average time since the split was 13 weeks.) For 10 to 12 weeks, the students filled out weekly reports about their emotions, sexual activity and motivation for those sexual activities.

Sexual healing?

Much of what the researchers found confirmed the conventional wisdom about rebounds. Thirty-five percent of participants said they'd had sex to get over their ex, and 25 percent said they'd had sex as a form of revenge. People who had been dumped were more likely than people who did the dumping to have rebound and revenge sex.

The tendency to have rebound and revenge sex fades over time, the researchers found. By about five months post-breakup, people who were dumped became no more likely to use sex to cope with their negative emotions than people who did the dumping.

The study couldn't uncover whether rebound sex really helped people; researchers weren't able to assign students randomly to try out rebound sex, so it's likely that there are individual differences between people who have sex to cope after a breakup and people who don't, Cooper said. Nevertheless, people who reported the highest levels of rebound or revenge sex right after the breakup were the most likely to have sex with strangers and to keep having sex with lots of new people over time.

"It suggests that people who are using these strategies are, in fact, more likely to take sexual risks, and that they may be having greater difficulty in moving on and establishing a new relationship," Cooper said.

Cooper next plans to investigate whether rebound sex helps the broken-hearted feel better. She'd also like to expand the research beyond college students to other age groups and longer-term relationships.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Even water tastes sweeter when you're in love, new research finds.

But not every emotion heightens the senses. Jealousy fails to bring out bitter or sour tastes, despite metaphors that suggest it might, researchers report in the December 2013 issue of the journal Emotion.

That love alters one's sensory perceptions and jealousy does not is important to psychologists who study what are called "embodied" metaphors, or linguistic flourishes people quite literally feel in their bones. For example, studies have shown that people induced to feel lonely rate the temperature of the room as colder than do their unprimed counterparts. And the idea that important things have heft plays out physically, too: When someone believes a book is important, it feels heavier.

Read more: 12 scientifically proven signs of love

But "just because there is a metaphor does not necessarily imply that we will get these kind of sensations and perception effects," said study researcher Kai Qin Chan, a doctoral candidate at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

The taste of love

After seeing previous research on emotional metaphors, like the studies linking loneliness to coldness and heaviness to importance, Chan and his colleagues wanted to expand the question.

"We always say, 'love is sweet,' 'honey baby,' this kind of thing," Chan told LiveScience. "We thought, let's see whether this applies to love." [How Do I Love Thee? Experts Count 8 Ways]

Because Chan speaks Mandarin Chinese, he also wondered about jealousy, for which there is a Mandarin metaphor: chi cu. It literally means, "to ingest vinegar." There are similar metaphors in German, Chan said.

After surveying students at the National University of Singapore to be sure that they were aware of the "love is sweet" and "jealousy is bitter" metaphor, Chan and his colleagues conducted three experiments with students at the same university.

In the first two studies, researchers asked students to write about an experience either with romantic love or with jealousy, or about a neutral topic. Next, scientists had the students taste either Ribena Pastilles (a sweet-and-sour gummy candy) or Meiji Morinaga bittersweet chocolates.

The candies balanced bitter and sweet and bitter and sour equally, and it required a lot of taste-testing to find that quality.

"I bought like $80 worth of candies, because I was trying to find a suitable one," Chan said. "I was eating candies practically every day."

Metaphor made real

After tasting the candies, the students (197 in total) ranked the treats' sweetness, bitterness and sourness. Those who had written about love ranked both candies as sweeter than those who had written about jealousy or a neutral topic. But writing about jealousy had no effect on rankings of bitterness.

Next, the researchers repeated the study, but this time asking 93 new student-volunteers to sample distilled water instead of candy. Researchers told the students the water was a new drink product and asked them to rate its sweetness, bitterness and sourness.

Again, love made the water taste sweeter — even though it had no real taste at all. Jealousy did not affect the water's taste.

The finding is important for two reasons, Chan said. First of all, the fact that even water tastes sweeter when people think about love reveals that the emotion isn't acting on the taste receptors on the tongue, making them more sensitive to sugar. There's no sugar in the water, after all. Instead, the effect must arise from the brain's processing of the taste information.

Second, the lack of an effect caused by jealousy reveals language alone doesn't influences the senses — metaphors have to go deeper. Chan and his colleagues suspect that embodied metaphors develop only after a lot of experience. The linkage of love with the physical experience of sweetness may go back to infancy, he said. Babies start their lives drinking breast milk or formula, both of which are sweet, and may learn to associate that taste with their mother's love.

Similarly, a parent's physical warmth might be linked with closeness and acceptance, and being alone might be linked with feeling cold from an early age, Chan said. Even heaviness and importance have a physical linkage. Important books like dictionaries tend to be large and heavy, while fluffy reading usually comes in the form of lightweight paperbacks. 

Editor's note: This article was updated on Jan. 23 to correct the Mandarin spelling and translation of the phrase "chi cu."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitterand Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Bisexuals are people who are sexually attracted to both men and women. But not everyone believes they exist, new research finds.

Nearly 15 percent of adults in a new survey declared bisexuality "not a legitimate sexual orientation," according to a study presented Tuesday (Nov. 5) at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Boston. Straight men were the least likely to believe in bisexuals, but gay and lesbian participants also showed a thread of negativity toward bisexuality, the survey found.

About 1.8 percent of the U.S. population identifies as bisexual, according to a 2011 report by the University of California, Los Angeles' Williams Institute. Nevertheless, the orientation is often seen as a stopover on the way to homosexuality, or a way for those confused about their attractions to define themselves. In 2005, researchers studying bisexual men even suggested the identity didn't exist, and that bisexual men are simply gay men in denial. In 2011, the researchers who conducted that study reversed those findings after conducting research on a better-defined group of bisexuals. 

Even though science has made strides in finally accepting bisexuality, public opinion still hasn't entirely caught up. Mackey Friedman, a researcher with the University of Pittsburgh school of public health, first surveyed hundreds of college students, asking them to free-associate words that came to mind in relation to bisexuality. "Confused," "experimental" and "different" were among the results. [5 Myths About Polyamory Debunked]

Next, Friedman and his colleagues used those responses to create a 33-question survey on attitudes toward bisexuality, which they administered to 1,500 people via the Internet.

They found that about 15 percent of the sample overall disagreed that bisexuality was a real sexual orientation. Straight men were three times more likely than any other group to disbelieve in bisexuality. Women, white people and people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual showed the least amount of anti-bisexual bias. However, the researchers cautioned, gays and lesbians were more negative about bisexuality than bisexuals themselves, suggesting that prejudice against bisexuality still exists in the gay community. Male bisexuals were viewed more negatively than female bisexuals. (Women are more likely than men to identify as bisexual.)

Stigma can make it hard for bisexual people to feel socially connected, Friedman said in a statement.

"Having hard data to back up why a bisexual person might feel the need to be secretive about sexual orientation, something that can lead to higher depression and many other negative health outcomes, is very useful to people trying to fight stigma and marginalization," he said. "For example, this information can guide social marketing interventions and outreach to reduce that stigma, and improve rates of HIV prevention, testing and treatment within the bisexual community."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Syphilis has been infecting people for centuries, and many researchers have tried to pinpoint the part of the world where the bacterium that causes the disease first appeared, before spreading across the globe and becoming the international disease that it is today.

Yet, despite researchers delving into studying the disease — looking at it from the angles of history, politics, paleopathology and molecular chemistry — the origin of syphilis remains an enigma, say researchers who recently reviewed the literature about syphilis.

The main hypotheses about the origin of syphilis revolve around the voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World. According to the "Columbian" theory, the crews of Columbus brought the disease from America to Europe when they returned home in 1492. Not long afterward, the first recorded epidemic of syphilis happened, during the French invasion of the Italian city of Naples in 1495.

However, critics of the Columbian theory claim that syphilis may have existed in Europe prior to Columbus' return, and the disease simply wasn't distinguished from other conditions such as leprosy until 1495.

Syphilis — a sexually transmitted disease that can damage the heart, brain, eyes and bones, and even cause death if untreated — first appears in the historical record in the 1496 writings of a man named Joseph Grünpeck. But it was the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro who first used the term "syphilis" in 1530 in a Latin poem.

Fracastoro said that this "vulgar disease was born in the west of the Atlantic seas, over those unhappy, recently discovered edges," researchers Ismael Maatouk and Roy Moutran wrote in their article, published Oct. 25 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

But before getting its current name, syphilis had many other monikers. In fact, each regional population had several names for the disease, often blaming its enemy of being responsible. The Italians called syphilis the French disease, the Japanese called it the Portuguese disease, the Turkish called it "the French or Christian evil," and the Persians called it the "Turk evil."

"These attributions reflect the fact that people wanted to clear their responsibility for the dissemination of this rapid and unknown disease," the researchers said. [Top 10 Stigmatized Health Disorders]

Syphilis also had more than 50 appellations that corresponded to saints — including St. Job, St. Roch and St. Reine — believed to help heal the disease, the researchers said.

What is known about the etymology of the word "syphilis" goes back to a story that Fracastoro told in his book in 1530 about a Greek shepherd, Syphilus, who led a revolt against the god of the sun and suffered later from this disease, the researchers said. The majority of Renaissance authors used the term "syphilis" after Fracastoro had mentioned Syphilus's myth in his book.

Although the main hypotheses about the origins of syphilis focus on either an American or European origin, other possibilities exist. It was later recognized that different varieties of the disease existed, such as bejel, pinta and yaws, all caused by subspecies of the bacterium Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis.

According to one theory, T. pallidum bacteria have existed since antiquity, infecting humans all along but giving rise to variable symptoms that prevented doctors from realizing it was one disease. The bacteria were detected in 1905. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases]

Syphilis has four stages, each of which has different symptoms ranging from sores and skin rashes to blindness, paralysis and dementia. Symptoms of late-stage syphilis can appear 30 years after the early-stage symptoms have disappeared in an untreated person.

Paleopathologists have played a pivotal role in addressing the question surrounding the origin of syphilis, the researchers said. Syphilis and its related diseases leave distinct marks on the bones, allowing researchers to examine the remains of past generations.

Evidence from pre-Columbian sites in America shows a high rate of syphilis in young people, suggesting there may have been a nonsexually transmitted form of the disease, similar to today's yaws or bejel, the researchers said. It is possible that the responsible bacterium would have evolved once it arrived in Europe, under a new set of selective pressures and different climates.

"Perhaps it was the exposure to this novel host environment that resulted in the birth of the T. palladium subspecies that causes syphilis," the researchers said.

Today, syphilis is easy to cure in its early stages with antibiotics. However, it remains a global problem, infecting an estimated 12 million people each year, mostly through unsafe sexual practices.

Email Bahar Gholipour. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

What is love? Maybe it means slowing down to walk at your beloved's pace.

New research finds that men adjust their walking speed to match their romantic partner's pace — a phenomenon not seen when guys walk with female friends. The findings have implications for understanding the evolution of human groups, given that early hunter-gatherers had to travel together, despite their diverse range of shapes and sizes.

Every individual has an optimal walking speed, researchers from Seattle Pacific University report today (Oct. 23) in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Much of what determines that speed is height: the longer your legs are, the faster you're likely to walk — a fact that means men, on average, have a higher optimal speed than women do.

And speed matters, because this optimal point is the one at which a person moves the most efficiently, without wasting energy. When people walk together, someone has to pay the cost of adjusting his or her pace away from this optimum speed. [Men vs. Women: Our Top 6 Physical Differences Explained]

To find out who pays, the researchers recruited 11 heterosexual couples — a total of 22 men and women — and asked them to walk solo around a track. These initial walks set a baseline for each person's preferred pace, which averaged 3.4 mph (5.5 km/h) for men and 3.2 mph (5.1 km/h) for women.

Next, each person walked multiple laps around the track, alternating between walking alone and walking alongside another person. At various points, the person was joined by his or her romantic partner, by a same-sex friend and by an opposite-sex friend. For part of the walk with their romantic partner, the couples were instructed to hold hands.

The researchers timed the walks, and discovered that when a lovey-dovey couple walked together, the man slowed his pace to match his female partner's optimal speed. This occurred whether or not the two were holding hands.

When men and women in platonic friendships walked together, in contrast, both parties altered their speed. Men slowed slightly, and women sped up, to meet in the middle at about 3.3 mph (5.3 km/h).

When walking with someone of the same sex, men sped up so that both guys were chugging along at about 4 percent faster than their preferred pace. Women, on the other hand, slowed so that both walked about 3 percent slower than usual.

Many hunter-gatherer groups split into same-sex teams for long-distance travel, likely to prevent either men or women from having to pay an energy penalty to match each other's pace, the researchers wrote. In romantic relationships, however, men may have evolved to care for their partners, taking the energy hit so that the woman can save her effort for reproduction, they wrote.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

You've got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, as the saying goes. New research suggests the cliché is true on an evolutionary level.

Kissing might have evolved as a way to assess the quality of potential mates, according to two new studies. Women, who tend to be pickier about romantic entanglements than men, also care more about kissing in the first phases of a relationship, suggesting that make-outs may weed out duds. What's more, women are especially attuned to the importance of kissing during fertile phases of the menstrual cycle.

Kissing exists in virtually every culture on Earth, said study researcher Rafael Wlodarski, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. Some of the oldest records left by humanity, including the Hindu Veda and ancient Egyptian wall murals, depict kissing.

"Because it's so common," Wlodarski told LiveScience, "it might serve a purpose."

The evolution of make-outs

Theories about why kissing matters fall into three categories. Some believe kissing evolved to help people assess potential mates, perhaps by transmitting pheromones, or chemical signals that could carry information about health or immune compatibility. [50 Sultry Facts About Sex]

"It's just an excuse to get two people who are interested in each other close enough to have a sniff," Wlodarski said.

No particular compound has been proven to be a human pheromone, but there is evidence that scent carries information. One study published in April 2013 found that women prefer the scent of men who have high levels of the masculine hormone testosterone.

Kissing also may have evolved to keep romantic pairs bonded, or to increase arousal prior to sex. To test these theories, Wlodarski and his colleagues recruited 902 American and British adults to answer questions about their attitudes toward kissing.

The participants rated how important they considered kissing at various stages in relationships. The approximately half of participants who were in relationships also reported how much they and their partners kissed, and how satisfied they were in the relationship.

The results gave little support to the notion that kissing evolved to ease the way to sex (even if it may often be used that way). People in short-term relationships saw kissing as most important right before sex, but there was no other indication that people use kissing primarily as a sexual warm-up act. In fact, people in relationships closely associated the amount and quality of their kisses with relationship satisfaction. The more kissing, the happier they were. The amount of sex, on the other hand, wasn't related to relationship satisfaction at all. 

Pucker up

The latter finding suggests kissing serves a pair-bonding purpose, helping couples show affection and commitment. But kissing also seems to help people gauge relationship potential.

If kissing is a way to assess mates, the pickiest people should place the highest importance on kissing. This appears to be the case: Women, who take on the risk of gestating, birthing and caring for a child when they have sex, are generally more choosy about mates than men. They're also more likely than men to rate kissing as important, and more likely to say that an initial kiss had changed their attraction to another person, Wlodarski and his colleagues found. [Busted! 6 Gender Myths in the Bedroom & Beyond]

People who rated themselves as attractive — and thus who likely can afford to be picky — were also the most interested in kissing and the most likely to say that a kiss could sway their perceptions of attraction. Wdolarski and his colleagues report these findings in an upcoming issue of the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

A second study by the researchers, this one published in the September issue of the journal Human Nature, examined only female attitudes toward kissing. If kissing communicates some information about health, fertility or genetic compatibility, the thinking went, women who are at risk of conceiving are more likely to think kissing is important — after all, they might end up with a baby if the romance goes well.

The researchers surveyed 84 American and British women, asking them to report the dates of their menstrual cycle and to answer questions about how important kissing is in various stages of a relationship. Fifty of the women were in the luteal, or less-fertile, phase of their cycle, and 34 were in the late follicular phase, the point at which fertility peaks.

The most fertile women were more likely than the least fertile women to say that kissing in the early stages of the relationship is important, lending credence to the idea that they might be subconsciously sniffing out the best genes for their potential offspring. Both groups were equally likely to say kissing later in a relationship is important, potentially pointing to kissing's bond-cementing role.

"At different times in the relationship, [kissing] is used for different things," Wlodarski said. He next plans to move beyond kissing into even murkier depths.

"I'm interested in doing more research on what love is in humans," he said. "What is it that makes us so intimately attracted to one specific person?"

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Introduction

Memorialized in monuments, Grecian statues and bathroom graffiti everywhere, the penis may be the most famous and well-studied human organ on the planet.

But despite its outsized profile in the popular imagination, the male member still has a few secrets left to reveal. From penis spines to the ideal size and even penis shame, here are eight wild facts about the male sex organ.

Editor's note: This countdown was first published Aug. 21, 2013.

Average Joes

The average erect penis is about 5.56 inches (14 cm) long, according to a 2013 study detailed in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that surveyed 1,661 men. But variety is the spice of life, and men in that study had members that ranged from 1.6 inches (4cm) long to 10.2 inches (26 cm) long.

Not all erections were created equal. Those who measured their penises after oral sex or intercourse sported larger penises than those who relied on fantasy alone, the study found.

And because it reduces blood flow to the penis, smoking can shorten the average penis by up to 0.4 inches (1 cm), other studies have found.

Size matters

When it comes to penises, size does matter — at least for some women. Women who are more likely to have vaginal orgasms say it is easier to orgasm with men who have longer penises, according to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Though it's not clear exactly why, a longer penis may be better able to stimulate the vagina and the cervix, study co-author Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of the West of Scotland, told LiveScience at the time. In a 2013 study detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers reported women said the ideal penis size varied with a man's height, with a larger organ looking better on taller men.

Penile anomalies

Very rarely, a man may be born with two penises, a condition that affects every 5 million to 6 million males and is known as diphallus. Unfortunately, this condition doesn't mean double the fun: Both organs are rarely fully functional, and the condition often comes along with other anomalies in the genital area that require surgery to correct.

Men with another penis condition called priapism suffer from a persistent erection that won't go away after four hours. Usually the cause is a failure of blood to return from the penis to the rest of the body, although it is also occasionally found in those with sickle-cell anemia or leukemia. The situation is usually a medical emergency that requires a shot of pseudoepinephrine to constrict the smooth muscles in the penis.  

Related: Can a transplanted penis work like the original?

Ancient relics

The penis may have been a lot scarier in humans' evolutionary past. At one point in time, the male penis had spines, but human ancestors lost those prickly structures before Neanderthals and modern humans diverged some 700,000 years ago, according to a 2010 study published in the journal Nature. Scientists aren't clear on the function of those spines, but some propose they allowed for quickies because they can create an erection quickly, and are more common in promiscuous species, such as cats (tomcats have rather terrifying spines on their penis).

Another relic of times past is the penis bone, or baculum. Though most apes have a bone to keep their member erect, human males lost theirs at some point and now rely on blood pressure for stiffness. In other animals, the penis bone sits inside the body and is pushed out into the penis for an instant, reliable erection. It's still a mystery why males lost this trait, but in "The Selfish Gene" (Oxford University Press, 2006), biologist Richard Dawkins proposes the bone-free penis was selected for because it allows females to gauge potential partners' health — those who can't get an erection probably have poor blood flow.

Evening action

Whether or not men are celibate during the day, their penis is working out at night. Most men have three to five erections a night during the rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep, whether they are dreaming about grandma or supermodel Elle Macpherson. This nighttime action apparently keeps the male member in shape — penises that don't experience regular erections risk losing their elasticity and shrinking.

Because this is such a basic physiological process, many doctors ask whether a man has nighttime erections to determine the cause of erectile dysfunction.

Foreskin facts

When baby boys are born, the foreskin tissue is fused to the glans of the penis. In the womb, the foreskin evolves from the same tissue as the clitoral hood.

The foreskin's inner surface is made up of mucous membranes similar to those found inside the eyelid or the mouth, making it a moist place. That unique environment could be responsible for the increased STD transmission rates associated with uncircumcised men in some studies. [5 Things You Didn't Know About Circumcision]

The foreskin also has an abundance of Langerhans cells, the immune cells infiltrated by HIV. That may explain why circumcised men in Africa have a 60 percent lower rate of HIV infection from heterosexual intercourse.

The American Academy of Pediatrics does not endorse or discourage circumcision, noting that circumcision carries both small risks and benefits. But "intactivists" disagree, citing studies that suggest circumcised men experience less sexual pleasure. Many doctors, however, are skeptical of this research, because the methodology has been problematic or biased.

Grower or shower

The old adage is true: Some men are "showers" and others are "growers." There's no way to predict the size of a man's erect penis when it's flaccid, according to a 1996 article in the Journal of Urology. However, a stretched-out penis is a good predictor of its ultimate erect size, a 2000 study in the International Journal of Impotence Research found.

Penis shame

Penis anxiety is real and common: In one study published in September 2013 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, 30 percent of a sample of British men were very dissatisfied with their penis size. The study found no link, however, between size anxiety and actual penis size. Some men were so stressed about their penis size that they feared others would be able to see the size or shape of their genitalia through their pants.

Many men want more condom sizes, new research suggests.

When offered more than the usual range of options, many men seek a more customized fit, according to a study published in July in the journal Sexual Health. Only about 1 in 7 men go with the standard sizes offered in the United States.

However, one of the study co-authors is the CEO of the company that sold the condoms, and the study was based on the first 1,000 men who bought the company's condoms on the Internet, so it may be hard to draw conclusions about the preferences of the general population.

Range of sizes

Even so, a recent study found that the average penis size is about 5.56 inches (14.12 centimeters), but there is considerable variability — with the smallest penis in that study measuring 1.6 inches (4 cm) and the largest sizing up at 10.3 inches (26.2 cm). [7 Wild Facts About the Penis]

By contrast, most condoms sold in the United States average 7 inches (17.7 cm) long, are a few inches bigger than the average penis and come in just a few standardized sizes. The biggest standard condoms are 8.32 inches (21 cm) long.

Because condoms are considered medical devices, they must go through rigorous, standardized testing — typically involving a balloon test where they are filled with water or air until they burst. The organizations that conduct the testing only allow narrow size ranges.

However, several studies have reported that up to half of men find condoms to be too long, too short, too loose or too tight. Poorly fitting condoms can lead to discomfort, slippage and breakage during sex, all of which reduce condom effectiveness. Condoms have a failure rate of about 15 percent with typical use.

Diversity abounds

Between 2011 and 2012, TheyFit LLC, a condom company, launched an array of condoms in 95 different sizes, which vary in length and width, to men throughout the European Union.

"The smallest one looks a bit like a pinky finger, and the biggest one looks a bit like a forearm," said TheyFit's chief operating officer Joe Nelson.

Of the first 1,000 packets sold, 83 of the 95 sizes were purchased, including every length and width available. The average length purchased was about 5.2 inches (13.2 cm), Nelson said.

Only about 13 percent of the condoms bought fell within the ranges that are allowed by testing organizations. However, the men who bought the condoms explicitly sought customized sizes, so perhaps these men were more likely in the first place to find regular condoms problematic than the average man.

However, the team believes the research reflects the preferences of the general population, because they explicitly didn't market the condoms to any particular penis size, Nelson said.

"It's not just these guys who like to think they need a Magnum or an XL, it's also these smaller guys," Nelson told LiveScience.

The findings suggest that at least some men, when given the option, would prefer more sizes than are currently available in the United States.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

Women who are in early menopause are just as interested in sex as women who are just a bit younger, and derive as much pleasure from it, suggests a new study from France.

Researchers found that about one-third of the women in the study said sexuality was essential for their "personal equilibrium," though 60 percent admitted they would eventually lose interest in sex. There were no significant differences between women in menopause and those in their 40s and 50s who had not yet experienced the change, the researchers said.

There were also no differences between the two groups of women in terms of the percentage who had two or more sex partners during the previous 12 months (about 4 percent), the percentage who said they had sex fewer than six times monthly (about half of both groups) and the percentage who said they were "very satisfied" with their sex lives (about a third), according to the study.

What's more, a comparable number of pre-menopausal (17.2 percent) and post-menopausal women  (19.7 percent) reported not having sexual intercourse for three months.

"Our results confirm that for middle-aged women who are at the onset of menopause, the biological/hormonal changes that characterize menopause do not negatively affect sexual life," the researchers wrote in their study. "The effect of menopause at this point in women's lives may be more symbolic than biological, expressed by a form of anticipation of old age." [5 Key Nutrients Women Need As They Age]

For the study, the researchers asked 277 post-menopausal women about their sexual practices and beliefs. Of these, 68 were using hormone replacement therapy and 209 were not. Their responses were compared to those of 408 pre-menopausal women.

Menopause is defined as not having had a period for 12 consecutive months. After that milestone is reached, a woman is considered post-menopausal. Hormone therapy can be prescribed to treat the symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes and night sweats. Taking hormones may also reduce the risk of vaginal thinning and dryness, which can make sex painful.

All the women who participated in the study were ages 45 to 55. Among women who had never used hormones, the mean average age at menopause was 49; for hormone users, it was 47.5.

The researchers found that being post-menopausal did not markedly affect a woman's sexual activity, practices, ability or satisfaction.

By contrast, women did differ about what they said it meant when a couple didn't have sex for three months. Overall, just 35 percent of post-menopausal women reported that this was a red flag for difficulty in the relationship, compared with 48 percent of pre-menopausal women. But 54 percent of post-menopausal women who used hormones regarded three months without intercourse as a problem whereas 30 percent of non-hormone users did.

Dr. Michelle Warren, a professor of women’s health and of medicine at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, said the findings "bother" her.

"There are a lot of details missing from the study," Warren said.

"The researchers didn't define [in their study] what menopause is, and didn't ask the women exactly where they were in menopause," said Warren, who was not involved in the study. Nor did the researchers ask the women what types of hormones they were using, or consider their menopausal symptoms  such as vaginal dryness, which can affect sexual enjoyment.

Because the post-menopausal women in the study were still relatively young, they may not have yet developed the problems that prompt many women to avoid intimacy, Warren said. For example, a recent study published in the journal Menopause found that 64 percent of North American women ages 55 to 65 report pain when they have sex.

The researchers acknowledged that the small number of hormone users in the study made it difficult to draw firm conclusions about how hormone therapy might affect sexuality.  However, they  suggested that post-menopausal women who use hormones "desire in some way to erase their menopause, to continue as if nothing had changed with it, including their sexuality."

Warren disagreed that sex was a primary motivation for women to take hormones. "Nowadays, women are much more circumspect about whether or not to use hormones," she said. "The great majority take them because they are suffering. It is not sex that brings them to the doctor, for the most part."

The study appears in the July issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook &Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com .

Michael Douglas believes that giving oral sex is what led to his throat cancer.

At least, that's what Douglas indicated in an interview with The Guardian published on Sunday (June 2). 

When asked whether smoking and drinking for many years contributed to the throat cancer that the actor revealed he had in 2010, Douglas said no. He said, "No. Because, without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus], which actually comes about from cunnilingus."

After explaining that stress from his son's incarceration may have also played a role, he continued, "It's a sexually transmitted disease that causes cancer... And if you have it, cunnilingus is also the best cure for it." 

Douglas is correct in that HPV can be contracted though oral sex, and can cause cancer of the throat  and oral cavity, studies have shown. 

Oral HPV infection is more common in men than women, according to a study published in 2012 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In that study, 10 percent of men ages 14 to 69 had an oral HPV infection, compared with 3.6 percent of women.

The way people's pupils react when they see other people is an effective way to assess sexual orientation, according to a new study.

The reactions of study participants' pupils revealed that heterosexual men responded most to images of women and homosexual men responded most to images of men.

Additionally, researchers found that homosexual women responded most to images of women, and heterosexual women expressed arousal in response to both men and women, though they were more likely to choose to watch men.

Previous studies have shown that people's pupils widen in response to seeing others who they find attractive; the new study showed that, indeed, a person's sexuality is evident in their pupils' responses.

Results also revealed that bisexual men were attracted to both men and women, an idea that has been disputed, and that heterosexual women may be aroused by both genders, despite being straight.

"The pupil reacts very quickly, and it is unconscious, so it's a method that gives us a subconscious indicator of sexuality," said lead study author Gerulf Rieger, a researcher at Cornell University.Sex researchers don't always want to rely on people's own reports about who they are sexually attracted to, because cultural and societal pressures can influence what people say, he explained.

The findings are detailed today (Aug. 3) in the journal PLoS ONE.

Reasons for women's arousal

Researchers asked about 300 study participants to watch 30-second videos of people of both sexes masturbating, and tracked the dilation of participants' pupils in response. The participants also watched simultaneous videos of males and females, and the researchers tracked where they spent more time looking.

The finding that heterosexual women are aroused by both genders is in line with other studies.

"The female brain is not as differentiated," said Sandra Witelson, a professor of psychiatry at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine of McMaster University. "They don’t have as strong a response for only men, as heterosexual men have for only women."

The female tendency to be aroused by both sexes may be because of female brain composition, Witelson said.

Study researcher Ritch Savin-Williams, a psychology professor at Cornell, said women's less-distinct preference for men may be the result of a defense mechanism that evolved to protect women from forced sexual intercourse. If a woman can become aroused with any sort of sexual simulation, the lubrication that results can protect her from injuries.

Bisexual men

The pupils of men in the study who identified themselves as bisexual responded similarly to videos of males and females, confirming that bisexuality truly exists in nature, Savin-Williams said.

This fact has been disputed because of past research suggesting that men who say they are bisexual actually respond only to men, in measurements of genital responses, he said. Some have suggested that being bisexual is not a true state of sexuality, and is instead a sign of someone transitioning to accept himself as being gay.

"I was surprised that the pupil tells us something more in line with what the people tell us, which is not what the penises tell us," Rieger said. In general, studies measuring genital responses are trickier, because such responses vary greatly between people, and are difficult to prompt naturally in a lab setting.

Studies on genital responses from Northwestern University researchers have also confirmed the possibility of male bisexuality, Rieger said.

Overall, the study results show that pupil dilation tests can be used to assess overarching trends in sexuality in a large population, not necessarily the sexual orientation of individuals, Savin-Williams said.

However, the researchers said pupil responses could possibly be used in the future for more specific measurements, like understanding the sexuality of someone on trial for a sex crime, Savin-Williams said.

Pass it on: Pupils dilate to indicate sexual interest.

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Intro

Whether you're lovesick or sick of love, it's hard not to think about relationships and all they bring during this time of the year.

Difficult dinner reservations and price-inflated Valentine's Day roses aside, a steady, committed relationship does offer some benefits. Here are five ways romantic relationships can be good for you.

Fewer mental health problems

Couples may occasionally drive each other crazy but not literally so. Overall, people in committed relationships experience significantly fewer mental health problems than single people , according to a study done by Florida State University in 2010, which observed 1,621 college students.

In fact, the study showed that those not in committed relationships who had more sexual partners also had more physical and mental health problems.

The same trend can also be found in post-college adults. Compared with those in relationships, single men and women have comparatively higher levels of depression, anxiety, mood disorders, adjustment problems, suicidal behavior and other forms of psychological distress, according to a 2002 review in the American Journal of Sociology.

The study also showed that men and women in relationships experience equal benefits in terms of mental health. However, the author acknowledged that mental health is likely both a consequence and cause of being coupled up those with mental health issues are also less likely to be in a committed relationship in the ?rst place.

Reduced pain

Popular ballads might bemoan that "love hurts ." However, research has shown the opposite is true love can actually help numb your pain.

A 2010 study published in the journal PLoS ONE examined the relationship between pain relief, feelings of romantic love and activation of reward systems in the brain. Researchers subjected 15 college students who said they were intensely in love to mild pain they placed a heat block in the palm of the students' hands while showing them pictures of a loved one or an equally attractive stranger.

The results showed that a picture of their loved one distracted them from the pain, but a picture of another person of equal attractiveness was not as helpful. Images of their brains using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) confirmed that while looking at pictures of their romantic partner, they experienced increased activity in reward-processing regions of the brain, and decreased activity in pain-processing regions.

The students also performed a word-association distraction task while the heat block emitted moderate-intensity heat. In this case, their pain levels were reduced by an average of 36 percent while they were distracted by doing the task, but decreased by 44.7 percent while they looked at pictures of a romantic partner.

Reduced stress

It's easy to assume that a low-maintenance, drama-free romantic relationship should be relatively free of stress. To boot, there are studies to back that up.

Recent studies have found that single people are more prone to psychological stress than those who are married or in a steady relationship. Relationship status can affect the production of cortisol, a stress hormone, during stressful events, according to a 2010 study by University of Chicago and Northwestern University researchers.

And a 2008 study in the Journal of Family Psychology found that women with supportive spouses experienced less marital strain and in turn, were better at tolerating relationship stresses. The researchers also suggested that partners who are satisfied with their relationship are in a better position to provide support when the other partner experiences stressful events.

Longer life

Longitudinal studies and census data have shown that unmarried adults had a higher probability of early death than those who were married and living with their spouses. A 2000 study by the U.S. Bureau of the Census of 281,460 people over age 45 found that non-married people had a significantly increased risk of death over the study period compared with married people, even after adjusting for other socioeconomic factors. Similar effects have also been shown in Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.

In fact, a 2011 study published by University of Pennsylvania researchers in the Journal of Aging and Health found that being continuously married (as opposed to being continuously single or transitioning between separation and divorce) led to longer lives among men with low income and socioeconomic inequalities.

Although the researchers cautioned that it's difficult to assess the causal effect of marital status from observational data, it's possible that married people, even those who have undergone divorces, have more supportive social networks and children that stimulate continuing family contact than unmarried singles, hence extending their life expectancy.

Happiness

Some lovesick couples seem to revel in showing how happy they are. They can't help it some of them truly are happier than singles. Studies have shown that when we look at the face of someone that we are truly, madly, deeply and passionately in love with, it engages certain areas in the brain.

Brain images from fMRI suggest that early-stage, intense romantic love can activate certain dopamine-rich areas in the brain, according to a 2005 study in the Journal of Neurophysiology. These areas are associated with reward, desire, addiction and euphoric states. In fact, one of these areas, the anterior cingulate, is responsible for obsessive thinking, cognition and emotion the characteristics of love.

Interestingly enough, the researchers also said the fMRI images of a brain in love were slightly different than the images of brains that were sexually aroused.

Related: 5 Ways Relationships Are Terrible for Your Health

Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND.

People who have trouble with social interactions may be able to look to the hormone oxytocin to improve their social skills, a small new study suggests.

Oxytocin, already known to play a role in maternal bonding, love and friendship, has now been shown to help people who feel shy or awkward to improve their social skills, according to researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Columbia University in New York.

However, the hormone doesn't seem to do much for people who already have great social and relational skills .

"Oxytocin is widely believed to make all people more empathic and understanding of others," study researcher Jennifer Bartz an assistant psychiatry professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Our study contradicts that. Instead, oxytocin appears to be helpful only for those who are less socially proficient."

The researchers measured the social competency of 27 healthy, adult men by having them take the Autism Spectrum Quotient, a test that measures how well people can think through social situations. Then, researchers randomly assigned some men to take oxytocin and the others to take a placebo.

The men then watched videos of people discussing emotional events from their lives, and rated how they thought the people in the videos were feeling.

The men who scored low on the social competency test and had taken oxytocin did better in the video test than men who scored low and did not take the oxytocin, the researchers said.

However, men who scored high on the social competency test did not seem to be affected at all by the oxytocin, according to the study.

The researchers acknowledged that more work is needed, but said the findings show oxytocin has the potential to treat social deficits in people with disorders such as autism .

The study was published Sept. 21 in the journal Psychological Science.

Laura Woodmansee is a writer based in Southern California. She holds an M.S. in Journalism from USC’s Annenberg School for Journalism and is the author of the books "Women Astronauts", "Women of Space: Cool Careers on the Final Frontier", and "Sex in Space". She contributed this piece to LiveScience’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Sex in space is obviously one of those topics that gets people giggling, but it has a serious side too. If we are going to venture out into space, and really live there, then people are going to do everything they do on Earth — including having sex and making babies.

Seven years ago, I wrote a book called "Sex in Space." The idea came from previous book interviews I did with women astronauts like Sally Ride and Shannon Lucid. After talking with them about the challenges of being a female on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station, I became interested in what the next step of human space exploration would look like.

I felt then, and still do today, that it's important for any spacefaring society to discuss sex and reproduction beyond Earth. To put it simply, we need to know exactly what we're getting into because the consequences affect not only us, but the next generation of human beings.

Although we've been studying the health of astronauts in orbit for fifty plus years, we’ve never really looked into how the human reproductive system responds to the microgravity of Earth orbit, the low gravity of the Moon or Mars, or the hyper-gravity of a giant planet. It's an understandably sensitive topic, especially for a public agency such as NASA or the ESA.

The news that University of Montreal researchers found that reproductive processes in plants were affected by changes in gravity is very important because it gives us a clue as to how the human reproductive system might react to micro- or hyper-gravity. That study only increases my concern that there could be trouble ahead for babies conceived in space, as well as for the mothers.

According to the University of Montreal study, changes in gravity affect both the "traffic flow" and the formation of the cell. Can you imagine how those kinds of changes would affect a human embryo? At this point in time, I hope that no one would want to do that experiment.

Couples going on space vacations are bound to want to have a good time. Maybe space tourism companies ought to consider banning conception in orbit. I realize this may seem extreme. But consider the fact that doctors prescribe medications with warnings about pregnancy. Maybe spaceflight ought to come with a warning label: 'Don’t get pregnant in space.' Sex in space education anyone? Just a thought . . .

The research that has come out today on plant sex and conception in space highlights the fact that we simply don't know the impact space conditions would have on human conception and pregnancy. Right now, it would be unethical to conceive a baby in orbit, or even risk conception. That’s my bottom line.

Laura blogs at LauraWoodmansee.com and at the newly created StarryGoodness.com.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

A new study suggesting that circumcision can decrease sexual pleasure is drawing the fire of scientists in the field, who say the findings are flawed.

The study, published in February in the British Journal of Urology International, found that circumcised men reported less sexual sensitivity than their uncut brethren.

But several experts say the study has too many weaknesses to draw any conclusions from it.

"The study is pretty flawed," said Douglas Diekema, a pediatrics professor at the University of Washington, who was part of the American Academy of Pediatrics 2012 task force on circumcision. "I read the conclusion and then I read the study, and I said, 'Wow, they went overboard in what they're concluding.'"

The study used a biased sample population, didn't measure sensitivity changes before and after circumcision, and found only a tiny difference between the two groups, which is clinically meaningless, making it impossible to conclude from the results that circumcision reduces sexual sensitivity, several experts said. [5 Things You Didn't Know About Circumcision]

Cutting debate

Whether parents should circumcise their baby boys is a topic of passionate debate. Studies show circumcision reduces HIV transmission in high-prevalence areas, such as Africa, and reduces urinary tract infection and penile cancer incidence. Having the procedure done in infants is less complicated than circumcising adults.

But anti-circumcision activists (sometimes referred to as intactivists) denounce it as performing a medically unnecessary procedure on babies who are unable to give consent. Some also argue that the operation itself is painful and permanently reduces sexual sensitivity.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded that circumcision's benefits outweigh its risks and that no well-done studies find a reduction of sensitivity. Two large studies of a random sample of men in Africa found no difference in sexual pleasure after circumcision between those who'd had been snipped and those who hadn't, Michael Brady, chairman of the pediatrics department at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, who worked on those trials, wrote in an email.

And a January study of about 10,000 German men found no difference in erectile function based on circumcision status.

Sensitivity findings

The current study recruited 1,059 uncircumcised and 310 circumcised men from Belgium through leaflets and advertising at various locations such as railway stations. They then invited the men to answer about 40 questions rating sensitivity, pain and unusual sensations at different locations on their penis on a scale of 1 to 5. The survey typically took two hours to complete. [10 Odd Facts About the Male Body]

Uncircumcised men rated their glans (bulbous tip of penis) and foreskin, which covers the glans when the penis is flaccid, as slightly more sensitive and likely to bring them to orgasm than circumcised men. (The foreskin is what gets removed during circumcision.)

Circumcised men reported a slight increase in pain or unusual sensation on the lower side of the penis, said study co-author Piet Hoebeke, a pediatric urologist at Ghent University Hospital in Belgium.

Flawed sample

But the sample population may be problematic, Diekema said. Belgian men typically only get circumcised for medical reasons, meaning circumcised respondents may have problems unrelated to circumcision.

People who are willing to spend two hours filling out a questionnaire on penile sensitivity probably don't reflect the general population, he said. And the fact that the number of circumcised men in the study was higher than in the general population suggests the population was biased, researchers said.

Miniscule difference

In addition, the differences in sexual sensitivity only appeared for some parts of the penis and were so minuscule — at most a few tenths and sometimes just three-hundredths of a point on a 5-point scale — that they probably have no clinical relevance, several researchers said.

But study co-author Justine Schober, a pediatric urologist at Rockefeller University in New York, who created the rating scale, said the current study has much more ability to detect differences in genital sensitivity than past studies, which simply asked people yes or no questions about their sexual function.

"If you have very carefully constructed questions then you get very detailed information," Schober told LiveScience.

But the very detailed questions actually make the results less, not more, sound, said Brian Morris, a biologist from the University of Sydney, who was not involved in the study. When people ask dozens of questions, statistics predict that you will get some significant differences between groups just by chance, Morris said.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter @tiaghose. Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Have you been dumped? Join the crowd. Nearly 90 percent of Americans have experienced at least one breakup, according to a 2008 study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.

When a person is head over heels in love, happy chemicals, like dopamine, are produced in the brain. But when the relationship ends, the brain abruptly stops churning out those chemicals. The result: feelings of withdrawal and despair, comparable to what happens when someone stops using drugs or alcohol. Some studies suggest that the part of the brain linked to addiction gets activated when a person is dumped.

In a 2012 study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to record the brain activity of 15 college-age men and women who had recently been rejected by their partners. After showing each broken-hearted participant photos of his or her former love, the researchers discovered that areas of the brain that control motivation and reward, as well as craving and addiction, were stimulated; not so when the researchers showed the spurned partners photos of people they didn’t know.

The study volunteers also confessed that they spent more than 85 percent of their waking time thinking about the person who had rejected them. So it’s no surprise that after a breakup, some people obsess about their ex.

Here are three ways you can lessen the pain of a breakup and let go of your ex so you can move on.

Go cold turkey. The best way to deal with an obsession is to take control of it before it controls you, according to Janice Leiberman, a New York City-based psychotherapist who specializes in relationship issues.

There are several ways to do this.  "Put the photographs away and delete — yes, permanently — the loving e-mail messages," said Regina Barreca, a professor of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. "And avoid Facebook-stalking your ex and his/her new love interest."

Lucy Brown, a clinical professor who studies the impact that love and relationships have on the brain at Einstein School of Medicine in New York City, suggests taking antidepressants if self-distraction strategies don't work. Antidepressants have been shown to suppress the activity of brain chemicals, such as serotonin and dopamine, that play a role in obsessive thinking and craving. Brown compared the effect antidepressants have on emotional pain to the effect morphine has on physical pain — they both numb the hurt.

"You know the pain is there, and it hurts, but you just don't have a reaction to it," she said. "You don't think about it constantly and you aren't obsessed with it."

Mourn, if you want — but not for too long. The emotional pain from a breakup can be just as devastating as the death of a loved one. And the longer you've been together, the more difficult things will be.

The stages of a breakup — shock, denial, anger, depression and acceptance — aren’t all that different from the stages of grief. But this is one instance where it's best not to make the post-breakup blues a way of life. Barreca recommends giving yourself no more than two weeks to mourn, whether that means crying, moaning, or missing work. "We permit ourselves to become what I call 'emotionally incontinent' after a breakup," she said.  "By that I mean we think we've earned the right to break or ignore the boundaries of ordinary behavior because we're in pain."

Assigning a boundary to a mourning period is a practice that has been recognized by cultures throughout history, according to Barreca. It's useful psychologically, especially for the community that must react to the person going through a tough period.

At first, "everybody pitches in with sympathy and concern," she said. "But after a certain point, the person has to start acting 'as if' things are getting better even if it doesn't feel that way." If they don't, he or she becomes a burden to the people they rely on for support. "Misery might love company, but company sure doesn't love misery," Barreca added.

Indeed, acting 'as if' matters have improved just may surprise you. "If you act like you're back in control of your emotional life — even if you don't feel that way — you eventually become in control," Barreca said.

Look on the bright side. Rather than wallowing in self-pity and obsessing over what will never be, zero in on the benefits of a breakup.

"Try to focus on the things you can do now that you are single that you couldn't before," said Gary Lewandowski, associate professor of psychology at Monmouth University in New Jersey.  "What did your previous relationship prevent you from doing that you can do now?"

In 2009, Lewandowksi did a study, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, that involved nearly 90 people. Everyone had either gotten dumped by or broken up with their partner during the previous three months.  He instructed the newly single individuals to jot down their feelings about their relationship, be they positive or negative. 

Lewandowski found that people who focused on writing about their positive emotions were more likely to feel relieved, free, independent and happy.

On the other hand, people who vented or complained in their writing were more likely to feel sad, lonely and lost, experiencing only a small increase in positive emotions.

 "I think that when bad things happen we tend to have a hard time thinking about anything but how badly we feel," Lewandowski said. "The nice thing about this study is that we asked people to take a new perspective by at least considering possible positive outcomes."

He also believes that if someone experiences a bad event, such as a breakup, the experience is rarely 100 percent negative. "The feelings may be predominantly loneliness and sorrow, but there are probably some silver linings there if you look hard enough to identify them," he said.  

Pass it on: To recover from a broken heart, limit the mourning and focus on the positive.

This story was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND. Find us on Facebook.