Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: Love is one of the most common topics in fiction, reflecting the importance that it has on human experience. Romantic love comprises a universal component of sexual attraction and a culturally-specific component of emotional investment. The latter component is thought to play a role in enhancing the cohesion of long-term relationships and thus increase the investment in child care. Importantly, this long term strategy is thought to be especially advantageous when living standards are high. Here, we aim at investigating the relationship between living standards, the emotional components of love expressed in fiction work, and behavioural outcomes related to pair bonding such as nuptial and fertility rates. Towards this goal, we developed natural language processing measures of attraction (fast love) and of emotional investment (slow love) and computed a slow-to-fast love ratio (SFLR). Using this measure, we evaluate the correlation and causal relationship between SFLR and measures of living standards (GDP per capita and life expectancy). To investigate whether the cultural impact of romantic love affects behaviour, we will also evaluate the causal relationship between SFLR and nuptial rates (long-term pair bonding), fertility rates (investment in fewer offspring), and education (more investment in each offspring).