aughter facilitates the adaptive response to stress by increasing the psychological distance from distress and by enhancing social relations. To test these hypotheses, the authors related measures of bereaved adults' laughter and smiling 6 months postloss to measures of their (a) subjective emotion and dissociation from distress, (b) social relations, and (c) responses they evoked in others. Duchenne laughter, which involves orbicularis oculi muscle action,...

The relationship between humor and coping with stress was investigated for trainees in a course for combat NCOs in the Israel Defense Forces. Measures of humor through self-report and peer-ratings were administered to 159 soldiers. Coping with stress was assessed through ratings by commanders and peers, and through final course grades. The findings showed that humor as rated by peers (but not by self-report) was...

It was hypothesized that repeated exposure to humorous material reduces distress, pain, and medication following surgery. This hypothesis was tested in a field experiment by randomly assigning 78 postsurgical patients to either a control group or 1 of 8 experimental groups formed by the factorial crossing of type of videotape (humorous vs. serious), perceived control (choice vs. no choice), and expectation (positive vs. none). Multivariate...

The self‐expansion model of love developed out of a confluence of research on attraction and arousal, Eastern psychology, motivation theory, and the social psychology of personal relationships. The model treats love (the desire for a relationship with a particular other) as arising from a desire to expand the self by including that other in the self, as well as by associating expansion with that particular...

Two prospective, longitudinal studies examined the consequences of falling in love, focusing on predictions developed in the context of A. Aron and E. N. Aron's (1986, in press) self-expansion model of motivation and cognition in close relationships. In each study a sample with a high expected incidence of falling in love (first- and second-year undergraduates in the fall term) was tested 5 times over 10...

Scientists have described myriad traits in mammalian and avian species that evolved to attract mates. But the brain mechanisms by which conspecifics become attracted to these traits is largely unknown. Yet mammals and birds express mate preferences and make mate choices, and data suggest that this “attraction system” is associated with the dopaminergic reward system. It has been proposed that intense romantic love, a cross‐cultural...

Early-stage romantic love can induce euphoria, is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and is possibly a developed form of a mammalian drive to pursue preferred mates. It has an important influence on social behaviors that have reproductive and genetic consequences. To determine which reward and motivation systems may be involved, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and studied 10 women and 7 men who were intensely “in...

In this study we examined the following: (1) frequencies of remarrying or becoming romantically involved for widows and widowers during the first 2 years of widowhood; (2) attitudes toward dating and remarriage among the recently widowed, and their evolution; (3) identifiable factors which predict the development of new romances, such as sex, age, income, and level of education; and (4) the psychological well-being of those...

This study explores gender differences in older widowed persons' interest in dating and remarriage, and the implications of these desires for psychological adjustment to loss. Analyses are based on the Changing Lives of Older Couples study (N = 210). Men's interest in dating and remarriage is conditional upon the amount of social support received from friends. Six months after spousal loss, only those men with...

Previous research has shown that major life events can have short- and long-term effects on subjective well-being (SWB). The present meta-analysis examines (a) whether life events have different effects on affective and cognitive well-being and (b) how the rate of adaptation varies across different life events. Longitudinal data from 188 publications (313 samples, N = 65,911) were integrated to describe the reaction and adaptation to...