Love Really Is Blind

How clever of Geezer to post an item pegged to both the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth (Feb 12) and Valentine’s Day (if you don’t know the date, you don’t need to know the date). Love, it seems,.is as blind as the old song alleges.
The Scientific American reports that researchers at Florida State University have learned that people in a committed relationship who have been thinking about their
partner actually avert their eyes from attractive members of the
opposite sex without even being aware they are doing it. The journal reports that the scientists took subjects who were married or living together
monoga­mously and asked half of them to write about feelings of love
for their partner and the other half to write about a happy experience.
Those who wrote about love actually turned their attention away from
attractive members of the opposite sex even more quickly than they
looked away from average-looking people. Subjects who wrote about being
happy, however, remained as distracted by a pretty face as ever.
The Darwin connection? Not exactly conjoined, but the Scientific American does mention that researchers think the attentional bias evolved to help men and
women stay in monogamous relation­ships, which in humans tend to have a
reproductive advantage.
Read more in the Scientific American.