ORIGINAL PAPER Reduced cognitive control in passionate lovers Henk van Steenbergen • Sandra J. E. Langeslag • Guido P. H. Band • Bernhard Hommel Published online: 2 November 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract Passionate love is associated with intense changes in emotion and attention which are thought to play an important role in the early stages of romantic relationship formation. Although passionate love usually involves enhanced, near-obsessive attention to the beloved, anec- dotal evidence suggest that the lover’s concentration for daily tasks like study and work may actually be impaired, suggesting reduced cognitive control. Affect might also contribute to changes in cognitive control. We examined the link between passionate love and cognitive control in a sample of students who had recently become involved in a romantic relationship. Intensity of passionate love as mea- sured by the Passionate Love Scale was shown to correlate with decreased individual efficiency in cognitive control as measured in Stroop and flanker task performance. There was no evidence that affective changes mediate this effect. This study provides the first empirical evidence that pas- sionate love in the early stages of romantic relationship is characterized by impaired cognitive control. Keywords Passionate love Á Cognitive control Á Flanker task Á Stroop task Á Passionate Love Scale (PLS) Introduction Falling in love is an experience that involves very intense affective and cognitive changes including euphoria and overwhelming joy, increased arousal and energy, emo- tional dependency on the partner, craving for emotional union with the beloved, and obsessional thoughts about and focused attention on the special other (Fisher 1998; Hat- field and Sprecher 1986). Several theorists have proposed that passionate love—also referred to as infatuation or limerence (Tennov 1979)—should be distinguished from another important type of love, usually referred to as companionate love (Berscheid and Walster 1978; Hatfield and Sprecher 1986; Rubin 1970 cf. Sternberg 1986). Although both types of love may often co-occur, they nevertheless show different trajectories over time (Aron and Aron 1986; Berscheid 2010; Baumeister and Brat- slvasky 1999) and may serve different functions (Fisher et al. 2006; Reis and Aron 2008). Companionate love, on the one hand, has been associated with intimacy and commitment (Baumeister and Bratslvasky 1999), aspects that contribute to the maintenance of long-term relation- ships and allowing couples to raise their children in a safe and socially embedded environment. Passionate love, on the other hand, is thought to play a central role in forming a relationship with a partner, by becoming attracted to that individual (Reis and Aron 2008). Although psychological studies from the last decades have substantially increased our understanding of love and its important role in human relationships (for reviews, see Berscheid 2010; Reis and Aron 2008), it is yet poorly understood how passionate love affects our cognitive functioning, in particular one’s self-regulation in terms of cognitive control (also known as self-control or executive function; Baumeister et al. 2007). Research focusing on H. van Steenbergen (&) Á G. P. H. Band Á B. Hommel Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: HvanSteenbergen@fsw.leidenuniv.nl H. van Steenbergen Á G. P. H. Band Á B. Hommel Leiden University Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands S. J. E. Langeslag Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 123 Motiv Emot (2014) 38:444–450 DOI 10.1007/s11031-013-9380-3