- Scientists have discovered why many seemingly strait-laced women end up eloping with exotic lovers
- Kissing, cuddling and falling in love raise levels of the hormone oxytocin
- But researchers have found that it also encourages people to break rules
Daily Mail Reporter
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From the grandmother who falls head-over-heels with her Mediterranean hotel waiter to the aid worker who’s set to marry her migrant beau from The Jungle camp in Calais, the tale is a familiar one.
Now scientists have discovered the reason why so many seemingly strait-laced women end up eloping with exotic lovers – and why Shirley Valentine-style relationships so often ultimately fail.
Kissing, cuddling and falling in love raise levels of the hormone oxytocin, which stimulates the reward mechanism in the brain.
Scientists have discovered the reason why so many seemingly strait-laced women end up eloping with exotic lovers, and why Shirley Valentine-style relationships so often ultimately fail
But researchers have found that it also encourages people – particularly those who live orderly, structured lives – to break rules and challenge taboos.
The team from Amsterdam University recruited 139 young adults who answered questions about their character, including how spontaneous and impulsive they are and whether or not they have strict daily routines.
They then all inhaled a nasal spray, though only half took on oxytocin while the rest had, unknown to them, been given a placebo.
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After 30 minutes, they were given a computer task to complete.
Thirty balls on the screen could be either dragged into either a blue bucket – with a reward of five cents for each – or a yellow bucket – at ten cents apiece.
However, participants were also told: ‘The rule is to put the balls in the blue bucket’ though no explanation was given.
Most people ended up splitting the balls between the two buckets.
Kissing, cuddling and falling in love raise levels of the hormone oxytocin, which stimulates the reward mechanism in the brain. Julia Roberts’ character from the 2010 film Eat Pray Love leaves a successful career to embark on a journey of self-discovery to Italy, India and Bali
But unquestioning compliance with the stricture was higher among those who had taken the placebo – 33 per cent versus 22 per cent.
And those who had had oxytocin were more than twice as likely to ignore the rule completely and maximise their cash return – 11 per cent versus 5 per cent.
The study – published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience – states: ‘Oxytocin dampened rule adherence in particular in participants high on need for structure.
‘[These] findings may appear at odds with work showing that oxytocin promotes social conformity. The key difference [here] is that the rule in this study was arbitrary and adhering to it had no benefits for either oneself or another group.
‘Possibly then, oxytocin enables individuals to focus on the benefits and costs of a particular rule, allowing them to flexibly adapt by either following the rule or complying with a norm, or not.
‘Although taboos, norms, and laws are often functional and needed for the regulation of human life, mindlessly adhering to any rule may be maladaptive and hurtful to oneself.’
Previous research has shown that oxytocin levels are higher in new lovers compared with single people.
This week, it emerged that a British aid worker at The Jungle migrant camp in Calais had become engaged to a Syrian refugee she met there.
Former management consultant Sarah Gayton, 41, is now living with 24-year-old Hamoude Kahlil in London after he illegally entered the UK in the back of lorry and was given leave to remain for five years.
The revelation came in the wake of reports that many female volunteers were travelling to the notorious camp to have sex with migrants.
There have been a steady stream of headlines about whirlwind romances similar to the plot of the 1989 film Shirley Valentine in which a housewife falls in love with a Greek local while on holiday in the Med.
Nottinghamshire grandmother Dorothy Sims shocked her friends and family when she fell for a 21-year-old Tunisian waiter called Rafaa in 2006.
The pair wed a year later but the marriage fell apart soon after when he was refused a UK visa by a judge who was suspicious about his motives.
In the 1989 rom-com Shirley Valentine, a Liverpudlian housewife played by Pauline Collins, leaves her husband and escapes from her life of mundane domesticity for an all-expenses-paid holiday in Greece. There she embarks on an exciting romance with attractive Greek hotel manager Costas Caldes, played by Scottish heartthrob Tom Conti.
The story of a straight-laced girl gone rogue is also seen in the 1978 musical Grease, where wholesome Sandra Dee, played by Olivia Newton-John, transforms herself to gain confidence and win the affections of leather-clad Danny Zuko.
It may also apply to Julia Roberts’ character from the 2010 film Eat Pray Love. Recently divorced, she leaves a successful career to embark on a journey of self-discovery to Italy, India and Bali.
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