Embodied self-other overlap in romantic love: a review and integrative perspective

Abstract

Romantic love has long intrigued scientists in various disciplines. Social-cognitive research has provided ample evidence for overlapping mental representations of self and romantic partner. This overlap between self and romantic partner would contribute to the experience of love and has been found to be a predictor of relationship quality. Self-partner overlap has been mainly documented at the level of conceptual or narrative self, with studies showing confusion between one's own and partner's identity aspects, perspectives, and outcomes. But the self is not restricted to abstract, conceptual representations but also involves body-related representations, which, research has revealed, are linked to social-cognitive processes. In this article, we review the emerging evidence that romantic love involves not only a blurring of conceptual selves, but also a reduction of the distinction between self and romantic partner at a bodily level. We discuss the potential function(s) of self-other overlap in romantic relationship at the level of body-related representations and consider possible mechanisms. We conclude with possible future directions to further investigate how romantic love engages embodied self-other representations involved in social interactions.

Self-partner inclusion predicts performance of romantically involved individuals in a body-scaled action-anticipation task

“…The fact that IOS and PLS scores had a similar modulatory effect on 1-PP data is consistent with the relationship that has been established between inclusion of romantic partner in the self and romantic feelings [12,18,29]. Furthermore, the influence of the intensity of romantic feelings, as indexed by PLS, on perceptual judgments is in line with recent work suggesting that the positive affective states associated with romantic love may affect cognitive functioning [48].…”

“…The pattern of correlation between IOS scores, shoulder width and passability judgments in the 1-PP task is thus compatible with the idea that including one's partner into the self triggers mechanisms affecting self-boundaries in the bodily domain [30,48,52]. Moreover, it is worth noting that inclusion of other in the self was indexed by IOS score, which taps conceptual forms of self-representation [79], while passability judgments were used to probe representations related to the bodily-self.…”

“…Overlapping and confounded representations of one’s own and romantic partner’s bodily states is what is expected from including other in the self at an embodied, bodily level. This self-partner integration at the bodily level may have social-cognitive consequences that would be beneficial for the relationship, such as increased liking, trust, mutual understanding and cooperation [ 48 ].…”

“…There is accumulating evidence for an embodied self-other overlap in romantic love [for a review, see 48 ]. A first line of evidence comes from neuroimaging studies that have revealed common activations between the processing of one’s own and partner’s bodily states [ 49 , 50 ].…”

“…Similarly, in the context of joint action, individuals take their romantic partner’s action into account to a greater extent than that of a close friend, confirming a reduced self-other distinction at the level of bodily self-representations in romantic love [ 30 , 55 ]. Romantic love may thus be associated with cognitive states that blur or reduce the saliency of self-boundaries in the bodily domain, in a way that is compatible with an inclusion of romantic partner in the self [ 48 ]. The aim of the present study was to further test this hypothesis by investigating whether perceptual judgments that rest on the representation of body’s spatial boundaries, such as decision about potential actions, are affected in romantically involved individuals.…”