Essentials: The Science of Love, Desire & Attachment

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are going to talk about the psychology and the biology. of desire, love, and attachment. One of the most robust findings in the field of psychology is this notion of attachment styles.

And this was something that was discovered through a beautiful set of studies that were done by Mary Ainsworth in the 1980s, in which she developed a laboratory condition called the Strange Situation Task. The strange situation task involves a parent, typically a mother, in the studies that were done, but a parent or other caregiver bringing their child, their actual child, into a laboratory, and there's a room with a stranger. And the mother enters the room with the child and there's some toys in the room and typically the mother and the stranger will talk. Obviously the stranger is part of the experiment.

It's not just some random person off the street. And the child is allowed to move about the room. They can play with toys or not. But then at some point the mother leaves And then at some point later, designated by the experimenter, the mother comes back.

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