Married Couples
Robert Levenson, Ph.D., researches human psychophysiology. Levenson uses longitudinal studies of married couples' physiological responses. He measures how empathy requires a calm and receptive emotional environment for the couple to be in physiological sync. When an emotional hijacking is taking place (anger or argument) empathy declines and the cognitions of the spouse are blocked.
Read more about this topic: Emotional Contagion
Famous quotes containing the words married and/or couples:
“We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.”
—native American belief, quoted by D. Jenness in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” Bulletin no. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology (1943)
“Could that old god rise up again
We’d drink a can or two,
And out and lay our leadership
On country and on town,
Throw likely couples into bed
And knock the others down.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)