Love and the Brain: Do Partnerships Really Make Us Happy? Here’s What the Science Says

I’m Shayla Love, and you’re listening to Scientific American’s Science, Quickly. We’ve been talking about love this week, and so far we’ve maintained a pretty basic assumption: that love is good, that love makes us happier. But does it? And if so, does it bring the same amount of happiness to everyone? 

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Harry Reis: I’ve been studying relationships for about 40 years. 

Love: That’s Harry Reis, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. He told me that decades of work has found that partnered people are just, well, better off than un-partnered people.

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