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The Science of Love

By: Wind Goodfriend, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Wind Goodfriend
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Publisher's summary

What is love? It's more scientific than you think.

Through 10 illuminating lectures, Dr. Wind Goodfriend surveys the biology of interpersonal attraction, sexual preference and desire, and conflict resolution. You'll look at a variety of romantic notions, common myths, and love stereotypes through the lens of science in order to break them down and better set expectations when it comes to keeping a long-term relationship happy and healthy. You'll apply biology, psychology, and anthropology to that "spark" we feel when we are attracted to someone, to better understand what that feeling is.

The mystery of love meets the power of science. And you'll never fall in love again - in quite the same way.

©2021 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2021 Audible Originals, LLC.
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About the Creator and Performer

Dr. Wind Goodfriend is a professor of psychology at Buena Vista University. She also serves as the assistant dean of liberal arts. Dr. Goodfriend earned her master’s degree and doctorate in social psychology from Purdue University. She is the author or editor of over 100 publications, including four textbooks. Her first textbook, Social Psychology, won the Most Promising Textbook of the Year Award in 2019 from the Textbook and Academic Authors Association. She has also won several teaching awards, including the Wythe Teacher of the Year, one of the nation’s largest teaching prizes at the university level. Dr. Goodfriend’s research focuses on relationship violence, prejudice toward sexual and gender minorities, the psychological dynamics of cults, and how psychology is portrayed in popular culture and media.

What listeners say about The Science of Love

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Science of Love

This is fantastically written. Goodfriend is clearly an expert on the topic. My only issue was getting used to her voice, there was something about her pronunciation and emphasis that got on my nerves at first. But this is incredibly superficial and subjective, I recommend this book to anyone who likes psychology. I’d love to have her as a professor.

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Intriguing and insightful

I liked this insight and it has answered questions I didn’t even know I had. Some of the statements mentioned has been replaying in my head and is relevant to all my interactions and relationships and I do appreciate too and insight on advice for success and communication skills within existing and not yet existing relationships.

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Keep Going

if you've had a psychology class in the past the beginning will be familiar but it quickly goes into interesting studies from the 60s to very recently, moves along at a really good pace, narration is good, author obviously smart and very interested in the topic, I found some useful ideas to improve my communication, and good reminders of things we know can help relationships but may not be consistent in applying. definitely recommend.

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Interesting, but not new information

This short book mentions a number of interesting studies, such as the t-shirt study, or the one where an attractive woman suggests having sex to strangers, or the one where danger makes people feel more focused on sex or sexual attraction. I'm pretty sure every one of the studies mentioned I had already heard of from other books, but still, this isn't bad.

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Opened my eyes about the science of love.

Very informative. This book made me understand why I do what I do in my relationship. I have a fixed mindset whilst my partner has a growth mindset. Thanks for opening my eyes. I learned a lot.
I just have a hard time believing studies since they tend to be unreliable when replicated sometimes. I don't consider them as 100% acceptable simply because I am not sure if they tested to enough participants to draw conclusions for billions of people around the world.
Also, people are likely to fib on surveys to be socially acceptable, which makes these old (before 1995) studies pre-tinder highly contestable in today's time.
I am sure a lot of people would get offended by the stereotypical conclusions drawn by the researches cited. I find them interesting.

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Perfect length

This book was just long enough and just short enough to keep you engaged the entire time. The author/narrator went straight to the point in each section without any fillers. In other words she kept an interesting topic interesting. This style fosters retention. The topics were relevant to dating and relationships in society today so they were relatable. I also learned new information in this field of study. Excellent book.

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Fantastic!

So much great content that I now have to buy the hardcopy to mark up all the points I need to research further.

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great course!

I really enjoyed listening to this course. I especially liked it being narrated by the author herself as enabled creation of a bond with the lecturer.

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So Good. So Informative

A complete course in Love and Human Animal. What took her so long to tell us? Interesting, and sometimes funny.

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Informative and inspiring

I was in an Emotionally abusive relationship for 16 years and I am now in a very healthy relationship for the last 15 years this book validated a lot of what I went through and gave me a lot of ideas to continue making my present relationship work

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