New technologies regularly bring about profound changes in our daily lives. Romantic relationships are no exception to these transformations. Some philosophers expect the emergence in the near future of love pills: a theoretically achievable biotechnological intervention that could be designed to strengthen and maintain love in romantic relationships. We investigated laypeople's resistance to the use of such technologies and its sources. Across two studies (Study 1, French and Peruvian university students, N after exclusion = 186; Study 2, Amazon Mechanical Turk sample, N after exclusion = 693, pre-registered), we found that love drugs are considered as more morally problematic than psychological therapy. In Study 2, we show that this last effect is partially due to the fact that the love resulting from the use of love drugs is perceived as less authentic, intense, and durable. We discuss the specific role of authenticity in the moral disapproval of love drugs.
Authors
Mentioned Organizations
- Bibliographic Reference
- Anthony Lantian, Jordane Boudesseul, Florian Cova. Prescription for Love: An Experimental Investigation of Laypeople’s Moral Disapprovalof Love Drugs. 2023. ⟨hal-04290217⟩
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/572wa
- HAL Collection
- ['Université Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis', 'Université Paris Lumières', 'Université Paris Nanterre', 'Laboratoire parisien de psychologie sociale', "Collection supérieure de l'université Paris Nanterre", 'HAL UNIV-PARIS8 - open access']
- HAL Identifier
- 4290217
- Institution
- ['Université Paris Nanterre', 'Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis', 'Universidad de Lima', 'Université de Genève = University of Geneva']
- Laboratory
- ['Laboratoire Parisien de Psychologie Sociale', 'Swiss Center for Affective Sciences']
- Published in
- France
