These foolish things / 这些愚蠢的玩意儿

Of course, love is about more than just genes. Cultural and social factors, and learning, play big roles. Who and how a person has loved in the past are important determinants of his (or her) capacity to fall in love at any given moment in the future. This is because animals—people included—learn from their sexual and social experiences. Arousal comes naturally. But long-term success in mating requires a change from being naive about this state to knowing the precise factors that lead from arousal to the rewards of sex, love and attachment. For some humans, this may involve flowers, chocolate and sweet words. But these things are learnt.

当然，爱情不止与基因有关。文化社会因素和后天的学习在其中也扮演着重要的角色。一个人曾经爱过谁？如何爱过？对他(她)将来任何时刻的相爱能力都是决定性的因素，因为动物（包括人类）能从他们的性和社会经验中进行学习。性唤醒可本能地产生，但长期而成功的配偶关系，却需要一个对爱情各种精确因素从无知到熟悉的改变过程，这个过程包括由性唤醒而导致性行为、爱和附属关系产生对大脑的奖赏。对于一些人来说，这可能包括鲜花、巧克力和甜言蜜语：这些都是可以学会的。

If humans become conditioned by their experiences, this may be the reason why some people tend to date the same “type” of partner over and over again. Researchers think humans develop a “love map” as they grow up—a blueprint that contains the many things that they have learnt are attractive. This inner scorecard is something that people use to rate the suitability of mates. Yet the idea that humans are actually born with a particular type of “soul mate” wired into their desires is wrong. Research on the choices of partner made by identical twins suggests that the development of love maps takes time, and has a strong random component.

人类常常会囿于自身的经验，因此某些人总喜欢一再地和相同“类型”伴侣约会。研究人员认为，随着人们年龄的增长，他们会在大脑内发展一个“爱情地图”——一个包含许多人们已经熟悉的、魅力事物的蓝图。这个内部记分卡是人们用于评价配偶适合度的依据。认为特定类型的“精神伴侣”与欲望的内在联系是与生俱来，这种想法是错误的。对同卵双胞胎择偶的研究表明，爱情地图的发展需要时间，而且有很强的随机成份。

Work on rats is leading researchers such as Dr Pfaus to wonder whether the template of features found attractive by an individual is formed during a critical period of sexual-behaviour development. He says that even in animals that are not supposed to pair-bond, such as rats, these features may get fixed with the experience of sexual reward. Rats can be conditioned to prefer particular types of partner—for example by pairing sexual reward with some kind of cue, such as lemon-scented members of the opposite sex. This work may help the understanding of unusual sexual preferences. Human fetishes, for example, develop early, and are almost impossible to change. The fetishist connects objects such as feet, shoes, stuffed toys and even balloons, that have a visual association with childhood sexual experiences, to sexual gratification.

针对家鼠的研究工作使Pfaus博士等研究人员力图查明：具有异性魅力的特征模板，是不是在性行为发展的关键时期形成的？他认为，即使在没有伴侣连接习性的动物当中——如家鼠——这些特征仍可能通过性奖赏的经验固定下来。家鼠能条件反射地偏爱特别类型的伴侣。举例来说，性奖赏同时伴随着某种提示条件，比如具有柠檬气息的异性。这项工作也许有助于对异常的性偏爱的理解。例如，人类的恋物情结发展于早期，而且几乎是不可改变。恋物癖者会把童年时期在视觉上和性经验关联的物体与性满足连接起来，诸如脚、鞋子、布玩具甚至气球等。

So love, in all its glory, is just, it seems, a chemical state with genetic roots and environmental influences. But all this work leads to other questions. If scientists can make a more sociable mouse, might it be possible to create a more sociable human? And what about a more loving one? A few people even think that “paradise-engineering”, dedicated to abolishing the “biological substrates of human suffering”, is rather a good idea.

因此，关于爱的所有光彩之处，看上去只不过是具有遗传基础和受环境影响的一种化学状态。与此相关，这儿涉及的一切还将导致更多其他的问题。如果科学家能制造一只社会性更强的老鼠，那么他们是否可能产生一个社会性更强的人呢？创造一个更惹人喜爱的人，其结果又将如何？一些人甚至认为致力于废除“人类受难的生物学基体”的“天堂工程”，是一个非常不错的主意。