ABSTRACT
This chapter describes recent evidence for the role that biologically based motivational systems play in forming and maintaining sexual and romantic relationships. Perceptual processes such as attention are influenced by people's motivations. Several recent studies on mating and attention have tested the hypothesis that mating motives lead perceivers to attend preferentially to phenotypic cues in other people that signal the presence of desirable mating-related traits. Mating-related cognition, however, is also highly responsive to temporarily activated motivational states. Integrating theories of social psychology and evolutionary psychology provides a strong overarching framework with which to understand the adaptively motivated aspects of people's relationship psychology. Evolutionary theories suggest that love is a key affective mechanism that underlies long-term pair bonding. Successfully maintaining a relationship into the long-term requires people to overcome a number of substantial challenges, not the least of which is avoiding temptations posed by desirable alternatives to one's long-term partner.
