Love is … an uptick in cardiac vagal tone, of course

The classic comic strip “Love Is …” would carry some surprise endings if Barbara L. Fredrickson were writing it. Her decades of research into positive emotions has led her to some unsentimental conclusions. Among them, that love is … not lasting … not unconditional … not exclusive.

But Fredrickson, director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, defines love more broadly, meaning it’s not as elusive as some of us think.

She also credits love with nourishing our minds and bodies much more than romantic notions of it suggest.

For more, read Wednesday’s Family section in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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