Have a sore wrist from all that swiping left and right on your phone? Now, Hands-Free Tinder, a new Apple Watch app, promises to do the matching for you, by quite literally listening to your heart. Or, more accurately (if less romantically), tracking your heart. Since the watch can detect heart rate, when you're in the app, if you're looking at a profile and your heart rate increases, it's the equivalent of swiping yes. If it decreases or stays the same, it's a left swipe.
As the website says: "We've removed the need for a user to take action, instead allowing data to make the decision for them. After all, the heart doesn't lie!" Maybe the heart doesn't lie, but it also isn't capable of taking a very deep reading. I think it's slightly worrying to take the (already precariously small) amount of mental work out of Tinder, but there you go. Just better hope your pulse doesn't spike when you see one sexy photo, without you noticing a sexist tagline or that they hate dogs. But if you've ever been like "Oh, I like Tinder, but if it only there wasn't so much thinking involved!", this is definitely the app for you.
There is something to this heart rate thing — we've all had that pounding feeling around someone we like. And there's a whole lot of other stuff that happens to your body when you're falling in love (or lust).
1. Your Brain Drugs You Up
Seriously, they've done brain scans. One study of 10 women and 7 men found that looking at photos of their loved ones produced "emotional responses in the same parts of the brain normally involved with motivation and reward," LiveScience reports. Arthur Aron of SUNY Stony Brook, co-author of the study, said that "intense passionate love uses the same system in the brain that gets activated when a person is addicted to drugs."
2. ...And Makes You Nervous
Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and co-founder of the same study said that "you can feel happy when you're in love, but you can also feel anxious. ... The other person becomes a goal in life, a prize."
3. You Get All Hot And Sweaty, Before You Even Enter The Room
Lots of hormones are released when you're falling in love, including dopamine, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, Science Daily reports. And according to Dr. Pat Mumby, professor and co-director of the Loyola Sexual Wellness Clinic, says "this internal elixir of love is responsible for making our cheeks flush, our palms sweat and our hearts race."
4. Your Brain Makes You Get Obsessive
You know how you feel a little tunnel-visioned when you're in love? You're not imagining that. Dr. Mary Lynn, DO and also co-director of Loyola Sexual Wellness Clinic says "love lowers serotonin levels, which is common in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders ... This may explain why we concentrate on little other than our partner during the early stages of a relationship."
5. Your Pupils Dilate
Apparently when you're attracted to someone your eyes want to grab as much as they can, and according to Cosmopolitan UK, "your pupils will dilate, and it'll have nothing to do with bright lights. Pupils are associated with positive emotions and your mind will want to know more about the man [or woman] you're flirting with."
7. You Can Go Blind
You can really go blind with jealousy. It's called "emotion-induced" blindness. Cosmopolitan UK reports on research from the University of Delaware that showed "having pangs of jealousy could make us temporarily blind. In the study women were shown a selection of images and had to find a "target" image. The test took a turn when the women were told their men were rating images of girls in terms of attractiveness. The jealous types failed to spot the target." So... maybe don't get jealous while driving.
8. It Doesn't Go Away
OK, the good news is, that despite the "honeymoon period," the joyful hormone rushes of love and attraction don't need to go anywhere. Helen Fisher of Rutgers University and author of "Why Him? Why Her? Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type" did brain scans on people in love. According to CNN, "They found the same activity in the brains of people who said they were in love after 20 years of marriage as in people who had just fallen in love. This brain area makes dopamine and sends it to other areas."
Images: Pexels; Giphy (8)
