"Chemistry" is...Chemical

Deciphering the complicated science of spark

Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. More specifically, according to the Cambridge Dictionary: “the scientific study of the basic characteristics of substances and the ways in which they react or combine.”

But chemistry—the coveted, elusive “spark” that may or may not, likely not, happen between two people who typically these days bump up against each other in a dating app and then try to “react or combine” In Real Life—well that’s nearly impossible to find let alone quantify with words.

Even the dictionary gets a little vague here with: “a quality that exists when two people understand and are attracted to each other.”

In my own fumbling attempts to revisit this fabled paradise, I thought best first to try to fully fathom what and where it is. If I could put this chemistry in a bottle, call it eau de l’amour and spritz liberally all the pulse points of the singletons, I’d be a gazillionaire. But actually, this perfume already exists—in our pheromones, which might be as unique a signature and impossible to control as our DNA. Supposedly our underlying, most primal scents play a subliminal role in our sexual selection. However, I’d theorize that part of our contemporary confusion in sifting out an ideal mate might stem from how much we’ve buried or eliminated our natural guiding stench with products and scouring—or for that matter, how we’ve replaced IRL initial interactions with online.

On one first encounter, my date only half-joked that I had to pass his sniff test. Whatever was emanating from my scalp. He not-so-subtly leaned in to breathe it in within moments of our first meeting. I’d like to think it was the essence of my brain waves leaking he was capturing and not the funk of sloughed off dead skin and sweat. Tangible soul. But more likely since I had recently showered: shampoo and conditioner. I passed the test. Until he soon lost interest and discarded me like a toxic single-use plastic. Back to the apps I sulkily swipe.

Even if we can’t exactly detect it on the outside, I believe we humans are walking petri dish experiments and nothing if not the sum of our chemicals. Even if that total is cruel or benumbed.

James Hyatt Inhaling Chlorine Gas, daguerreotype in his textbook for schoolchildren "The Elements of Chemistry" (1855), from the Gillman Collection

I do appreciate that Cambridge includes the concept of “understanding” above and doesn’t just skim the surface with attraction. Because for me and most people I know, attraction is some special mix of mental and physical, probably actually more mental than physical, tilting toward sapiosexual if you will. But that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s much choice about it.

According to an article in Psychology Today, What is Romantic Chemistry? by Dr. Paul Thagard, psychologists parsed this out into the interaction of various experiential components. And the author, as a cognitive scientist, goes further to connect this to consciousness through his “four brain mechanisms” below:

Dating sites often promise to help people meet others with good chemistry, although they never say what chemistry is. Good chemistry is the experience of feeling an intense connection with a potential partner, but how does it work?

The mystery of chemistry has been markedly reduced by an account provided by three psychologists: Harry Reis, Annie Regan, and Sonja Lyubomirsky. They describe chemistry as an emergent property resulting from the interaction of perceptual, emotional, and behavioral components.

They write of chemistry as an experience but do not tie their account to a theory of consciousness. I fill this gap by tying their analysis of chemistry to what I think are the four main brain mechanisms of conscious experience: neural representation, binding, coherence, and competition.

So let’s explore what Dr. Thagard means by all this, first by Representation. He puts a gender-neutrally named pair, Pat and Sam, on a first date. Each is perceiving the other through vision, voice, touch, smell. But perception is just the “beginning of chemistry that requires mutual coordination.” Behaviorally this happens through smiling, nodding, leaning in, grazing a hand.

By far the greatest contributor to romantic chemistry is conversation.

Words exchanged are the obvious part of this conversation, but also the nonverbal. Eye contact, facial expressions, synchronous movements. The abstract is embodied and felt—“erogenous tingles and butterflies in the stomach that indicate nervous interest” (although, careful, it’s a first date: this could also just be the misattributed adrenaline of stress).

The emotional component, the judgments underlying these acts and sensations, is ideally also synchronizing into anything from “mild interest to mutual excitement.” The mirth of shared laughter, lust from agreed attraction. “Abstract neural representations of each other” might be happening such as thinking the other is intelligent or ethically/politically aligned.

Then Binding happens. Perceptions involve neural representations forming into new more “enduring” ones. Initial awkwardness might grow into increasing chemistry as the connection grows and the brain “binds” one association with another over time and comfort level. The perception that the person has kind eyes might grow into an idea that they have good qualities and that might, later mixed with recalling the date, bind into a fond memory and the assessment of “agreeable.”

Coherence: is how we gather these perceptual bits into our idea of a coherent whole. We interpret a complete person based on what we’ve learned so far of what they believe, want and value. (This could easily crumple if they contradict themselves, which can happen in an instant since some of us might have a tendency to build these idea edifices faster than the other is representing.)

Reis, Regan, and Lyubomirsky do not use the term “coherence,” but they describe how chemistry can arise from shared identities and matching personal goals. The chemistry that may develop between Pat and Sam is much more than their physical attraction to each other because conversation also reveals if they are a good fit for each other with respect to religion, career plans, lifestyle, and geographical preferences.

So compatibility is indeed also in the chemistry mix. You can see how you might need a spreadsheet to track this—I’m working on it.

Finally, Competition. If the parties aren’t mutually paying attention to each other, the sand castle also quickly crumbles.

Attention results from competition between neural representations. Pat and Sam will thrive if they are much more interested in each other than in the many distractions in their lives. Competition is largely shaped by emotions—in this case, Pat and Sam finding each other sufficiently interesting, exciting, fun, and sexy to focus their attention.

The opposite of this: finding yourself drawn during your dinner to glance at your phone rather than into the kind eyes of your tablemate; or more privately but even more insidious, going home after that perfectly good meal and convo and still finding yourself drawn into more app-swiping on the endless hunt for Some Other Better Candidate. The distractions and competition are limitless. What will win your attention?

In summary, the Dr. writes:

Reis, Regan, and Lyubomirsky describe chemistry as arising from the interaction of cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes. Compatibly, I have described the conscious experience of chemistry as requiring the interactions of neural firings, inferences that make coherent sense of interactions, and emotional responses that marshal attention to outcompete distractions.

How lucky indeed when all of these many delicate factors and mechanisms align and magnify between two people. And you could say that all these complex interactive measures of perception, behavior, emotional are indeed just chemical when you go next next-level with a neuroscientist:

I just watched these 2.5 hours featuring Dr. Andrew Huberman, burly neuroscientist and professor at Stanford School of Medicine, also rich with words like matching, mutuality, empathy, coordination and synchronicity, here in regards to the Autonomic (automatic) Nervous System. “Neural representation” through his lens entails chemicals firing of whatever flavor from serotonin to oxytocin. Huberman cites one study categorizing the four personality types found across dating apps not according to combos of four letters (i.e. INFP, me) but according to their dominant chemical composition:

• The Dopamines - curious/energetic

• The Serotonic - cautious/social norm compliant

• The Testosterones - analytical/tough-minded

• The Estrogens/Oxytocins - prosocial/empathetic

The dopes and the seros usually stick with their own kinds; while the testos and the estros pair with their opposite counterparts. I’d say, just to muddy the waters, I’m pinch of this and an ounce of that. How might you align?

As fascinating as that journey through neurons and hormones was, the hour was late and I may have dozed off when Huberman started listing all the supplements you can take to adjust this or that in your ailing libido: maca, tongkat, tribulus terrestris...

All of these experts from the various fields and different angles seem to agree that mind and body, conscious and subconscious, chemical and metaphysical, are working in complicated tandem to create a sense of connection on every level of one’s being, even if what results might be, says Huberman, just “positive delusion.”

“There’s a deeper layer to all this which is that our biology that resides below our conscious awareness—things like our hormones, things like pheromones—are shaping the way that we choose, interpret, and act with other potential romantic partners or romantic partners we already have. This cannot be overemphasized: no matter how much we would like to create a sort of top-down description—meaning from the cortex and our understanding of things onto what we find attractive, who we find attractive, what we enjoy, what we don’t enjoy in the pursuit and romantic interaction with others—there always seems to be and indeed there always is, a deeper layer in which our subconscious processing drives us to find a particular person to be particularly attractive, or in which we have chemistry with somebody, or in which we lack chemistry with somebody. And I would say that one of the more exciting, fascinating, and indeed mysterious aspects of desire, love and attraction are those subconscious processes, those things that we call chemistry.”

_Dr. Andrew Huberman

It’s a dance that takes two. The language of “mutual,” “shared,” “agreed,” and “synchronous” makes it obvious that chemistry has to coexist both within and between people to even exist. It cannot be one-sided, which would just make it simple delusion. It’s one thing to feel something, alone, for a person, but to have it be reciprocated—now that’s incredible.

Science loves a mystery. There’s a point at which—as when we try to surmise the farthest outskirts of the ever-expanding universe and what (multiple universes?) might lie beyond—words and data just fail us and you have to embrace the unknown and buckle in for the rocket ride.