Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, US researchers reported.

College students who reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women, the team at the University of California Los Angeles and dating Web site eHarmony found.

"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to enable you to push thoughts of that tempting¹ other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

"It's almost like love puts blinders on people," added Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology² and communication studies at UCLA.

Gonzaga and Haselton asked 120 heterosexual undergraduates in committed relationships to examine photographs of attractive members of the opposite sex from an eHarmony Web site.

The volunteers were asked to choose the most attractive photos, and write an essay either about their current romantic partner, or the subject of their choice.

While writing, the students were asked to forget the "hotties" from the Web site, but told to put a check in the margins³ if they did happen to think of the attractive photos.

The volunteers who wrote about their partners were six times less likely to admit to thinking of the attractive others than volunteers who wrote about random⁴ subjects.

And later asked to recall the cuties in the pictures, the students who wrote about their lovers remembered fewer details about the physical appearance of the attractive strangers.

"These people could remember the color of a shirt or whether the photo was taken in New York, but they didn't remember anything tempting about the person," Gonzaga said.

"It's not like their overall memory was impaired⁵; it's as if they had selectively screened out things that would make them think about the how attractive the alternative was."

 美国研究人员日前称，爱情的确是“盲目”的，至少在看待其他人时如此。

洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学的研究小组及约会交友网站eHarmony发现，正在谈恋爱的大学生不大可能注意别的帅哥或美女。

研究结果在《进化与人类行为》期刊上发表。eHarmony网站的吉安•宫扎格说：“一旦爱上某人，其他人在你眼中就会黯然失色，而且这种感觉似乎能让你驱走内心的杂念。”

洛杉矶加利福尼亚大学的心理和沟通研究副教授马尔蒂•哈塞尔顿说：“这就像是爱情蒙住了我们的双眼。”

宫扎格和哈塞尔顿对120对感情稳定的大学生异性情侣进行了研究，让他们浏览eHarmony网站的帅哥或美女照片。

志愿者们需从中选出最帅或最漂亮的异性照片，然后写一篇关于自己爱人或自命题的文章。

研究人员要求志愿者在写文章时忘记他们之前看到的那些“帅哥美女”，但如果偶然想起那些照片，需在空白处打一个钩。

写关于爱人文章的志愿者想起那些照片的几率为写其它主题文章的研究对象的六分之一。

之后在被要求回忆照片中人物的外貌特征时，写关于爱人文章的人回忆起来的细节较少。

宫扎格说：“这一部分人能记得照片中人物衬衫的颜色或照片是否在纽约拍的，但他们记不清任何具有吸引力的特征。”

“这并不是他们的整体记忆受到了损害；这就好比他们选择性地过滤掉了会让他们分心的东西。”