Love, while thought to be an innate emotion, is instead a learned trait.  This can be explained by analyzing how humans utilize language and communication.  David Premack’s 2004, “Is Language the Key to Human Intelligence?” explores the ways that monkeys, chimpanzees, and humans communicate with their own species.  His logic can be extended to apply to the language of love, i.e. flirting, in addition to the traditional meaning of communication, i.e. conversing.  Voluntary control of the hands and head, imitation and teaching, and “theory of mind” are all a part of how people interact when they express affection and how they come to understand how to show those emotions of affection.  The facts in Premack’s article show that humans have unique abilities to communicate love.  While the emotion of love includes instinctive aspects, such as pheromones, to make us believe in “love at first sight,” the actions humans use and the ways they communicate love are acquired.

One such action is manipulating body language and facial expressions.  These are the two most important aspects of flirting nonverbally, and humans control them subtly in conversation.  Often, a female’s nonverbal communication says more about how she feels than her words.  If she inclines her head away from the conversation or folds her arms across her chest, then she is indicating that she is uninterested in the person to whom she is speaking, regardless of what she may be politely saying.  According to a recent study, this nonverbal behavior is specific to humans.  Evidence shows that while humans can voluntarily control their face and hands to display their emotions, other species, such as chimpanzees and monkeys make facial expressions involuntarily.  They cannot control the emotions shown on their faces.  The duplicity of human facial and body control is not present in monkeys and chimpanzees.  Thus, humans can “speak” nonverbally and voluntarily through body language and facial expressions, unlike monkeys, and this allows them to effectively communicate their affections, or lack thereof, for others.

Imitation and teaching are other very important aspects of communication.  Humans observe and learn the language of love through their social interactions with parents and peers.  They then copy the actions they observed as a way to express their affection towards others.  For example, we learn by watching the people around us that hugging is a sign of affection.  As a result, we begin to hug the people we care about.  Likewise, chimpanzees and monkeys all learn basic communication by observing and imitating their peers.  However, the difference between communication among humans and communication among primates lies in teaching, which is defined by Premack as being “strictly human.”  When humans teach something, they share previously acquired, beneficial wisdom with a novice.  This applies to the language of love through sexual education.  Teaching sexual education informs teenagers about the consequences of their sexual decisions.  This means that they will not have to learn the lesson “the hard way,” by experience.  Instead, the teenager depends upon the wisdom of the sexual education teacher.  Chimpanzees and monkeys, on the other hand, do not have sexual education programs.  Their young are left to learn through experience.  Yet again, humans display a distinctive ability to communicate affections, this time through imitation and teaching.

Premack also discusses the “theory of mind,” which he defines as the study of how “human communication is intentional” and how communication is perceived by a listener.  A speaker’s goal is to inform the listener, but sometimes the listener misunderstands what is being said.  For example, when a boy tells a girl that he likes her, she can take this to mean that he considers her to be a good friend when in actuality he has a crush on her.  This type of miscommunication is often found in the language of love and is even fabled about in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where the two lovers do not effectively communicate their plan for staying together, and thus both end up dead.  Juliet never made her intention to fake her own death clear to Romeo, who in turn also did not attempt to communicate with Juliet while he was banished from the town.  Despite being humans, Romeo and Juliet acted more like monkeys since they allowed a miscommunication to occur and did not attempt to fix it.  Their behavior, according to Premack, is much closer to that of monkeys because “there is no evidence that monkeys correct errant listeners or that their communication is intentional.”  Intentional communication and an accurate transfer of information from a speaker to a listener are the basis of a productive exchange of ideas.  Fortunately, humans have mastered the ability to ensure that they are well understood.  At least Juliet had the ability to find a better way to communicate with Romeo and let him know that she was planning on feigning her own death.  Monkeys though, have not demonstrated that they are able to correct the listener if a miscommunication should occur.  Thus, humans can more effectively and efficiently communicate their feelings and affections for another.

However, when most humans think of communication, they often think about grammar and the technicalities of language.  These aspects of communication are a part of the presentation of language.  While improper grammar can usually be understood, proper grammar is essential to communicate effectively because it directly impacts how a person is perceived by society.  For example, a man who can articulate his thoughts and words, as well as quote romantic poets, is much more likely to impress a woman than a man who uses improper grammar, because he would appear to be the more intellectual individual.  Grammar is also used in a sense by monkeys and chimpanzees.  They have an elementary ability to understand what is being communicated and can “talk,” in a sense, with the other primate.  Yet this ability is not developed enough in primates to produce metaphors and if-then statements, both of which are considered to be higher forms of intelligence in communication.  Once again, humans use communication to flirt and display affections, but this time it is done formally with proper grammar.

While Premack insists that the differences between humans, chimpanzees, and monkeys regarding language are not large enough to be the sole contributors to human uniqueness, an application of the aspects of communication to the language of love tends to show that humans possess some very important and distinct qualities.  The various aspects of language are vital concerning effective communication of affection between humans.  Not only can we teach and learn love through imitation, but this ability is unique to humans.  Perhaps primates do not need to have language in order to show their love, but the fact remains that they do not have the same capabilities as humans to utilize language in a similar manner when it comes to monkeying around in the language of love.

 

Reference:

 

Premack, David. 2004. Is Language the Key to Human Intelligence?  Science Magazine 303, 318-320. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/303/5656/318