Have you looked at love this way? According to a new study, the fact that you cannot concentrate at work may mean you are in love with your boyfriend…

The study which was published in the journal Motivation and Emotion says, people who are in love are less able to focus and to perform tasks that require attention.

Explaining the study, researcher Henk van Steenbergen said; ‘when you have just become involved in a romantic relationship you’ll probably find it harder to focus on other things because you spend a large part of your cognitive resources on thinking of your beloved,’.

According to MailOnline;

While passionate love usually involves enhanced, near-obsessive attention to your beloved, a lover’s concentration for daily tasks like study and work may actually be impaired, suggesting reduced cognitive control.

Mr van Steenbergen, together with colleagues from Leiden University and the University of Maryland, studied 43 participants who had been in a relationship for less than six months.

They were asked to perform a number of tasks, one of which included being timed as they sorted irrelevant from relevant information.

The more in love they were, the less able they were to hone in on the ‘relevant’ information. There was no difference between men and women.

The participants also listened to music that elicited romantic feelings, and were asked to think of a romantic event to intensify their love feelings, before completing a questionnaire that was used to assess the intensity of their love. 

‘The reason why romantic love is associated with cognitive control is still unknown,’ said Mr van Steenbergen.

‘It could be that lovers use all their cognitive resources to think about their beloved, which leaves them no resources to perform a boring task.

‘It could also be that the association goes in the opposite direction: people who have reduced cognitive control may experience more intense love feelings than people who have higher levels of cognitive control.‘