Can’t concentrate on work? You must be in love!

Can’t concentrate on work? Well, you must be in love.

That’s the finding of a recent study published in the (obscure) journal of Motivation and Emotion, which claims people in love are less likely able to concentrate on work and study or perform tasks that require too much attention.

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,” Henk van Steenbergen, one of study’s researchers, told London’s Daily Mail.

The survey, which was conducted by colleagues from Leiden University in the Netherlands and the University of Maryland in the United States, was conducted on a mere 43 people who had been ‘in love’ for less than six months.[ew-supplier-carousel]

The researchers asked the 43 participants to perform several routine tasks such as being able to sort irrelevant information from relevant information. They found that the more in love a participant was, the less able they were to hone in on relevant information suggesting cognitive control was reduced in new lovers. There was no difference in the reactions of men and women.