Ep 4. Six-Pack Science: Love Island

 
 

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We've been mugged right off and watched the latest series of Love Island, all in the name of SCIENCE. Why do we fancy people? Can we learn anything from reality TV or is it just trash? And how can we win Love Island using Science?

We explore the science behind attraction and what physiological changes happen in our bodies when we meet someone who's our 'type on paper'. We're also joined on the episode by two experts in reality TV, Professor Annette Hill and Dr Brendan Rooney, who explain to us how to define reality TV and how it's evolved in recent decades, whether binge-watching reality TV shows can be a bad thing, and what indeed we might be LEARNING from Love Island, as we judge the islander's interesting decisions and questionable outfit choices. 

 

Meet our guests

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Annette Hill

Professor of Media and Communication at Lund University, Sweden, joins us to define ‘reality TV,’.

Image credit: Michael Rubsamen.

https://www.kom.lu.se/en/person/AnnetteHill

 
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Brendan Rooney

Dr Brendan Rooney, Assistant Professor in the UCD School of Psychology and Director of the Media and Entertainment Psychology Lab at UCD, Ireland. Bren chats with us about the pros and cons of consuming reality TV and explores what we might be learning from Love Island, without even realising it.

@brenrooney | @ME_LabTweets | @me_lab_ucd | MELabPosts

Love Island blogs

Featured
How to cope with rejection...the love life of a fruit fly.
How to cope with rejection...the love life of a fruit fly.

Ever noticed those fruit flies buzzing around your overly ripe bananas? Only a couple of millimetres long, these tiny flies are attracted to rotting, fermenting fruit. Research has found that male fruit fly who were rejected by females, drank four times as much alcohol as those who had sex.

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Episode references (if you fancy some extra reading)