Staring at your beloved's face really can take the pain away and make everything better. A small but intriguing study has found that college students who looked at pictures of their beloveds felt less pain than others. The study, published in PLoS One, was a collaboration between the pain researcher Sean Mackey and the love researcher Arthur Aron, who wondered how their fields might overlap in the brain. First they put out the call for volunteers in the early, passionate stages of a relationship.