It's not necessarily that the study was retracted. The news article from the Guardian you linked mentioned that the study was submitted to the journal Personal Relationships; this means it had not yet been accepted for publication. And indeed it looks like that study never got published there despite all the media coverage.

Actually it has finally come out, 5 years later! Burton-Chellew, M.N and Dunbar, Robin I. M. (2015). Romance and reproduction are socially costly. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 9(4), 229-241. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000046

From the abstract

We used an Internet sample of 540 respondents to test and show that the average size of support networks is reduced for individuals in a romantic relationship. We also found approximately 9% of our sample reported having an “extra” romantic partner they could call on for help, however these respondents did not have an even smaller network than those in just 1 relationship. The support network is also further reduced for those who have offspring, however these effects are contingent on age, primarily affecting those under the age of 36 years. Taking into account the acquisition of a new member to the network when entering a relationship, the cost of romance is the loss of nearly 2 members. On average, these social costs are spread equally among related and nonrelated members of the network.

An objectively verifiable indication that an animal has pair-bonded would be a visible indication of distress when forcibly separated from his/her mate. I'm not suggesting that this is the best way to determine whether an animal has pair-bonded. For example, an elevated level of some hormone in the blood stream (a "being in love" hormone) that reliably indicates being pair-bonded would be a superior objectively verifiable indication (in my opinion) because it doesn't involve causing distress in an animal.

I'm not a biologist - just an occasional recreational reader of popular works in biology. So, my opinion isn't worth much.

Are there any studies that highlight which biases become stronger when someone "falls in love"? (Assume the love is reciprocated.) I am mainly interested in biases that affect short- and medium-term decisions, since the state of mind in question usually doesn't last long.

One example is the apparent overblown usage of the affect heuristic when judging the goodness of the new partner's perceived characteristics and actions (the halo effect on steroids).

A study that relies only on self-reported claims of 'being in love' might be interesting to read, but such a study would be of higher quality if there was an objective way to take a group of people and sort them into one of two groups: "in love" or "not in love." Based on my own experience and experiences reported by others, I wouldn't reject the notion that such a sorting is possible in principle, although it may be beyond our current technological capability. The pain associated with being suddenly separated from someone that you have 'fallen in love with' can rival physical pain in intensity. What type of instrumentation would we need to detect when a person is primed for such a response? I have no idea.

Are there any studies that highlight which biases become stronger when someone "falls in love"? (Assume the love is reciprocated.) I am mainly interested in biases that affect short- and medium-term decisions, since the state of mind in question usually doesn't last long.

One example is the apparent overblown usage of the affect heuristic when judging the goodness of the new partner's perceived characteristics and actions (the halo effect on steroids).

Any chance of a combined ebook version?

It's funny, when trying to think how could an AI exploit the text interface, I came up with the idea of writing multiple lines of ASCII text in a rapid fashion and produce an "ASCII video" for the human to watch. Unless the AI could only write a new line every second or something like that...

This made me wonder if the AI could also exploit other things such as the sound the machine would do when specific data patterns would be copied into RAM or when certain sequences of computations would be processed by a CPU. Sure, the machine (including the monitor) could be placed in a sound proof room, but then I start thinking about energy dissipation patterns and how could those be used to interfere with the environment and consequently with the human...

Anyway, I think that when thinking about the means of communication the AI has available, one should be thorough and consider everything that is a part of, or is connected to, the physical system running the AI.

So I noticed a few people from Portugal in the public raw data. I am one of those people and from what I saw in the data, the remaining are all lurkers.

Viva pessoal! Want to join the community, even if just to say hi? =)

They had a primary partner, I had a primary partner. We were secondary to each other.

Here is a complete list of Country counts (ordered by count) (ordered alphabetically).

Note that only countries from people who allowed their results to be public are listed. It is possible for someone from a non-listed country to have completed the survey but chose to remain private.

Inside square brackets are the full counts provided by Yvain (which include private results).

People who have not chosen a country are not listed. People with multiple countries are counted multiple times.