modern love research paper

HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article

Towards a comprehensive theory of love: the quadruple theory.

• Independent Researcher, San Diego, CA, United States

Scholars across an array of disciplines including social psychologists have been trying to explain the meaning of love for over a century but its polysemous nature has made it difficult to fully understand. In this paper, a quadruple framework of attraction, resonance or connection, trust, and respect are proposed to explain the meaning of love. The framework is used to explain how love grows and dies and to describe brand love, romantic love, and parental love. The synergistic relationship between the factors and how their variations modulate the intensity or levels of love are discussed.

Introduction

Scholars across an array of disciplines have tried to define the meaning and nature of love with some success but questions remain. Indeed, it has been described as a propensity to think, feel, and behave positively toward another ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986 ). However, the application of this approach has been unsuccessful in all forms of love ( Berscheid, 2010 ). Some social psychologists have tried to define love using psychometric techniques. Robert Sternberg Triangular Theory of Love and Clyde and Susan Hendrick’s Love Attitudes Scale (LAS) are notable attempts to employ the psychometric approach ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986 ; Sternberg, 1986 ). However, data analysis from the administration of the LAS, Sternberg’s scale and the Passionate Love Scale by Hatfield and Sprecher’s (1986) found a poor association with all forms of love ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1989 ). Other studies have found a poor correlation between these and other love scales with different types of love ( Whitley, 1993 ; Sternberg, 1997 ; Masuda, 2003 ; Graham and Christiansen, 2009 ).

In recent years, the neuropsychological approach to study the nature of love has gained prominence. Research has compared the brain activity of people who were deeply in love while viewing a picture of their partner and friends of the same age using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and concluded that there is a specialized network of the brain involved in love ( Bartels and Zeki, 2000 ). Indeed, several lines of investigation using fMRI have described a specialized area of the brain mediating maternal love ( Noriuchi et al., 2008 ; Noriuchi and Kikuchi, 2013 ) and, fMRI studies have implicated multiple brain systems particularly the reward system in romantic love ( Aron et al., 2005 ; Fisher et al., 2005 , 2010 ; Beauregard et al., 2009 ). Brain regions including ventral tegmental area, anterior insula, ventral striatum, and supplementary motor area have been demonstrated to mediate social and material reward anticipation ( Gu et al., 2019 ). Although brain imaging provides a unique insight into the nature of love, making sense of the psychological significance or inference of fMRI data is problematic ( Cacioppo et al., 2003 ).

Also, there has been growing interests in the neurobiology of love. Indeed, evidence suggests possible roles for oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, cortisol, morphinergic system, and nerve growth factor in love and attachment ( Esch and Stefano, 2005 ; De Boer et al., 2012 ; Seshadri, 2016 ; Feldman, 2017 ). However, in many cases, definite proof is still lacking and the few imaging studies on love are limited by selection bias on the duration of a love affair, gender and cultural differences ( De Boer et al., 2012 ).

So, while advances have been made in unraveling the meaning of love, questions remain and a framework that can be employed to understand love in all its forms remains to be developed or proposed. The objective of this article is to propose a novel framework that can be applied to all forms of love.

Theoretical Background and Hypothesis Development (The AAC Model)

In the past few decades, the psychological literature has defined and described different forms of love and from these descriptions, the role of attraction, attachment-commitment, and caregiving (AAC), appears to be consistent in all forms of love.

Attraction theory is one of the first approaches to explain the phenomenon of love and several studies and scholarly works have described the importance of attraction in different forms of love ( Byrne and Griffitt, 1973 ; Berscheid and Hatfield, 1978 ; Fisher et al., 2006 ; Braxton-Davis, 2010 ; Grant-Jacob, 2016 ). Attraction has been described as an evolutionary adaptation of humans for mating, reproduction, and parenting ( Fisher et al., 2002a , 2006 ).

The role of attachment in love has also been extensively investigated. Attachment bonds have been described as a critical feature of mammals including parent-infant, pair-bonds, conspecifics, and peers ( Feldman, 2017 ). Indeed, neural networks including the interaction of oxytocin and dopamine in the striatum have been implicated in attachment bonds ( Feldman, 2017 ). The key features of attachment include proximity maintenance, safety and security, and separation distress ( Berscheid, 2010 ). Multiple lines of research have proposed that humans possess an innate behavioral system of attachment that is essential in love ( Harlow, 1958 ; Bowlby, 1977 , 1988 , 1989 ; Ainsworth, 1985 ; Hazan and Shaver, 1987 ; Bretherton, 1992 ; Carter, 1998 ; Burkett and Young, 2012 ). Attachment is essential to commitment and satisfaction in a relationship ( Péloquin et al., 2013 ) and commitment leads to greater intimacy ( Sternberg, 1986 ).

Also, several lines of evidence have described the role of caregiving in love. It has been proposed that humans possess an inborn caregiving system that complements their attachment system ( Bowlby, 1973 ; Ainsworth, 1985 ). Indeed, several studies have used caregiving scale and compassionate love scale, to describe the role of caring, concern, tenderness, supporting, helping, and understanding the other(s), in love and relationships ( Kunce and Shaver, 1994 ; Sprecher and Fehr, 2005 ). Mutual communally responsive relationships in which partners attend to one another’s needs and welfare with the expectation that the other will return the favor when their own needs arise ( Clark and Mills, 1979 ; Clark and Monin, 2006 ), have been described as key in all types of relationships including friendship, family, and romantic and compassionate love ( Berscheid, 2010 ).

Attachment and caregiving reinforce each other in relationships. Evidence suggests that sustained caregiving is frequently accompanied by the growth of familiarity between the caregiver and the receiver ( Bowlby, 1989 , p. 115) strengthening attachment ( Berscheid, 2010 ). Several studies have proposed that attachment has a positive influence on caregiving behavior in love and relationships ( Carnelley et al., 1996 ; Collins and Feeney, 2000 ; Feeney and Collins, 2001 ; Mikulincer, 2006 ; Canterberry and Gillath, 2012 ; Péloquin et al., 2013 ).

The AAC model can be seen across the literature on love. Robert Sternberg triangular theory of love which proposes that love has three components —intimacy, passion, and commitment ( Sternberg, 1986 ), essentially applies the AAC model. Passion, a key factor in his theory, is associated with attraction ( Berscheid and Hatfield, 1978 ), and many passionate behaviors including increased energy, focused attention, intrusive thinking, obsessive following, possessive mate guarding, goal-oriented behaviors and motivation to win and keep a preferred mating partner ( Fisher et al., 2002b , 2006 ; Fisher, 2005 ). Also, evidence indicates that attachment is central to intimacy, another pillar of the triangular theory ( Morris, 1982 ; Feeney and Noller, 1990 ; Oleson, 1996 ; Grabill and Kent, 2000 ). Commitment, the last pillar of the triangular theory, is based on interdependence and social exchange theories ( Stanley et al., 2010 ), which is connected to mutual caregiving and secure attachment.

Hendrick and Hendrick’s (1986) , Love Attitudes Scale (LAS) which measures six types of love ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986 ) is at its core based on the AAC model. Similarly, numerous works on love ( Rubin, 1970 ; Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986 ; Fehr, 1994 ; Grote and Frieze, 1994 ), have applied one or all of the factors in the ACC model. Berscheid (2010) , proposed four candidates for a temporal model of love including companionate love, romantic love, and compassionate love and adult attachment love. As described, these different types of love (romantic, companionate, compassionate, and attachment) all apply at least one or all of the factors in the AAC model.

New Theory (The Quadruple Framework)

The AAC model can be fully captured by four fundamental factors; attraction, connection or resonance, trust, and respect, providing a novel framework that could explain love in all its forms. Table 1 shows the core factors of love, and the four factors derived from them.

Table 1. Factors of love.

Evidence suggests that both attachment and attraction play a role in obsession or passion observed in love ( Fisher et al., 2005 ; Honari and Saremi, 2015 ). Attraction is influenced by the value or appeal perceived from a relationship and this affects commitment ( Rusbult, 1980 ).

Connection or Resonance

Connection is key to commitment, caregiving, and intimacy. It creates a sense of oneness in relationships and it is strengthened by proximity, familiarity, similarity, and positive shared experiences ( Sullivan et al., 2011 ; Beckes et al., 2013 ). Homogeneity or similarity has been observed to increase social capital and engagement among people ( Costa and Kahn, 2003a , b ), and it has been described as foundational to human relationships ( Tobore, 2018 , pp. 6–13). Research indicates that similarity plays a key role in attachment and companionship as people are more likely to form long-lasting and successful relationships with those who are more similar to themselves ( Burgess and Wallin, 1954 ; Byrne, 1971 ; Berscheid and Reis, 1998 ; Lutz-Zois et al., 2006 ). Proximity plays a key role in caregiving as people are more likely to show compassion to those they are familiar with or those closest to them ( Sprecher and Fehr, 2005 ). Similarity and proximity contribute to feelings of familiarity ( Berscheid, 2010 ). Also, caregiving and empathy are positively related to emotional interdependence ( Hatfield et al., 1994 ).

Trust is crucial for love ( Esch and Stefano, 2005 ) and it plays an important role in relationship intimacy and caregiving ( Rempel and Holmes, 1985 ; Wilson et al., 1998 ; Salazar, 2015 ), as well as attachment ( Rodriguez et al., 2015 ; Bidmon, 2017 ). Familiarity is a sine qua non for trust ( Luhmann, 1979 ), and trust is key to relationship satisfaction ( Simpson, 2007 ; Fitzpatrick and Lafontaine, 2017 ).

Respect is cross-cultural and universal ( Frei and Shaver, 2002 ; Hendrick et al., 2010 ) and has been described as fundamental in love ( Hendrick et al., 2011 ). It plays a cardinal role in interpersonal relations at all levels ( Hendrick et al., 2010 ). Indeed, it is essential in relationship commitment and satisfaction ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 2006 ) and relationship intimacy and attachment ( Alper, 2004 ; Hendrick et al., 2011 ).

Synergetic Interactions of the Four Factors

Connection and attraction.

Similarity, proximity, and familiarity are all important in connection because they promote attachment and a sense of oneness in a relationship ( Sullivan et al., 2011 ; Beckes et al., 2013 ). Research indicates that proximity ( Batool and Malik, 2010 ) and familiarity positively influence attraction ( Norton et al., 2015 ) and several lines of evidence suggests that people are attracted to those similar to themselves ( Sykes et al., 1976 ; Wetzel and Insko, 1982 ; Montoya et al., 2008 ; Batool and Malik, 2010 ; Collisson and Howell, 2014 ). Also, attraction mediates similarity and familiarity ( Moreland and Zajonc, 1982 ; Elbedweihy et al., 2016 ).

Respect and Trust

Evidence suggests that respect promotes trust ( Ali et al., 2012 ).

Connection, Respect, Trust, and Attraction

Trust affects attraction ( Singh et al., 2015 ). Trust and respect can mediate attitude similarity and promote attraction ( Singh et al., 2016 ).

So, although these factors can operate independently, evidence suggests that the weakening of one factor could negatively affect the others and the status of love. Similarly, the strengthening of one factor positively modulates the others and the status of love.

Relationships are dynamic and change as events and conditions in the environment change ( Berscheid, 2010 ). Love is associated with causal conditions that respond to these changes favorably or negatively ( Berscheid, 2010 ). In other words, as conditions change, and these factors become present, love is achieved and if they die, it fades. Figure 1 below explains how love grows and dies. Point C in the figure explains the variations in the intensity or levels of love and this variation is influenced by the strength of each factor. The stronger the presence of all factors, the higher the intensity and the lower, the weaker the intensity of love. The concept of non-love is similar to the “non-love” described in Sternberg’s triangular theory of love in which all components of love are absent ( Sternberg, 1986 ).

Figure 1. Description: (A) Presence of love (all factors are present). (B) Absence of love (state of non-love or state where all factors are latent or dormant). (C) Different levels of love due to variations in the four factors. (D) Movement from non-love toward love (developmental stage: at least one but not all four factors are present). (E) Movement away from love toward non-love (decline stage: at least one or more of the four factors are absent).

Application of the Quadruple Framework on Romantic, Brand and Parental Love

Romantic, parental and brand love have been chosen to demonstrate the role of these factors and their interactions in love because there is significant existing literature on them. However, they can be applied to understand love in all its forms.

Romantic Love

Attraction and romantic love.

Attraction involves both physical and personality traits ( Braxton-Davis, 2010 ; Karandashev and Fata, 2014 ). To this end, attraction could be subdivided into sexual or material and non-sexual or non-material attraction. Sexual or material attraction includes physical attributes such as beauty, aesthetics, appeal, wealth, etc. In contrast, non-sexual or non-material attraction includes characteristics such as personality, social status, power, humor, intelligence, character, confidence, temperament, honesty, good quality, kindness, integrity, etc. Both types of attraction are not mutually exclusive.

Romantic love has been described as a advanced form of human attraction system ( Fisher et al., 2005 ) and it fits with the passion component of Sternberg’s triangular theory of love which he described as the quickest to recruit ( Sternberg, 1986 ). Indeed, research indicates that physical attractiveness and sensual feelings are essential in romantic love and dating ( Brislin and Lewis, 1968 ; Regan and Berscheid, 1999 ; Luo and Zhang, 2009 ; Braxton-Davis, 2010 ; Ha et al., 2010 ; Guéguen and Lamy, 2012 ) and sexual attraction often provides the motivational spark that kickstarts a romantic relationship ( Gillath et al., 2008 ). Behavioral data suggest that love and sex drive follow complementary pathways in the brain ( Seshadri, 2016 ). Indeed, the neuroendocrine system for sexual attraction and attachment appears to work synergistically motivating individuals to both prefer a specific mating partner and to form an attachment to that partner ( Seshadri, 2016 ). Sex promotes the activity of hormones involved in love including arginine vasopressin in the ventral pallidum, oxytocin in the nucleus accumbens and stimulates dopamine release which consequently motivates preference for a partner and strengthens attachment or pair-bonding ( Seshadri, 2016 ).

Also, romantic love is associated with non-material attraction. Research indicates that many people are attracted to their romantic partner because of personality traits like generosity, kindness, warmth, humor, helpfulness, openness to new ideas ( Giles, 2015 , pp. 168–169). Findings from a research study on preferences in human mate selection indicate that personality traits such as kindness/considerate and understanding, exciting, and intelligent are strongly preferred in a potential mate ( Buss and Barnes, 1986 ). Indeed, character and physical attractiveness have been found to contribute jointly and significantly to romantic attraction ( McKelvie and Matthews, 1976 ).

Attraction is key to commitment in a romantic relationship ( Rusbult, 1980 ), indicating that without attraction a romantic relationship could lose its luster. Also, romantic attraction is weakened or declines as the reason for its presence declines or deteriorates. If attraction is sexual or due to material characteristics, then aging or any accident that compromises physical beauty would result in its decline ( Braxton-Davis, 2010 ). Loss of fortune or social status could also weaken attraction and increase tension in a relationship. Indeed, tensions about money increase marital conflicts ( Papp et al., 2009 ; Dew and Dakin, 2011 ) and predicted subsequent divorce ( Amato and Rogers, 1997 ).

Connection and Romantic Love

Connection or resonance fits with the intimacy, and commitment components of Sternberg’s triangular theory of love ( Sternberg, 1986 ). Connection in romantic love involves intimacy, friendship or companionship and caregiving and it is strengthened by novelty, proximity, communication, positive shared experiences, familiarity, and similarity. It is what creates a sense of oneness between romantic partners and it is expressed in the form of proximity seeking and maintenance, concern, and compassion ( Neto, 2012 ). Evidence suggests that deeper levels of emotional involvement or attachment increase commitment and cognitive interdependence or tendency to think about the relationship in a pluralistic manner, as reflected in the use of plural pronouns to describe oneself, romantic partner and relationship ( Agnew et al., 1998 ).

Research indicates that both sexual attraction and friendship are necessary for romantic love ( Meyers and Berscheid, 1997 ; Gillath et al., 2008 ; Berscheid, 2010 ), indicating that connection which is essential for companionship plays a key role in romantic love. A study on college students by Hendrick and Hendrick (1993) found that a significant number of the students described their romantic partner as their closest friend ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1993 ), reinforcing the importance of friendship or companionship in romantic love.

Similarity along the lines of values, goals, religion, nationality, career, culture, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, language, etc. is essential in liking and friendship in romantic love ( Berscheid and Reis, 1998 ). Research indicates that a partner who shared similar values and interests were more likely to experience stronger love ( Jin et al., 2017 ). Indeed, the more satisfied individuals were with their friendships the more similar they perceived their friends to be to themselves ( Morry, 2005 ). Also, similarity influences perceptions of familiarity ( Moreland and Zajonc, 1982 ), and familiarity plays a role in the formation of attachment and connectedness because it signals safety and security ( Bowlby, 1977 ). Moreover, similarity and familiarity affect caregiving. Sprecher and Fehr (2005) , found compassion or caregiving were lower for strangers, and greatest for dating and marital relationships, indicating that similarity and familiarity enhance intimacy and positively influences caregiving ( Sprecher and Fehr, 2005 ).

Proximity through increased exposure is known to promote liking ( Saegert et al., 1973 ), familiarity and emotional connectedness ( Sternberg, 1986 ; Berscheid, 2010 ). Exposure through fun times and direct and frequent communication is essential to maintaining and strengthening attachment and connectedness ( Sternberg and Grajek, 1984 ). In Sternberg’s triangular theory, effective communication is described as essential and affects the intimacy component of a relationship ( Sternberg, 1986 ). Indeed, intimacy grows from a combination of mutual self-disclosure and interactions mediated by positive partner responsiveness ( Laurenceau et al., 1998 , 2005 ; Manne et al., 2004 ), indicating that positive feedback and fun times together strengthens connection.

Also, sexual activity is an important component of the reward system that reinforces emotional attachment ( Seshadri, 2016 ), indicating that sexual activity may increase emotional connectedness and intimacy. Over time in most relationships, predictability grows, and sexual satisfaction becomes readily available. This weakens the erotic and emotional experience associated with romantic love ( Berscheid, 2010 ). Research shows that a reduction in novelty due to the monotony of being with the same person for a long period is the reason for this decline in sexual attraction ( Freud and Rieff, 1997 , p. 57; Sprecher et al., 2006 , p. 467). According to Sternberg (1986) , the worst enemy of the intimacy component of love is stagnation. He explained that too much predictability can erode the level of intimacy in a close relationship ( Sternberg, 1986 ). So, novelty is essential to maintaining sexual attraction and strengthening connection in romantic love.

Jealousy and separation distress which are key features of romantic love ( Fisher et al., 2002b ), are actions to maintain and protect the emotional union and are expressions of a strong connection. Research has found a significant correlation between anxiety and love ( Hatfield et al., 1989 ) and a positive link between romantic love and jealousy in stable relationships ( Mathes and Severa, 1981 ; Aune and Comstock, 1991 ; Attridge, 2013 ; Gomillion et al., 2014 ). Indeed, individuals who feel strong romantic love tend to be more jealous or sensitive to threats to their relationship ( Orosz et al., 2015 ).

Connection in romantic love is weakened by distance, a dearth of communication, unsatisfactory sexual activity, divergences or dissimilarity of values and interests, monotony and too much predictability.

Trust and Romantic Love

Trust is the belief that a partner is, and will remain, reliable or dependable ( Cook, 2003 ). Trust in romantic love fits with the intimacy, and commitment components of Sternberg’s triangular theory of love which includes being able to count on the loved one in times of need, mutual understanding with the loved one, sharing of one’s self and one’s possessions with the loved one and maintaining the relationship ( Sternberg, 1986 ).

It has been proposed that love activates specific regions in the reward system which results in a reduction in emotional judgment and fear ( Seshadri, 2016 ). This reduced fear or trust has been identified as one of the most important characteristics of a romantic relationship and essential to fidelity, commitment, monogamy, emotional vulnerability, and intimacy ( Laborde et al., 2014 ). Indeed, trust can deepen intimacy, increase commitment and increase mutual monogamy, and make a person lower their guards in the belief that they are safe from harm ( Larzelere and Huston, 1980 ; Bauman and Berman, 2005 ). People with high trust in romantic relationships tend to expect that their partner will act in their interest causing them to prioritize relationship dependence over making themselves invulnerable from harm or self-protection ( Luchies et al., 2013 ). In contrast, people with low trust in their partner tend to be unsure about whether their partner will act in their interests and prioritize insulating themselves from harm over relationship dependence ( Luchies et al., 2013 ).

Trust takes time to grow into a romantic relationship. Indeed, people in a relationship come to trust their partners when they see that their partner’s action and behavior moves the relationship forward or acts in the interest of the relationship and not themself ( Wieselquist et al., 1999 ). Research indicates that trust is associated with mutual self-disclosure ( Larzelere and Huston, 1980 ), and positive partner responsiveness which are both essential to the experience of friendship and intimacy in romantic relationships ( Larzelere and Huston, 1980 ; Reis and Shaver, 1988 ; Laurenceau et al., 1998 ).

Also, trust influences caregiving and compassion. Evidence suggests that compassion is positively related to trust ( Salazar, 2015 ). Mutual communal responsiveness or caregiving in relationships in which partners attend to one another’s needs and welfare is done because they are confident that the other will do the same when or if their own needs arise ( Clark and Monin, 2006 ). Repeated acts of communal responsiveness given with no expectation of payback provide a partner with a sense of security and trust and increase the likelihood that they will be communally responsive if or when the need arises ( Clark and Monin, 2006 ), and contributes to a sense of love in romantic relationships ( Berscheid, 2010 ).

Loss or weakening of trust could spell the end of romantic love. Indeed, mistrust corrupts intimacy and often indicates that a relationship has ended or near its end ( LaFollette and Graham, 1986 ) and it makes mutual monogamy, and commitment difficult to achieve in a romantic relationship ( Towner et al., 2015 ). A study on individuals who had fallen out of romantic love with their spouse found that loss of trust and intimacy was part of the reason for the dissolution of love ( Sailor, 2013 ).

Respect and Romantic Love

Multiple lines of evidence suggest that respect is expected in both friendships and romantic relationships ( Gaines, 1994 , 1996 ). In romantic love, it entails consideration, admiration, high regard, and value for the loved one as a part of one’s life ( Sternberg and Grajek, 1984 ; Hendrick et al., 2011 ).

Gottman (1999) , found that the basis for a stable and satisfactory marital relationship is friendship filled with fondness and admiration ( Gottman, 1999 ). Respect is considered one of the most important things married couples want from their partner ( Gottman, 1994 ). Grote and Frieze (1994) , found that respect correlates with companionate or friendship love ( Grote and Frieze, 1994 ), indicating that respect is essential to intimacy and relationship satisfaction. Also, respect is positively correlated with passion, altruism, self-disclosure, and relationship overall satisfaction ( Frei and Shaver, 2002 ; Hendrick and Hendrick, 2006 ). It is associated with the tendency to overlook a partner’s negative behavior or respond with pro-relationship actions or compassion to their shortcomings ( Rusbult et al., 1998 ; Gottman, 1999 ).

Absence or a lack of respect could spell the end of romantic love. Research indicates that there is an expectation of mutual respect in friendship and most relationships and people reacted negatively when this expectation is violated ( Hendrick et al., 2011 ), indicating that a lack of respect could negatively affect commitment and attraction. Indeed, denial of respect is an important negative behavior in friendships and most relationships ( Gaines, 1994 , 1996 ) and a lack of respect is a violation of what it means to love one ‘s partner in a close romantic relationship ( Hendrick et al., 2011 ). Gottman (1993 , 1994) identified contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling as four of the relationally destructive behavior and he labeled them as “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

Romantic love summary

Romantic love involves the interactions and synergistic interplay between respect, connection, trust, and attraction. All four must be present in love. Any event that results in the loss of any of these factors could cause romantic love to gradually decline and unless effort is made to replenish it, it will eventually fade or collapse. Romantic love is dynamic and requires significant investment from both partners to keep it alive.

Parental Love

Attraction and parental love.

Attraction plays an essential role in parental love and it could be material or non-material. Material attraction involves the child’s health, gender, accomplishments or success, and attractiveness. In contrast, non-material attraction includes traits such as intelligence, character, and other personality traits.

Evidence suggests that culture influences gender preference with attraction greater for sons in most cases ( Cronk, 1993 ). Indeed, mothers and fathers have been found to favor the more intelligent and more ambitious/industrious child ( Lauricella, 2009 ). Also, parental perception that investment in a child will cost more than the benefits to be gained from taking care of the child might influence negative behavior toward the child. Indeed, multiple lines of evidence suggest that parental unemployment increases the rates of child maltreatment and abuse ( Steinberg et al., 1981 ; Lindo et al., 2013 ). Research indicates that teen mothers who have poor social support reported greater unhappiness, were at greater risk for child abuse and often employed the use of physical punishment toward their child ( Haskett et al., 1994 ; de Paúl and Domenech, 2000 ).

Also, several studies have suggested that parents tended to favor healthy children ( Mann, 1992 ; Barratt et al., 1996 ; Hagen, 1999 ). However, when resources are plentiful, parents tend to invest equally in less healthy or high-risk children ( Beaulieu and Bugental, 2008 ), because they have abundant resources to go around without compromising the reproductive value of healthy children ( Lauricella, 2009 ).

Connection and Parental Love

Connection creates a sense of oneness between parent and child and involves caregiving, intimacy, and attachment. It is influenced by proximity, positive and unique shared experiences, and similarity along virtually every dimension between parent and child.

Proximity, and similarity increases attachment and intimacy between parent and child. Research shows that parents are perceived as favoring genetically related children ( Salmon et al., 2012 ), and evidence suggests that paternal resemblance predicted paternal favoritism ( Lauricella, 2009 ). Parental proximity and similarity to a biological child are unique because it is based on genes and blood. In contrast, intimacy between a parent and an adopted child is based solely on shared experiences and proximity and takes time to grow and on many occasions may not develop ( Hooks, 1990 ; Hughes, 1999 ).

Dissimilarities or discrepancy in values, attitudes, etc., can create problems between children and parents and can have a profound effect on their relationship. Indeed, evidence suggests that the rebel child tended to be less close to the parents ( Rohde et al., 2003 ). Research has found that adolescents who are less religious than their parents tend to experience lower-quality relationships with their parents which results in higher rates of both internalizing and externalizing symptoms ( Kim-Spoon et al., 2012 ). When parents and family members were very religious, and a child comes out as an atheist, relationship quality could suffer in the form of rejection, anger, despair, or an inability to relate to one another ( Zimmerman et al., 2015 ). A study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youngsters, for patterns of disclosure of sexual orientation to families, found that those who had disclosed reported verbal and physical abuse by parents and family members ( D’Augelli et al., 1998 ). Honor killing of female children which have been reported in Pakistan and some parts of the Middle East because of deviation from traditional gender roles or crossing of social boundaries that are deemed as taboo in their culture ( Lindsey and Sarah, 2010 ), is another example of the negative effects of the discrepancy in values between parents and child.

Unique shared experiences between parent and child could increase connection. Bank (1988) observed that the development of favoritism seems to require that the “child’s conception or birth be unusual or stressful,” ( Bank, 1988 ). Evidence suggests that parents most favored child tended to be last-born child and this is linked to their unique position, vulnerability and neediness ( Rohde et al., 2003 ). Also, proximity, positive experiences and time spent together increases connection and intimacy. Research indicates that parents tend to give more love and support to the grown child they were historically closest to and got along with ( Siennick, 2013 ). A study of primiparous women found that mothers with greater contact with their infants were more reluctant to leave them with someone else, and engaged more intimately with their child ( Klaus et al., 1972 ).

Divorce could create distance between a parent and child, weakening connection and intimacy. Indeed, one of the outcomes of divorce is the lessening of contact between divorced non-custodial fathers and their children ( Appleby and Palkovitz, 2007 ), and this can reduce intimacy ( Guttmann and Rosenberg, 2003 ).

Also, parental separation distress, worry, and concern for their child’s welfare, academic performance, and future are expressions of connection and a lack thereof is a sign of poor connection. Indeed, the levels of concern and worry expressed between children and their parents influenced their perceptions of the relationship quality ( Hay et al., 2007 ).

Trust and Parental Love

Trust is essential to parental attachment, intimacy, and caregiving. When there is mistrust, attachment and intimacy between a parent and their child are disrupted or unable to blossom. In Africa and many parts of the world, there have been reports of children being condemned and abandoned by their parents simply because they are tagged as witches with mysterious evil powers ( Tedam, 2014 ; Bartholomew, 2015 ; Briggs and Whittaker, 2018 ). The tag of “witchcraft” stirs up fear and anger, causing the child to be perceived as a deadly threat which inevitably damages attachment, intimacy and eliminates the need for caregiving.

Research has found that firstborn children were most likely to be chosen as those to whom mothers would turn when facing personal problems or crises ( Suitor and Pillemer, 2007 ). This tendency may be linked to trust. Moreover, evidence suggests that the rebel child tended to be less close to the parents ( Rohde et al., 2003 ). In other words, the more obedient, and reliable child is likely to gain the confidence and intimacy of the parents. In contrast, the disobedient and unreliable child is excluded or kept at a distance. Also, trust and poor connection could influence inheritance and disinheritance decisions. Indeed, estrangement, alienation and disaffection of a parent toward a child could result in disinheritance ( Batts, 1990 ; Brashier, 1994 , 1996 ; Foster, 2001 ; Arroyo et al., 2016 ).

Respect and Parental Love

Respect in parental love entails treating the child with consideration and regard. This consideration and regard for the child are essential to intimacy, caregiving and attachment. Indeed, respect is foundational to a harmonious relationship between parent and child ( Dixon et al., 2008 ). Evidence suggests that humans possess an innate behavioral system that leads them to form an attachment to a familiar person who provides care, comfort, and protection ( Harlow, 1958 ; Bowlby, 1989 ). Repeated acts of caregiving contribute to a sense of love in all types of relationships ( Berscheid, 2010 ), reinforcing the role of parental caregiving in fostering intimacy and attachment with the child.

Taking care of an infant’s needs, and making sure they are safe and well, all fall under consideration and regard for the child. Child abuse and neglect ( Tedam, 2014 ; Bartholomew, 2015 ; Briggs and Whittaker, 2018 ), is a display of a lack of consideration for the child’s need.

Also, respect in parental love involves admiration. Research has found that fathers treated more ambitious/industrious sons with high regard, and both parents favored the more intelligent and more ambitious/industrious daughters ( Lauricella, 2009 ) indicating that a child that engages in activities or behavior that is highly regarded by their parents may gain favor with their parents, strengthening intimacy and vice versa.

Parental love summary

Parental love involves the interactions and synergistic interplay between respect, connection, trust, and attraction. Any event that results in the loss of any of these factors could cause parental love to gradually decline. In many cases, the behavior and actions of a child significantly influence parental love.

Brand love has been defined as the level of passionate emotional attachment a satisfied or happy consumer has for a brand and evidence suggests it is very similar to interpersonal love ( Russo et al., 2011 ).

Attraction and Brand Love

Attraction plays an essential role in brand love. Material attraction for a brand includes attributes like superior design, quality, and aesthetics, price, benefits, etc. Non-material attraction involves social status symbol, brand personality, uniqueness, distinctiveness, user experience, image, etc. evidence suggests that when talking about loved brands, people often talk passionately about the brand’s many attractive qualities such as its exceptional performance, good-looking design, value for money, and other positive attributes ( Fournier, 1998 ; Whang et al., 2004 ; Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006 ; Batra et al., 2012 ). Research on brand love has found that brand attractive attributes such as prestige or uniqueness influence brand passion which affects relevant factors such as purchase intention ( Bauer et al., 2007 ).

Also, brand attraction influences brand loyalty, and commitment. Indeed, research indicates that brand benefits influences brand loyalty or commitment ( Huang et al., 2016 ). Brand personality (image, distinctiveness, and self-expressive value) is strongly associated with brand identification and loyalty ( Kim et al., 2001 ; Elbedweihy et al., 2016 ).

Connection and Brand Love

Connection is essential to brand love. It involves brand attachment, commitment, and intimacy and it is strengthened by brand identification, image, familiarity or awareness, proximity, length or frequency of usage and similarity or congruences along virtually every dimension including values, lifestyle, goals, etc. between brand and customer. Brand awareness which means brand familiarity has been described as essential for people to identify with a brand ( Pascual and Académico, 2015 ), and it indirectly affects current purchases ( Esch et al., 2006 ).

Also, brand identification promotes a sense of oneness between a brand and a customer strengthening commitment and it is driven by brand self-similarity, brand prestige and brand distinctiveness ( Stokburger-Sauer et al., 2008 ). Indeed, brand identification contributes to the development of brand love and brand loyalty ( Alnawas and Altarifi, 2016 ) and brand image and identification influence loyalty and positive word of mouth ( Carroll and Ahuvia, 2006 ; Batra et al., 2012 ; Anggraeni and Rachmanita, 2015 ). Brand identity, values and lifestyle similarities to those of the customer appear to have a strong and significant relationship with brand love ( Batra et al., 2012 ; Rauschnabel and Ahuvia, 2014 ; Alnawas and Altarifi, 2016 ; Elbedweihy et al., 2016 ). Findings from research suggest that customer-to-customer similarity and sense of community drive consumer brand identification, loyalty, and engagement ( Bergkvist and Bech-Larsen, 2010 ; Elbedweihy et al., 2016 ).

Moreover, proximity and interaction play a role in brand love. Indeed, the duration of the relationship between a customer and a brand is essential in brand love ( Albert et al., 2007 ). Fournier (1998) , discussed interdependence which involved frequent brand interactions as necessary for a strong brand relationship ( Fournier, 1998 ). Similarly, Batra et al. (2012) found that having a long-term relationship, positive emotional connection and frequent interactions with a brand was an important aspect of brand love ( Batra et al., 2012 ). Indeed, shared experiences and history between a person and a brand can increase their emotional attachment, make the brand to become an important part of the person’s identity narrative and increases their loyalty to the brand ( Thomson et al., 2005 ; Pedeliento et al., 2016 ).

Just like romantic love, concern and worry and proximity seeking, or maintenance are an expression of emotional connectedness to the brand. Indeed, anticipated separation distress has been described as a core element of brand love ( Batra et al., 2012 ), and consumers are likely to feel strong desires to maintain proximity with their loved objects, even feeling “separation distress” when they are distanced from them ( Thomson et al., 2005 ; Park et al., 2010 ).

Also, novelty through continued innovation is vital to maintaining and strengthening both attraction and connection. According to the Harvard business review, the relationship between brand and consumer go through “ruts” and to “keep the spark” alive, innovation and news are essential ( Halloran, 2014 ). Research indicates that innovation plays a role in brand equity and it impacts brand identification or resonance ( Sinha, 2017 ).

Lack of brand familiarity or awareness, poor or negative user experience, a dearth of innovation and increased dissimilarities in values and lifestyles between brand and consumer can all weaken brand connection.

Trust and Brand Love

Trust is essential to brand attachment, intimacy, and commitment. It involves confidence and reliability, or dependability of the brand and it is influenced by brand image, familiarity, values, user experience, and quality. Indeed, brand trust directly influences brand love ( Turgut and Gultekin, 2015 ; Meisenzahl, 2017 ) and a strong relationship exists between brand love and brand trust and identification ( Albert and Merunka, 2013 ). Evidence suggests that brand familiarity influences brand trust ( Ha and Perks, 2005 ) and brand trust and experience, positively influence brand attachment ( Erciş et al., 2012 ; Chinomona, 2013 ; Chinomona and Maziriri, 2017 ).

Also, brand trust affects brand purchase, loyalty, and commitment. Evidence suggests that a strong relationship exists between brand love and brand trust, brand commitment, positive word of mouth, and willingness to pay a higher price for the brand ( Albert and Merunka, 2013 ). Research indicates that brand trust positively affects brand loyalty ( Setyawan and Kussudiyarsana, 2015 ), directly influences brand purchase intentions ( Yasin and Shamim, 2013 ) and positively influences current and future purchases ( Erciş et al., 2012 ). Indeed, more than any other factor, brand trust has been identified as essential for future purchases of a brand ( Esch et al., 2006 ). It is essential in determining purchase loyalty and attitudinal loyalty and it plays a role in brand market share ( Chaudhuri and Holbrook, 2001 ). Brand trust affects both affective and continuance commitment and affective commitment influences repurchase intention and loyalty ( Erciş et al., 2012 ).

Brand quality is essential to brand trust and love. Indeed, Fournier (1998) , discussed the role of brand quality in brand love and highlighted the role of trust in relationship satisfaction and strength ( Fournier, 1998 ). Also, brand trust has been found to positively affect resistance to negative information and repurchase intention ( Turgut and Gultekin, 2015 ).

Brand trust is weakened by poor user experience, brand quality, brand image, and a lack of brand familiarity.

Respect and Brand Love

Brand respect is essential in brand love and plays an important role in brand attachment, intimacy, and commitment. It is influenced by brand identification, values, image, experience, and quality. Brand respect is displayed by the customer in the form of high regard, admiration for the brand, brand loyalty and consideration or tolerance of negative information. Indeed, brand familiarity positively affects brand respect ( Zhou, 2017 ), indicating that brand familiarity increases regard for a brand. Evidence suggests that brand image positively influences brand respect and love ( Cho, 2011 ), indicating that brand image modulates a customer’s regard and admiration for a brand.

Brand respect influences brand commitment and loyalty. Indeed, a strong relationship has been found between brand respect and brand loyalty ( Cho, 2011 ) and brand admiration results in greater brand loyalty, stronger brand advocacy, and higher brand equity ( Park et al., 2016 ). Brand respect affects the behavioral outcomes of brand love such as affective commitment, and willingness to pay a price premium ( Garg et al., 2016 ; Park et al., 2016 ).

Also, evidence suggests that customers’ admiration or high regard for a brand contributes to why they tend to ignore negative information about the brand ( Elbedweihy et al., 2016 ). Fournier (1998) , included respect as one of the components of brand partner quality. This means that respect is one of the factors that reflects the consumer’s evaluation of the brand’s performance ( Fournier, 1998 ).

A lack of respect could negatively influence the relationship between a brand and a customer. Indeed, people react negatively when the expectation of respect is violated ( Hendrick et al., 2011 ) and a violation of expectation between brand and customer has been found to contribute to brand hate ( Zarantonello et al., 2016 ).

Brand love summary

Brand love involves the interactions and synergistic interplay between respect, connection, trust, and attraction. Any event that results in the loss of any of these factors could cause brand love to gradually decline and unless effort is made to replenish it, it will eventually fade or collapse. Brand love is dynamic and requires significant investment from the brand to keep it alive.

Strengths and Advances Made by the Quadruple Theory

The quadruple theory builds on many of the strengths of previous theories of love and it applies a temporal approach that has been proposed as the best way to understand love ( Berscheid, 2010 ). It goes further than previous theories for several reasons. Firstly, it could potentially be applied to any form of love although, only brand, romantic and parental love were discussed in this paper due to the paucity of scholarly articles on other forms of love. One of the reasons current love scales and approaches have been unable to be applied in all forms of love ( Hendrick and Hendrick, 1989 ; Whitley, 1993 ; Sternberg, 1997 ; Masuda, 2003 ; Graham and Christiansen, 2009 ), is because they capture only a part of the ACC model, unlike the quadruple framework which fully captures it.

Unlike previous theories, the quadruple theory’s application of the complex factor of connection/resonance gives it an edge in furthering our understanding of love. Proximity, positive shared experience, familiarity, and similarity are vital to connection and connection has the most profound influence on all the other factors.

Also, the dynamism and variation of these factors provide a fresh way to understand love from its development to collapse. As Figure 1 shows, love tends to take time to mature in a relationship and can die as these factors rise and decline. Figure 1 shows that variations in the presence of these factors represent different levels of love. Love in any relationship is influenced by the events in the environment it is embedded, and it responds favorably or negatively to these changes. Indeed, people get sick, old, lose their finances, travel in search of greener pastures creating distance, develop new interests different from their partner’s and all these influences the presence and absence of love. One brand becomes more innovative, improves its product quality and users experience over another and people gradually love it more than the one they previously loved. In other words, love is very dynamic and may be divided into high, moderate and low. Another point highlighted in Figure 1 is that the absence of one factor represents the absence of love and only the presence of all factors represents the presence of love. Indeed, the decline of a factor can be replenished in response to changes in the environment causing the reestablishment of love. Trust could decline but attraction and respect remain and over time trust could be replenished.

This dynamic understanding of love implies that it can be nurtured and sustained. As an example, for a brand to be loved and to maintain that love, it must make products that are attractive (appealing). It must be able to connect to its target customers by reaching out through adverts to achieve familiarity and it must ensure that its values, goals, actions are consistently similar to those of its customer base. Also, it must ensure its services and products and actions promote and maintain trust with its customers. It must respect (value) its customer’s interests and ensure that its services and products continue to receive the admiration of its customers. Table 2 describes how brand love can be nurtured and preserved.

Table 2. Brand love can be nurtured and maintained.

Using this framework, a love scale or algorithm could be developed to ascertain the presence or absence of love in any relationship. Such a scale must effectively capture these four factors and must consider the type of love being calculated in its approach. As an example, in trying to create a scale for romantic love, sexual attraction, and activity may be important for attraction and connection (depending on the age of the partners) but would be unnecessary in the calculation of brand or parental love.

Major Challenges for the Theory

One of the biggest challenges the theory faces is the lack of psychometric data to prove many of its claims. Most of its arguments are based on decades of psychological data, but its lack of psychometric data weakens the theory significantly. Also, the entire premise of the theory is based on the ACC model, which has not been validated as essential or foundational to understanding love. Perhaps, something else needs to be added to the model that the theory may have missed. The argument that the quadruple theory captures the ACC model better than previous theories on love is an argument that has not been validated, and it remains to be seen if this is true. Also, the argument that it can be applied to all forms of love apart from the three discussed remains to be tested and verified.

Gaps currently exist in our understanding of love and evidences from the existing literature show that a framework that can be applied to all forms of love is needed. The quadruple theory hopes to be that framework. It is likely to broaden our understanding of the complex nature of love. It could make love less complex by making it something that can be cultivated or nurtured, regulated and preserved. Future research should consider the modulatory roles of peptides, neurotransmitters, and hormones on these factors and their influence on love as well as the integrated parts of the brain that modulates all these factors and how they work synergistically in different stages of love.

It is important to note that love is universal and applies to people of all cultures, races, ethnicities, religion and sexual orientations. Indeed, romantic love as described by the quadruple theory applies equally to heterosexual relationships and to the relationships of people in the LGTBQ community.

In conclusion, culture has a monumental influence on what people feel, think, and how they behave toward other people and things in their environment ( Karandashev, 2015 ; Ching Hei and David, 2018 ). So, it can be considered a modulating factor on the factors discussed and on love.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : triangular theory of love, Romance, brand love, parental love, maternal love, Meaning of love, Definition of love, am I in love

Citation: Tobore TO (2020) Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Love: The Quadruple Theory. Front. Psychol. 11:862. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00862

Received: 20 September 2019; Accepted: 07 April 2020; Published: 19 May 2020.

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Copyright © 2020 Tobore. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Tobore Onojighofia Tobore, [email protected]

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For millions of years, humans have been selecting mates using the wealth of information gleaned in face-to-face interactions — not just appearance, but characteristics such as tone of voice, body language, and scent, as well as immediate feedback to their own communications. Does mate selection differ when those looking are presented with an almost overwhelming number of potential partners, but limited to a few photos, statistics, and an introductory paragraph about each one? What information do online daters focus on? Is it all about the photo? Or are words the key to someone’s heart (or at least their Match.com inbox)? In one survey of Australian online daters, 85% said they would not contact someone without a posted photo, so physical appearance is indeed important (Fiore et al., 2008). A 2008 study in which participants rated actual online profiles confirmed this, but also explored the criteria that made certain photos attractive (Fiore et al., 2008). Men were considered more attractive when they looked genuine, extraverted, and feminine, but not overly warm or kind. (Although feminine male photos were seen as attractive, whole male profiles were rated more attractive when they seemed more masculine, a perplexing result worthy of more study.) Women were deemed more attractive when they looked feminine, high in self-esteem, and not selfish. This study also found that the narrative  self-descriptive sections of the profiles played a key role in attractiveness, but the fixed choice sections of the profiles (where users have to pick from a specific set of descriptors, i.e., “Have children now,” “Want children someday,”  “Don’t want children,” smoker/non-smoker, etc.) only minimally affected attractiveness ratings. However, these fixed choice descriptors allow users to triage by easily weeding out those who don’t meet their  dealbreaker criteria for a partner (Fiore et al., 2008).

Researchers believe that users make up for the lack of information in online profiles by filling in the blanks with guesses based on small pieces of information. Some theorize that online daters may be wearing rose colored glasses when looking at potential dates — filling in the information gaps with positive qualities in a potential partner (Gibbs et al., 2006). In one study, knowing more information about a potential date generally led to liking them less, possibly because it called out inconsistencies and reduced opportunities to fill in the blanks with positive inferences. But, with a particularly compatible partner, more information led to more liking. For online daters, this means that a very detailed profile might attract fewer, but more compatible suitors (Norton et al., 2007).

Research has also revealed gender differences in both preference and messaging behavior on online dating sites. In particular, women and men differ in the relative importance they assign to various attributes of potential partners. A forthcoming study conducted by Günter Hitsch, Ali Hortaçsu (both at University of Chicago), and Dan Ariely (Duke University) confirmed existing evolutional theory, finding that in a sample of 22,000 online daters women weigh income more than physical attributes, including facial attractiveness, height and body mass index, when deciding who to contact (Hitsch et al., 2009). Interestingly, these differences persist even when reproduction is no longer a factor. In a study that looked at online daters across the lifespan, even older men “sought physical attractiveness and offered status-related information more than women” and women continued to be the more selective gender (Sears-Roberts Alterovitz & Mendelsohn, 2009).

In a nine-month study of participants on a dating site in 2008 and 2009, Andrew Fiore, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues examined stated preferences and actual messaging behavior (Fiore et al., 2010). In general, women really are pickier than men — listing smaller ranges in their preferences for age and ethnicity. Women also initiate and reply to contact less than men. They were contacted much more than men and, hence, generally had their choice of who to reply to. But, just as in the face-to-face dating scene, respect is important — users who respected others’ listed preferences for a potential partner were more likely to get a response. In light of these findings, the researchers presented some advice to potential online daters: “Choose wisely and, if possible, be female” (Fiore et al., 2010).

This study also leads to some intriguing design ideas for online dating sites’ automatic matching systems, which present users with sets of likely partners. More popular users are contacted more and, therefore, are less likely to respond to any one user. Taking this into account, dating sites may want to steer users toward slightly less popular potential dates who are more likely to respond, “a trade-off many users may willingly accept” (Fiore et al., 2010).

What I Like About You Me

In a 2005 study, Fiore and Judith Donath (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) examined messaging data from 65,000 users of a United States-based dating site. They found that users preferred sameness on all of the categories they tested (a variety of features from child preferences to education to physical features like height). But some factors played a larger role than others, with marital status and wanting or already having children showing the strongest same-seeking. Fiore has also found that women responded more frequently to men whose popularity on the site (a measure based on the average number of people contacting the user per day) was similar to their own (Fiore, 2010).

Online dating service users tend to contact people who are about as attractive as they are, but does your own attractiveness level influence how attractive you believe others to be? One research team put this question to the test on the website HOTorNOT.com. The site was launched in 2000 purely for users to rate each other on how attractive (or, obviously, not) they were. Later, the site added an online dating component. This provided an extra set of information for researchers — not only knowing who’s talking to whom, but the overall attractiveness ratings of those users from everyone on the site. Consistent with previous research, this study, published in Psychological Science , found that people with similar levels of physical attractiveness indeed tend to date each other, with more attractive people being more particular about the physical attractiveness of their potential dates. Compared to females, males are more influenced by how physically attractive their potential dates are, but less affected by how attractive they themselves are when deciding whom to date. (But these findings about gender bias in attraction are being challenged in other studies – more on this later.)  Also, regardless of how attractive people themselves are, they seem to judge others’ attractiveness in similar ways, supporting the notion that we have largely universal, culturally independent standards of beauty (e.g., symmetric faces; Lee et al., 2008).

Stretching (or Shrinking) the Truth

Assessing potential partners online hinges on other users being truthful in their descriptions. But what if they aren’t? Psychological scientists have turned to online dating to examine how truthful people are in their descriptions of themselves, both with themselves and to others. Online daters walk a fine line — everyone wants to make themselves as attractive as possible to potential dates, making deception very tempting. But, daters can’t be too deceptive, lest they actually get to the point of a real life meeting in which they could be exposed. Catalina Toma, Jeffrey Hancock (both at Cornell University), and Nicole Ellison (Michigan State University) examined the relationship between actual physical attributes and online self-descriptions of online daters in New York. They found that lying was ubiquitous, but usually fairly small in terms of magnitude. Men tended to lie about height and women tended to lie about weight. And the lying wasn’t due to self-deception — self-ratings of attributes tended to be accurate, even when information on the dating site was not (Toma, 2008).

The Need for Speed

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist and co-author of the HOTorNOT.com study and the forth-coming article with Hitsch and Hortaçsu, was initially drawn to online dating because it seemed like a very nice solution to a common problem — people in need of partners and no market for them to find each other. But while online dating has yielded fascinating results about preferences and many real-world matches, it doesn’t work for every person looking for a mate because it is so difficult to quantify the qualities that lead to and keep attraction going. As Ariely said, attempting to sum up the myriad aspects of a person in an online dating profile can be like “describing a dish in a restaurant by its chemical composition.” It’s accurate, but it doesn’t provide useful information when deciding what to order. Another modern dating innovation may provide a better solution: speed dating.

In the late 1990s, a rabbi in Los Angeles created a new way for Jewish singles in his community to meet each other — they would go on many “dates” lasting just a few minutes in one night, report to the event organizers if they wanted to see any of their “dates” in the future, and, if two people said yes to each other, they would be given contact information to continue corresponding. Since then, speed dating has spread around the world, giving millions of singles a chance at love. It also gives savvy researchers an unprecedented chance to study attraction in situ .

In the winter of 2004, Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick, both at Northwestern University at the time, thought that speed dating would be “a terrific way to catch initial attraction in action,” as Eastwick, now at Texas A&M, reported. This hunch was confirmed by a speed dating outing with several other Northwestern colleagues, and the researchers embarked a new track of speed dating work. (No word on whether the outing was a success from other standpoints.)

As Finkel and Eastwick point out in a 2008 study published in Current Directions in Psychological Science , the popularity of speed dating allows the collection of large, real world samples across cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic levels. The speed dating design also lets researchers to study both sides of a dyadic process. A speed dating event with 20 participants would yield 400 separate interactions, allowing researchers to create very detailed accounts of people’s attractions. For example, they would be able to tell that a certain woman liked a certain man because (a) she likes all the men (she has fewer dealbreaker standards), (b) all the women liked that man (he was an irresistible dish), or (c) they had a unique experience that made her like him more than other men at the event and him like her more than other women at the event (Finkel & Eastwick, 2008). Also, speed dating allows for exploring reciprocity effects. A 2007 Psychological Science article (Eastwick et al., 2007) found that liking can be reciprocal — if a women likes a certain man more than others, he is more likely to like her — but isn’t always reciprocal — if a woman likes all the men more than other women did, the men will generally like her less. As Finkel says, “romantic likers tend to be disliked.”

Speed dating empowers researchers to study interactions as they happen, rather than post-hoc reports. It also allows for testing actual versus stated preferences. One speed dating study showed that stated preferences do not match actual preferences and called into question the gender biases in attraction that have been well-documented elsewhere (i.e., that men see physical features as more important and women see earning prospects or security as more important), raising the specter of a disconnect between what we say we’re attracted to and what we’re actually attracted to (Eastwick  & Finkel, 2008).

Speed dating studies also allow researchers to study the implications of simple changes in dating paradigms. For example, even in light of the emerging sexual equality of the last several decades, many women (and men) expect the man to play the pursuer at the beginning of romantic heterosexual relationships (Finkel & Eastwick, 2009). This idea holds true at speed dating events, where women generally stay seated while the men rotate. This set-up stems from vague notions of chivalry, but also from more mundane purposes — according to one speed dating company executive, women tend to have more stuff with them, like purses, and are therefore less efficient movers. Could this set-up in itself affect attraction? Turns out that it can. In most speed dating scenarios (as in most attraction scenarios in general) women are more selective. But, when women rotated, this effect disappeared and they became less selective than the men. The researchers purport that, consistent with an embodied-approach explanation, the physical act of being the one to approach could increase self-confidence leading to being more open to approaching romantic partners and, therefore, less selective (Finkel & Eastwick, 2009). (For more information on embodied cognition, see “The Body of Knowledge” in the January 2010 Observer .)

he search for love is never easy and attraction is never simple.  Research into online matchmaking and speed dating is providing valuable insight into the human quest for romance, and this is only the beginning. Most of the research in this area to-date focuses on dating behavior of heterosexuals in the United States. More work is necessary to determine if the findings so far also apply to international daters and to understand the dynamics of homosexual pairings. Emerging methods may also bring new insight into dating dynamics. Finkel and Eastwick have begun using a coding scheme to study exactly what participants are saying during their dates, allowing them to potentially code what exactly makes a date great or awkward. As they say, “Is it better to be warm or a little cool and aloof? Is it better to communicate independence from or interdependence with your partner?” The duo has also begun to collect saliva samples from speed daters which they hope will allow them to explore “the biochemistry of romantic desire.” In the future, the search for love may be as simple as submitting saliva and waiting for a match, but for now those looking for love can at least take this new research to heart.

References and Further Reading

Eastwick, P.W., Finkel, E. J., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2007). Selective versus unselective romantic desire: Not all reciprocity is created equal. Psychological Science , 18 , 317–319.

Eastwick, P.W., & Finkel, E.J. (2008). Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 94 , 245-264 .

Finkel, E.J., & Eastwick, P.W. (2009). Arbitrary social norms influence sex differences in romantic selectivity. Psychological Science , 20 , 1290-1295.

Finkel, E.J., & Eastwick, P.W. (2008). Speed-dating. Current Directions in Psychological Science , 17 , 193-197.

Fiore, A.T., & Donath, J.S. (2005). Homophily in online dating: When do you like someone like yourself? Short Paper, ACM Computer-Human Interaction 2005.

Fiore, A.T., & Donath, J.S. (2004). Online personals: An overview . Short Paper, ACM Computer-Human Interaction 2004 .

Fiore, A T., Taylor, L S., Mendelsohn, G.A., & Hearst, M. (2008). Assessing attractiveness in online dating profiles . Short Paper, ACM Computer-Human Interaction 2008.

Fiore, A.T., Taylor, L.S., Zhong, X., Mendelsohn, G.A., & Cheshire, C. (2010). Who’s right and who writes: People, profiles, contacts, and replies in online dating. In Proceedings of Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences, 43 .

Gibbs, J.L., Ellison, N.B., & Heino, R.D. (2006). Self-presentation in online personals: The role of anticipated future interaction, self-disclosure, and perceived success in Internet dating . Communication Research , 33 , 1-26.

Hitsch, G.J., Hortaçsu, A., & Ariely, D. (in press). Matching and sorting in online dating. American Economic Review.

Hitsch, G.J., Hortaçsu, A., & Ariely, D. (2009). What makes you click: An empirical analysis of online dating. Working Paper, retrieved Jan. 2010 from: http://home.uchicago.edu/~hortacsu/onlinedating.pdf

Lee, L., Loewenstein, G., Ariely, D., Hong, J., & Young, J. (2008). If I’m not hot, are you hot or not? Physical-attractiveness evaluations and dating preferences as a function of one’s own attractiveness. Psychological Science , 19 , 669-677.

Norton, M., Frost, J., & Ariely, D. (2007). Less is more: The lure of ambiguity, or why familiarity breeds contempt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 92, 97-105.

Sears-Roberts Alterovitz, S., & Mendelsohn, G.A. (2009). Partner preferences across the life span: Online dating by older adults, Psychology and Aging , 24 , 513-517.

Toma, C., Hancock, J., & Ellison, N. (2008). Separating fact from fiction: An examination of deceptive self-presentation in online dating profiles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34 , 1023-1036.

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• Published: 07 March 2022

The cultural evolution of love in literary history

• Nicolas Baumard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1439-9150 1 ,
• Elise Huillery 2 ,
• Alexandre Hyafil   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0566-651X 3 &
• Lou Safra   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7618-6735 1 , 4  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  6 ,  pages 506–522 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Since the late nineteenth century, cultural historians have noted that the importance of love increased during the Medieval and Early Modern European period (a phenomenon that was once referred to as the emergence of ‘courtly love’). However, more recent works have shown a similar increase in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Indian and Japanese cultures. Why such a convergent evolution in very different cultures? Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, we leverage literary history and build a database of ancient literary fiction for 19 geographical areas and 77 historical periods covering 3,800 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Early Modern period. We first confirm that romantic elements have increased in Eurasian literary fiction over the past millennium, and that similar increases also occurred earlier, in Ancient Greece, Rome and Classical India. We then explore the ecological determinants of this increase. Consistent with hypotheses from cultural history and behavioural ecology, we show that a higher level of economic development is strongly associated with a greater incidence of love in narrative fiction (our proxy for the importance of love in a culture). To further test the causal role of economic development, we used a difference-in-difference method that exploits exogenous regional variations in economic development resulting from the adoption of the heavy plough in medieval Europe. Finally, we used probabilistic generative models to reconstruct the latent evolution of love and to assess the respective role of cultural diffusion and economic development.

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Data availability.

The data, as well as the the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey and the Ancient World Values Survey ( Romantic Love and Attitudes toward Children ), are available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ).

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available on OSF ( https://osf.io/ud35x ). A detailed description of the model for study 4 as well as MATLAB code to fit and run such models can be found on https://github.com/ahyafil/Evoked_Transmitted_Culture .

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Boyer, C. Chevallier, L. Cronk, H. Mercier, O. Morin and M. Singh for their comments and feedback on the draft. We thank S. Joye, M. White-Le Goff, M. Daumas, W. Reddy, K. Zakharia, E. Feuillebois-Pierunek, D. Struve and C. Svatek for their feedback on the design of the project, and S. Joye for her help in kickstarting the project. We thank T. Ansart for his help and advice in designing the figures. For their expertise in history of literature and their reading the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey, we thank M. Balda-Tillier, G. Barnes, B. Brosser, S. Brocquet, J.-B. Camps, N. Cattoni, M. Childs, C. Cleary, B. Cook, H. Cooper, M. Eggertsdóttir, W. Farris, E. Francis, H. Frangoulis, H. Fulton, G. Fussman, D. Goodall, I. Hassan, L. Haiyan, D. Hsieh, A. Inglis, C. Jouanno, R. Keller Kimbrough, J. D. Konstan, R. Lanselle, R. Luzi, M. Luo, R. Martin, D. Matringue, K. McMahon, G. Nagy, P. Nagy, H. Navratilova, D. Negers, P. Orsatti, F. Orsini, S. Ríkharðsdóttir, F. Schironi, S. Valeria, C. Starr, R. Torrella and S. Torres Pietro. Funding: This study was supported by the Institut d’Études Cognitives (ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL) for N.B. and L.S., and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (RYC-2017-2323) for A.H.

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Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Bellaterra, Spain

Alexandre Hyafil

Sciences Po, CEVIPOF, CNRS, Paris, France

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N.B. conceived the project, supervised the creation of the Ancient Literary Fictions Database and wrote the Ancient Literary Fictions Values Survey. L.S. and A.H. designed the analyses for study 1. L.S. designed the analyses for study 2. E.H. designed the difference-in-difference for study 3. A.H. designed the latent probabilistic generative models for study 4. All authors wrote the paper.

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Baumard, N., Huillery, E., Hyafil, A. et al. The cultural evolution of love in literary history. Nat Hum Behav 6 , 506–522 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01292-z

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Research Article

Regulation of Romantic Love Feelings: Preconceptions, Strategies, and Feasibility

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri–St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America

Affiliation Institute of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

• Sandra J. E. Langeslag, 
• Jan W. van Strien

• Published: August 16, 2016
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087
• Reader Comments

Love feelings can be more intense than desired (e.g., after a break-up) or less intense than desired (e.g., in long-term relationships). If only we could control our love feelings! We present the concept of explicit love regulation, which we define as the use of behavioral and cognitive strategies to change the intensity of current feelings of romantic love. We present the first two studies on preconceptions about, strategies for, and the feasibility of love regulation. Questionnaire responses showed that people perceive love feelings as somewhat uncontrollable. Still, in four open questions people reported to use strategies such as cognitive reappraisal, distraction, avoidance, and undertaking (new) activities to cope with break-ups, to maintain long-term relationships, and to regulate love feelings. Instructed up-regulation of love using reappraisal increased subjective feelings of attachment, while love down-regulation decreased subjective feelings of infatuation and attachment. We used the late positive potential (LPP) amplitude as an objective index of regulation success. Instructed love up-regulation enhanced the LPP between 300–400 ms in participants who were involved in a relationship and in participants who had recently experienced a romantic break-up, while love down-regulation reduced the LPP between 700–3000 ms in participants who were involved in a relationship. These findings corroborate the self-reported feasibility of love regulation, although they are complicated by the finding that love up-regulation also reduced the LPP between 700–3000 ms in participants who were involved in a relationship. To conclude, although people have the preconception that love feelings are uncontrollable, we show for the first time that intentional regulation of love feelings using reappraisal, and perhaps other strategies, is feasible. Love regulation will benefit individuals and society because it could enhance positive effects and reduce negative effects of romantic love.

Citation: Langeslag SJE, van Strien JW (2016) Regulation of Romantic Love Feelings: Preconceptions, Strategies, and Feasibility. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0161087. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087

Editor: Alexandra Key, Vanderbilt University, UNITED STATES

Received: March 8, 2016; Accepted: July 31, 2016; Published: August 16, 2016

Copyright: © 2016 Langeslag, van Strien. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Our data cannot be made publicly available for ethical reasons. That is, participants were not asked for permission for their data to be shared. Parts of the data are available on request. Please send requests to Sandra Langeslag ( [email protected] ).

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Romantic love strikes virtually everyone at least once (i.e., its lifetime prevalence approaches 100%) [ 1 ] and has a great impact on our lives. Romantic love has positive effects on individuals and society as a whole. For example, love is associated with positive emotions such as euphoria [ 2 ] and romantic relationships enhance happiness and life satisfaction [ 3 ]. But love also has a negative impact on individuals and society. For example, love is associated with stress [ 4 ] and jealousy [ 5 ], and romantic break-ups are associated with sadness and shame [ 6 ], a decrease in happiness and life satisfaction [ 7 ], and depression [ 8 ]. The high prevalence of love combined with its significant positive and negative impact on individuals and society make it an important research topic.

The word ‘love’ has many different meanings and may have different meanings to different people. Researchers have proposed several taxonomies of love, with various numbers of love types or components [ 9 – 13 ]. In this study, two types of love feelings are considered: infatuation and attachment. Infatuation is the overwhelming, amorous feeling for one individual, and is similar to the concepts ‘passion’ or ‘infatuated love’ [ 10 ], ‘romantic love’ [ 11 ], ‘passionate love’ [ 12 ], and ‘attraction’ [ 13 ]. Attachment, on the other hand, is the comforting feeling of emotional bonding with another individual, and is similar to the concepts ‘intimacy’ with ‘decision/commitment’ [ 10 ], and ‘companionate love’ [ 10 – 12 ].

Love feelings are sometimes weaker than desired. Infatuation is typically most intense at the early stages of love after which it decreases relatively quickly [ 13 – 15 ] and attachment takes some time to develop [ 13 – 15 ] after which it decreases over the course of decades [ 16 ]. The decrease of infatuation and attachment over time threatens the stability of romantic relationships. Indeed, falling out of love is the primary reason for divorce [ 17 ]. Love feelings can also be stronger than desired. People may, for example, be in love with someone who does not love them back or who has broken up with them. Clearly, it would be advantageous if we could regulate love feelings at will, so that we could up-regulate them when they are weaker than desired, and down-regulate them when they are stronger than desired.

We define love regulation as the use of behavioral or cognitive strategies to change the intensity of current feelings of romantic love. In an interview study, participants reported that their love feelings were involuntary and uncontrollable [ 2 ]. Nevertheless, three lines of research suggest that love regulation may actually be feasible. First, it is well known that people can regulate their emotions [ 18 – 21 ], which entails generating new emotions or changing the intensity of current emotions using behavioral or cognitive strategies [ 20 ]. There are multiple emotion regulation strategies, including situation selection, distraction, expression suppression, and cognitive reappraisal. Situation selection is to avoid or seek out certain situations to change the way you feel (e.g., attending a party to have fun) [ 21 ]. Distraction entails performing a secondary task to reduce the intensity of emotions (e.g., playing a video game to forget about a bad incident at work) [ 20 ]. Expression suppression involves inhibiting the expression of an emotion (e.g., keeping a poker face) [ 22 ]. Cognitive reappraisal involves reinterpreting the situation to change the way you feel (e.g., decreasing or increasing nervousness by reinterpreting an upcoming job interview as an opportunity to learn more about the company or as a once in a lifetime opportunity, respectively) [ 22 ]. Emotion regulation can be used to up- and down-regulate positive and negative emotions [ 23 ] and may happen implicitly or explicitly [ 18 ].

However, love is sometimes considered a motivation (or drive) rather than an emotion [ 24 ]. One reason why love would not be an emotion is that it elicits different emotions depending on the situation. Reciprocated love, for example, may elicit the emotion euphoria, while unreciprocated love may elicit the emotion sadness. It is therefore important that a second line of research has shown that people can use cognitive strategies to regulate their motivations, including sexual arousal [ 25 ], excitement about monetary reward [ 26 – 29 ], and craving for alcohol, food, and cigarettes [ 30 , 31 ]. The evidence that motivations can be regulated intentionally supports the idea that explicit love regulation may be feasible.

Finally, a third research line has shown that people think more favorably of their romantic partner than objectively justified [ 32 , 33 ]. Importantly, people who idealize their partner and whose partners idealize them have happier relationships [ 34 ]. These findings suggest that implicit up-regulation of love feelings for the current romantic partner is feasible and that it contributes to relationship satisfaction.

Even though this last research line shows that people can regulate their love feelings implicitly, there are no studies that provide information about the deliberate, explicit up- and down-regulation of love feelings. In two studies, we systematically examined preconceptions about, strategies for, and the feasibility of explicit regulation of love feelings. The first goal was to determine whether people think that love feelings can be controlled or not. Participants answered a series of questions that measured perceived control over love feelings and previous research [ 2 ] led us to hypothesize that people would perceive love feelings as uncontrollable. The second goal was to reveal which strategies people use when they try to up- and down-regulate their love feelings. Participants responded to four open questions and we expected that people would report the use of typical behavioral and cognitive emotion regulation strategies mentioned above. First, we conducted a pilot study (Study 1) and then we conducted another study (Study 2) to confirm the findings of the pilot study.

In addition, Study 2 employed a love regulation task to achieve the final research goal, which was to examine if people can intentionally up- and down-regulate love feelings. In this first empirical test of the feasibility of love regulation, we focused on the reappraisal strategy because it is considered effective in altering feeling intensity and beneficial for cognitive and social functioning [ 21 ]. Situation-focused reappraisal entails changing the emotional meaning of a situation by reinterpreting it [ 21 ], for example by focusing on positive or negative aspects of the situation, or by imagining a positive or negative outcome [ 35 ]. The use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate love feelings is related to the notion that cognitive processes, including making attributions, are associated with relationship satisfaction [ 36 , 37 ]. We focus on the intensity of infatuation and attachment rather than relationship outcomes, since love feelings do not occur exclusively in the context of romantic relationships [ 14 ].

Because it depends on the situation whether people would benefit from love up- or down-regulation, we tested a group of people who were involved in a romantic relationship and a group of people who had recently experienced a romantic break-up. People who are currently in a romantic relationship were expected to benefit from love up-regulation, because that would stabilize their relationship. People who have just experienced a break-up, in contrast, would benefit from love down-regulation, because that could help them cope with the break-up. Because previous research has shown that intense feelings of romantic love can be elicited by viewing pictures of the beloved [ 38 ], pictures of the (ex-)partner were used to elicit feelings of love, which participants were instructed to regulate in an explicit regulation task. Because self-reports are the only way to assess phenomenology (i.e., how someone feels) [ 39 ], participants rated how infatuated and how attached they felt after each regulation condition. It was hypothesized that love up-regulation would increase feelings of infatuation and attachment, whereas love down-regulation would decrease feelings of infatuation and attachment in both groups. It is of course important to dissociate between the concept of love regulation and the well-established concept of emotion regulation. Therefore, participants also rated how negative or positive they felt after each regulation condition. It was expected that love up-regulation would make the relationship group feel more positive, while love down-regulation would make them feel more negative. The opposite pattern was expected for the break-up group: feeling more negative following up-regulation and more positive following down-regulation. This hypothesis shows how love regulation is theoretically distinct from emotion regulation. That is, love regulation targets the intensity of love feelings rather than emotions. Of course, the change in love feelings may in turn influence emotions or affect. The direction of the effect of love regulation on emotion or affect may differ depending on the context, as indicated by the hypothesized opposite effects of love regulation on emotion/affect in the relationship and break-up groups.

Even though self-reports gain a unique insight into what people experience, they also suffer from social desirability biases and demand characteristics [ 40 , 41 ]. Therefore, in addition to subjective self-reports, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) as a more objective measure of love regulation success. ERPs have been used before to study emotion regulation and to study romantic love, but not to study love regulation. The late positive potential (LPP) reflects multiple and overlapping positivies over the posterior scalp beginning in the time range of the classic P300, i.e., around 300 ms after stimulus onset. The LPP amplitude is typically enhanced for negative and positive compared to neutral stimuli [ 19 ] and is therefore thought to reflect the affective and motivational intensity of information and the resulting motivated attention [ 42 ]. Correspondingly, we have shown that the LPP is enhanced in response to pictorial and verbal beloved-related information compared to control information [ 32 , 43 , 44 ]. Importantly, the LPP amplitude is modulated by emotion regulation instructions according to the regulatory goal: emotion down-regulation reduces the LPP amplitude, while emotion up-regulation enhances the LPP amplitude [ 27 , 45 – 49 ]. The LPP amplitude can therefore be used as an objective measure of regulation success [ 19 ]. Because the LPP reflects affective and motivational significance and the resulting motivated attention, rather than valence [ 42 ], regulation effects in the LPP amplitude reflect how regulation changes the affective and motivational intensity of information and the amount of motivated attention allocated to that information. It was expected that love up-regulation would enhance the LPP in response to pictures of the (ex-)partner in both groups, which would indicate that love up-regulation would enhance the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to the (ex-)partner. Love down-regulation, in contrast, was expected to reduce the LPP amplitude to (ex-)partner pictures in both groups, which would indicate that love down-regulation would reduce the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to the (ex-)partner.

Study 1 –Methods

Participants.

Thirty-two participants (18–30 yrs, M = 21.4, 7 men) who were in love by self-report were recruited from the University of Maryland community in the US. Being in love was an inclusion criterion because some of the questions assessing perceived control over love feelings (see below) contained a blank in which the participants had to mentally insert the name of their beloved. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Maryland and written informed consent was obtained. Participants were remunerated with $10.

First, participants completed some questions about their love feelings and their romantic relationship [ 44 ]. Participants also completed the Infatuation and Attachment Scales (IAS) [ 14 ], and the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) [ 50 ] to assess the intensity of infatuation and attachment. Then, participants completed 17 questions to assess perceived control of love feelings (Cronbach’s alpha = .93), see the S1 Appendix . These questions were phrased to measure perceived control over love in general, and over infatuation and attachment specifically. They were also phrased to measure perceived control over one’s own vs. people’s love feelings, and over the intensity and object of love feelings. Participants responded using a 9-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree, 9 = totally agree).

Subsequently, participants answered four open questions about the use of behavioral and cognitive strategies in the contexts of heartbreak and long-term relationships. We distinguished between emotion regulation and love down-regulation in the context of heartbreak by asking two questions: “What do you do or think to feel better when you have a broken heart?” (i.e., emotion regulation), “What do you do or think to decrease feelings of love when you have a broken heart?” (i.e., love down-regulation). In addition, we distinguished between maintaining relationships and love up-regulation in the context of long-term relationships by asking two questions: “What do you do or think to maintain a long-term relationship?” (i.e., maintaining relationships), and “What do you do or think to prevent that feelings of love decline in a long-term relationship?” (i.e., love up-regulation). If participants had not experienced heartbreak or any long-term relationships, they replied with what they think they would do in those circumstances.

The mean score on the 17 perceived control questions was subjected to a one-sample t -test against 5, to test if it differed from neutral. In addition, responses on subsets of the 17 questions that measured perceived control over a certain aspect of love were averaged to obtain measures of perceived control over seven different aspects of love (love in general, infatuation, attachment, self, people in general, intensity of love, and object of love). Five paired sample t -tests were conducted to test for differences in perceived control between related aspects of love (i.e., love in general vs. infatuation, love in general vs. attachment, infatuation vs. attachment, self vs. people in general, and intensity vs. object of feelings).

The responses to the four open strategy questions were analyzed qualitatively. Many participants listed multiple strategies in response to each of the four open strategy questions. Each strategy was scored as being an exemplar of a certain category. A priori categories were emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal, distraction, and suppression [ 20 , 21 ]. In the heartbreak context, reappraisal was subdivided into “focus on the negative aspects of the beloved/relationship”, “think of negative future scenarios”, “think about the positive aspects of the situation”, and “other”. In the long-term relationship context, reappraisal was subdivided into “focus on the positive aspects of the beloved/relationship”, and “think of positive future scenarios”. Other categories such as avoidance (see Tables 1 and 2 ) were added on the basis of participants’ responses.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.t001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.t002

Study 1 –Results

Participant characteristics.

All participants had an opposite-sex beloved. Twenty-seven (84%) of the participants reported to be in a relationship with their beloved, which supports the idea that love does not occur exclusively in the context of relationships [ 14 ]. See Table 3 for the other love characteristics.

Means (ranges in parentheses).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.t003

Perceived control

The mean score on the 17 perceived control questions was 4.5 ( SD = 1.4). A one-sample t -test revealed that this tended to be lower than 5 (= neutral), t (31) = -1.9, p = .066, which implies that participants perceive love feelings as neither controllable, nor uncontrollable, or as somewhat uncontrollable, if anything. See Table 4 for the mean perceived control over the seven different aspects of love. Participants felt more in control of feelings of attachment than infatuation, t (31) = 2.4, p = .022. There was no difference between the perceived control over the own vs. people’s feelings, t (31) = 0.5, p = .64. Participants felt more control over the intensity than the object of their love feelings, t (31) = 2.1, p = .047.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.t004

See Tables 1 and 2 for the regulation strategies reported. In the context of heartbreak, participants mostly used distraction, social support, and reappraisal. Distraction (e.g., watching TV, listening to music, focusing on work or school, or exercise) and seeking social support (e.g., talking to or spending time with family/friends) were used more to feel better than to decrease love feelings. In contrast, reappraisal was used more to decrease love feelings than to feel better. Reappraisal by focusing on negative aspects of the beloved was the most popular reappraisal strategy. Examples of other reappraisal strategies were thinking that time will heal, finding someone else to love, or focusing on positive aspects of oneself or one’s life. Thinking about positive aspects of the situation (e.g., focusing on the advantages of being single or being hopeful for the future), as well as avoidance (i.e., not talking about the beloved, getting rid of all pictures, and eliminating all contact) were moderately popular strategies to decrease love feelings. Strategies such as reappraisal by thinking about negative future scenarios (“it just wasn’t meant to last”), eating/smoking, and expressing emotions (“cry”) were used least often. None of the participants reported the use of suppression. Two participants reported that they did not, or could not, decrease love feelings.

In the context of long-term relationships, participants stressed the importance of communication/honesty and undertaking (new) activities with their beloved. Communication/honesty was deemed important for maintaining long-term relationships, whereas undertaking (new) activities with the beloved, which is a situation selection strategy, was mostly used to prevent love feelings from declining. Other strategies such as expressing love feelings to the beloved, trust, spending (quality) time with the beloved, loving unconditionally/making compromises, the two reappraisal strategies, and spending time apart from the beloved were mentioned as well. Six participants stated that love feelings would not decline if the relationship was good and/or that they would end the relationship if love feelings would decline.

In short, several behavioral and cognitive strategies were used in the contexts of heartbreak and long-term relationships. Some of these strategies were the typical cognitive and behavioral emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal, distraction, and situation selection. While some strategies seemed specific for feeling better during heartbreak or for maintaining long-term relationships, strategies such as reappraisal by focusing on negative aspects of the beloved or the relationship and undertaking (new) activities with the beloved seemed specific for down- and up-regulation of love feelings, respectively.

Interim Discussion

The results of this first exploratory study show that people perceive love feelings as neither controllable, nor uncontrollable (or as somewhat uncontrollable, if anything). People did perceive more control over some aspects of love than others and the majority of people reported to use a variety of strategies when heartbroken or when in a long-term relationship. Some strategies seemed specific for changing the intensity of love feelings, rather than for regulating emotions or maintaining relationships. Because this was only a pilot study with mostly female participants, we conducted a follow-up study (Study 2) to replicate and confirm these preliminary findings in a more gender-balanced sample. As mentioned in the introduction, Study 2 also included a love regulation task to test the feasibility of love regulation.

Study 2 –Methods

Twenty participants who were in a romantic relationship (19–25 yrs, M = 21.7, 10 men) and 20 participants who had recently experienced a romantic break-up (19–26 yrs, M = 21.9, 10 men) were recruited from the Erasmus University Rotterdam community in The Netherlands. For brevity, we will use the words ‘partner’ and ‘relationship’ in the remainder of the paper regardless of whether the relationship was ongoing or had dissolved. Inclusion criteria were normal or corrected to-normal vision, right-handedness (as determined by a hand preference questionnaire [ 51 ]), no use of medication known to affect the central nervous system, and no mental disorders. The reason for excluding participants with mental disorders was that many mental disorders are associated with emotion dysregulation [ 23 ], which indicates that love regulation may also be different in patients than in healthy controls. Four participants had to be excluded from the EEG analyses because of experimenter error during the EEG recording ( n = 3) or too many artifacts ( n = 1, more information below). Therefore the EEG analyses are based on 18 participants who were in a romantic relationship (19–25 yrs, M = 21.8, 9 men) and 18 participants who had recently experienced a romantic break-up (19–26 yrs, M = 21.7, 8 men). The study was approved by the Psychologie Ethische Commissie of the Erasmus Universiteit Rottterdam and written informed consent was obtained. Participants were remunerated with course credit or €15.

Questionnaires

In addition to the questions about their love feelings and their romantic relationship [ 44 ], the 17 perceived control questions (Cronbach’s alpha = .92), the four open regulation strategy questions, the Infatuation and Attachment Scales (IAS) [ 14 ], and the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) [ 50 ] used in Study 1, participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) [ 22 ] to assess individual differences in the habitual use of reappraisal and suppression. Participants also completed the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedules (PANAS) twice, once about the last two weeks and once about this moment [ 52 ].

Participants provided 30 digital pictures of their partner. There were no other requirements than that the pictures had to contain the partner. Therefore, the pictures could display parts of the partner (e.g., just the face) or the whole body of the partner, people other than the partner, a variety of facial expressions, objects, and scenery. The pictures were presented to elicit love feelings [ 38 ] and to help the participant come up with negative or positive aspects of the partner/relationship and future scenarios (see below). It is important to note that the variety of information on the pictures does not confound the effects of regulation, because the same 30 partner pictures were presented in each regulation condition. For the same reason, differences in picture content between the two groups could not confound the differences in regulation effects between groups. In addition, the pictures ensure high ecological validity, as the partner is typically encountered in a wide variety of contexts and with varying facial expressions. The neutral stimuli were 30 neutral pictures displaying humans from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) [ 53 ] with neutral normative valence ( M = 5.4, SD = 0.5) and low normative arousal ( M = 3.5, SD = 0.5) ratings, see S1 Text .

Love regulation task

Participants completed a love regulation task, see Fig 1 , while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. In the first two blocks, participants passively viewed partner and neutral pictures (order counterbalanced between participants). In the third and fourth block, participants were instructed to up- and down-regulate their love feelings in response to the partner pictures (order counterbalanced between participants) using reappraisal. Up-regulation instructions were to increase love feelings by thinking about positive aspects of the partner (e.g., “He is so funny”) or relationship (e.g., “We get along so well”), or positive future scenarios (e.g., “We’ll get married”). Down-regulation instructions were to decrease love feelings by thinking about negative aspects of the partner (e.g., “She is so lazy”) or relationship (e.g., “We often fight”), or negative future scenarios (e.g., “We won’t stay together forever”). Participants could use the information in the picture for inspiration. For example, the partner wearing a yellow shirt and standing next to a friend on a picture could inspire the participant to up-regulate love feelings by thinking “I love that yellow shirt he’s wearing” and to down-regulate love feelings by thinking “He is always hitting on that friend, and he might cheat on me one day”. These are instructions of situation-focused reappraisal, which involves reinterpreting “the nature of the events themselves, reevaluating others’ actions, dispositions, and outcomes” rather than self-focused reappraisal, which involves altering “the personal relevance of events” ([ 35 ], p. 484). That is, focusing on negative/positive aspects of the partner involves a reevaluation of the partner’s dispositions (“My partner is a wonderful person” when focusing on positive aspects vs. “My partner is a terrible person” when focusing on negative aspects), focusing on negative/positive aspects of the relationship involves a reevaluation of the relationship (“I am/was in a good relationship” when focusing on positive aspects, and “I am/was in a bad relationship” when focusing on negative aspects), and imagining positive/negative future relationship scenarios involves reevaluation of outcomes.

Please note that the stimulus in this figure is not actually one of the pictures that were submitted by the participants. Instead, it is an IAPS picture [ 53 ] that resembles the kinds of pictures that participants submitted.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g001

Each block started with an instruction word (‘view’, ‘increase’, ‘decrease’) for 4 sec and consisted of 30 trials. Trial structure was: fixation cross for 900–1100 ms, picture for 3 sec, and blank screen for 2 sec. After each block, participants completed four ratings on a 1–5 scale: infatuation, attachment, valence, and arousal, and they also completed the PANAS at this moment [ 52 ]. After the regulation task, participants wrote down what they had thought to up- and down-regulate love feelings to verify that they had followed the instructions.

EEG recording and preprocessing

The EEG was recorded using a 32-channel amplifier and data acquisition software (ActiveTwoSystem, BioSemi). The 32 Ag-AgCl active electrodes were placed upon the scalp by means of a head cap (BioSemi), according to the 10–20 International System. Vertical electro-oculogram and horizontal electro-oculogram were recorded by attaching additional electrodes (UltraFlat Active electrodes, BioSemi) above and below the left eye, and at the outer canthi of both eyes. Another two electrodes were attached to the left and right mastoids. An active electrode (common mode sense) and a passive electrode (driven right leg) were used to comprise a feedback loop for amplifier reference. All signals were digitized with a sampling rate of 512 Hz, a 24 bit A/D conversion and a low pass filter of 134 Hz. The EEG data were analyzed with BrainVision Analyzer 2 (Brain Products, Gilching, Germany). Per participant, a maximum of one bad electrode included in the analyses (see below) was corrected using spherical spline topographic interpolation. Offline, an average mastoids reference was applied and the data were filtered using a 0.1–30 Hz band pass filter (phase shift-free Butterworth filters; 24 dB/octave slope) and a 50 Hz notch filter. Data were segmented in epochs from 200 ms pre-stimulus until 3000 ms post-stimulus onset. Ocular artifact correction was applied semi-automatically according to the Gratton and Coles algorithm [ 54 ]. The 200 ms pre-stimulus period was used for baseline correction. Artifact rejection was performed at individual electrodes with the criterion minimum and maximum baseline-to-peak -75 to +75 μV. Because at least 12 trials are needed to adequately estimate emotion regulation effects in the LPP amplitude [ 55 ], the one participant that had fewer than 12 trials left per electrode per condition was excluded from the EEG analyses, as mentioned above. At the three electrodes used in the analyses (see below), the average number of accepted trials per condition ranged from 29.5 to 29.8 out of 30.

Statistical analyses

Questionnaire scores were analyzed with independent samples t -tests to test for differences between groups (adjusted t , df , and p values are shown when the Levene’s test for equality of variances indicated variance differences between the groups). Besides the one-sample t -test against 5 (= neutral), the perceived control scores were analyzed with three ANOVAs: one ANOVA with factors Love type (love in general, infatuation, attachment) and Group (relationship, break-up), one ANOVA with factors Self/People (self, people in general) and Group, and one ANOVA with factors Intensity/Object (intensity, object) and Group. Pearson correlation coefficients were computed between the seven perceived control scores and the two ERQ subscales across groups. Ratings and PANAS scores after the view conditions were analyzed with an ANOVA with factors Picture (partner, neutral) and Group. Ratings and PANAS scores following the three conditions with partner pictures were analyzed with an ANOVA with factors Regulation (view, up-regulation, down-regulation) and Group. In this analysis, only significant effects involving the factor Regulation are reported, because the main effect of Group is not relevant for the research question.

Because the LPP begins in the time range of the classic P300 [ 19 ] and can last as long as the stimulus duration [ 56 ], the ERP was quantified by mean amplitude measures in four time windows based on previous work [ 47 , 48 , 56 – 58 ]: 300–400 ms, 400–700 ms, 700–1000 ms, 1000–3000 ms. For each time window, mean amplitudes measures at Fz, Cz, and Pz were subjected to two ANOVAs. The first concerned the two view blocks and tested the factors Picture, Group, and Caudality (Fz, Cz, Pz). Only significant effects involving the factor Picture are reported, because those are relevant for the research question. The second ANOVA concerned the three blocks with partner pictures and tested the factors Regulation, Group, and Caudality. In this analysis, only significant effects involving the factor Regulation are reported, because those are relevant for the research question. When applicable, the degrees of freedom were corrected using the Greenhouse-Geisser correction. The F values, uncorrected degrees of freedom, the ε values and corrected probability values are reported. A significance level of 5% (two-sided) was selected and Fisher’s least significance difference (LSD) procedure was applied. This procedure controls type I error rate by conducting follow-up tests for significant main and interaction effects only. Those follow-up tests were paired samples t -tests testing differences between conditions across both groups (in case of significant main or interaction effects without the factor Group) or within groups (in case of significant interactions with the factor Group).

Study 2 –Results

Group characteristics.

All participants had an opposite-sex partner. The average time since the break-up was 3.0 months (range = 0.5–13.5). Ten of these break-ups were initiated by the partner, six by the participant, and four break-ups were a joint decision. See Table 4 for the other group characteristics and the statistics related to group differences. The relationship and break-up groups did not differ in how long they had known their partner for, how long ago their love feelings had started, and the duration of their relationships. The break-up groups did tend to report lower relationship quality than the relationship group. The break-up group also felt less attached and tended to feel more infatuated with their partner than the relationship group. Moreover, the break-up group tended to have experienced less positive affect during the past two weeks and had experienced more negative affect in the past two weeks and at the start of the testing session than the relationship group. Finally, the relationship and break-up groups did not differ in their habitual use of reappraisal and suppression. Thus, the two groups differed from each other on variables that can be expected to be related to whether someone is in a relationship or has experienced a break-up, but the groups did not differ on variables that should be unrelated to relationship status.

The mean score on the 17 perceived control questions was 4.5 ( SD = 1.4). A one-sample t -test showed that this was significantly lower than 5 (= neutral), t (39) = -2.2, p = .032, which suggests that participants perceive love feelings as uncontrollable. See Table 3 for the mean perceived control over the seven different aspects of love. There was a significant main effect of Love type, F (2,76) = 19.8, ε = 1.0, p < .001. Participants felt more in control of feelings of attachment than of feelings of infatuation or love in general, both p s < .001. In addition, there tended to be a main effect of Self/People, F (1,38) = 3.9, p = .056. Participants tended to feel that they were less able to control their love feelings than people in general are. Finally, there was a main effect of Intensity/Object, F (1,38) = 14.6, p < .001. Participants felt more in control of the intensity than of the object of their love feelings. In none of these analyses, the main effect of Group or interactions with Group were significant, all F s < 2.4, all p s > .13, so perceived control over different aspects of love feelings did not differ between the relationship and break-up groups.

The ERQ reappraisal score correlated positively with perceived control over individual love feelings, r (38) = .32, p = .044, and tended to correlate positively with perceived control over the intensity of love feelings, r (38) = .30, p = .056, and with perceived control over the object of love feelings, r (38) = .29, p = .075, see Fig 2 . These findings suggest that the more participants used the reappraisal strategy to regulate emotions in their daily life, the more they perceived love feelings as controllable.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g002

See Tables 1 and 2 for the regulation strategies reported. Participants mostly used distraction and reappraisal when heartbroken. Distraction was used more to feel better, while reappraisal by focusing on the negative aspects of the beloved/relationship was used more to decrease love feelings. The other strategies, such as reappraisal by thinking about the positive aspects of the situation, other ways of reappraising, avoidance, suppression (“making yourself strong (pretend) for the outside world”), eating/smoking, and expressing emotions were used least often when heartbroken. None of the participants reported the use of reappraisal by thinking about negative future scenarios. Two participants reported that they could not decrease love feelings. The use of the different strategies did not appear to differ between the relationship and break-up groups. Seeking social support was less popular in the current Dutch sample than in the US sample in Study 1.

Participants stressed the importance of communication/honesty and undertaking (new) activities with their beloved during long-term relationships. Communication/honesty was mostly used for maintaining long-term relationships. The break-up group used undertaking (new) activities with the beloved mostly to prevent love feelings from declining, while the relationship group used this strategy both to maintain their relationship and to prevent love feelings from declining. Strategies such as expressing love feelings to the beloved, spending (quality) time with the beloved, and loving unconditionally/making compromises were mentioned by some participants. The latter was used more for maintaining long-term relationships than for preventing love feelings from declining. Both reappraisal strategies (i.e., focusing on positive aspects of the beloved/relationship and thinking about positive future scenarios), trust, and spending time apart from the beloved were mentioned by some participants. Two participants specifically stated that love feelings would not decline if the relationship was good and/or that they would end the relationship if love feelings would decline. Other than the above-mentioned difference in the context of undertaking (new) activities, there were no obvious differences between the relationship and break-up groups. There were no major differences between this Dutch sample and the US sample in Study 1.

To conclude, participants reported to use several behavioral and cognitive strategies in heartbreak and long-term relationship contexts. As in Study 1, some of these strategies were the typical cognitive and behavioral emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal, distraction, situation selection, and suppression. As in Study 1, some strategies seemed specific for feeling better during heartbreak (i.e., emotion regulation) or for maintaining long-term relationships, while strategies such as reappraisal by focusing on the negative aspects of the beloved or the relationship and undertaking (new) activities with the beloved were used to down- and up-regulate love feelings, respectively.

See Fig 3 for the infatuation, attachment, valence, and arousal ratings at the end of each block in the regulation task.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g003

View blocks.

The infatuation ratings after the two view blocks showed main effects of Picture, F (1,38) = 27.1, p < .001, and Group, F (1,38) = 5.6, p = .023. Infatuation was higher after passive viewing of partner than neutral pictures, and higher in the relationship than the break-up group. Attachment ratings also showed main effects of Picture, F (1,38) = 23.9, p < .001, and Group, F (1,38) = 5.6, p = .023. Attachment was higher after passive viewing of partner than neutral pictures, and higher in the relationship than the break-up group. Thus, partner pictures elicited more feelings of infatuation and attachment than neutral pictures in both groups, which shows that the use of partner pictures was effective in eliciting love feelings [ 38 ].

For valence ratings, the main effects of Picture, F (1,38) = 9.9, p = .003, and Group, F (1,38) = 7.7, p = .008 were modulated by a significant Picture x Group interaction, F (1,38) = 20.7, p < .001. The relationship group felt more positive after passive viewing of partner than neutral pictures, p < .001, whereas the break-up group did not, p = .41. Arousal ratings showed a main effect of Picture, F (1,38) = 26.8, p < .001, which was modulated by a significant Picture x Group interaction, F (1,38) = 7.9, p = .008. The relationship group felt more aroused after passive viewing of partner than neutral pictures, p < .001, whereas the break-up group did not, p = .10. Thus, partner pictures elicited positive and arousing feelings in the relationship group but not in break-up group, which confirms that the two groups differed in anticipated ways.

Regulation blocks.

The infatuation ratings after the three blocks with partner pictures showed a main effect of Regulation, F (2,76) = 39.6, ε = .84, p < .001. Infatuation was lower after down-regulation than after passive viewing or up-regulation, both p s < .001. Attachment ratings also showed a main effect of Regulation, F (2,76) = 36.7, ε = .91, p < .001. Attachment was highest after up-regulation, intermediate after passive viewing, and lowest after down-regulation, all p s < .013. Valence ratings showed a main effect of Regulation, F (2,76) = 31.6, ε = .98, p < .001. Participants felt less positive after down-regulation than after passive viewing or up-regulation, both p s < .001. Arousal ratings showed no significant effects involving the factor Regulation, all p s > .26. To summarize, subjective love feelings were modulated in the expected directions by instructed love regulation in both groups. Up-regulation of love increased feelings of attachment, and down-regulation of love decreased feelings of infatuation and attachment. Finally, down-regulation of love decreased the pleasantness of feelings in both groups.

Positive and negative affect

See Fig 4 for positive and negative affect during the regulation task.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g004

Positive affect after the two view blocks showed a main effect of Picture, F (1,38) = 27.2, p < .001, which was modulated by a significant Picture x Group interaction, F (1,38) = 21.7, p < .001. The relationship group experienced more positive affect after passive viewing of partner than neutral pictures, p < .001, while the break-up group did not, p = .71. Negative affect showed main effects of Picture, F (1,38) = 9.6, p = .004, and Group, F (1,38) = 25.7, p < .001, which were modulated by a significant Picture x Group interaction, F (1,38) = 8.7, p = .005. The break-up group experienced more negative affect after passive viewing of partner than neutral pictures, p = .006, while the relationship group did not, p = .69. In short, partner pictures elicited positive affect in the relationship group, but negative affect in the break-up group, again confirming that the groups differed in expected ways.

Positive affect after the three blocks with partner pictures showed a main effect of Regulation, F (2,76) = 21.3, ε = .94, p < .001, which was modulated by a significant Regulation x Group interaction, F (2,76) = 8.4, ε = .94, p = .001. While the relationship group experienced most positive affect after passive viewing of partner pictures, intermediate positive affect after up-regulation and least positive affect after down-regulation, all p s < .034, positive affect in the break-up group was not affected by instructed love regulation, all p s > .17. Negative affect showed a main effect of Regulation, F (2,76) = 6.4, ε = .74, p = .007, which was modulated by a significant Regulation x Group interaction, F (2,76) = 5.0, ε = .74, p = .017. The relationship group experienced most negative affect after down-regulation, both p s < .008, whereas negative affect in the break-up group was not affected by instructed love regulation, all p s > .67. To summarize, love regulation decreased positive affect in the relationship group, although down-regulation decreased positive affect more than up-regulation. Down-regulation also increased negative affect in the relationship group. Regulation of love feelings did not influence affect in the break-up group.

Event-related potentials

See Fig 5 for the ERP waveforms and Fig 6 for the scalp topographies of the differences between partner and neutral pictures in the view blocks. In all four time windows, there was a significant main effect of Picture (300–400 ms: F (1,34) = 72.6, p < .001, 400–700 ms: F (1,34) = 101.6, p < .001, 700–1000 ms: F (1,34) = 112.3, p < .001 and 1000–3000 ms: F (1,34) = 51.1, p < .001), indicating that the ERP between 300–3000 ms was more positive in response to the partner than neutral pictures. The interactions involving the factors Picture and Group were not significant in any of the time windows, all F s < 1, ns , which indicated that the ERP response to the partner compared to the neutral pictures did not differ between the relationship and break-up groups. Partner and neutral pictures differ in multiple ways: partner pictures were familiar to the participants, elicited emotional feelings, displayed at least one familiar person, and may have displayed the participant him-/herself. Because all of these factors modulate the ERP [ 32 , 42 , 59 – 61 ], it is not surprising that the ERP difference between partner and neutral pictures is so extended in time and topography, and similar between the two groups. Please note that the up- and down-regulation effects of interest discussed below involve comparisons between up- and down-regulation of responses to the partner pictures only.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g005

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g006

See Fig 5 for the ERP waveforms and Fig 7 for the scalp topographies of the differences between regulation and view conditions. In the 300–400 ms time window, there were a main effect of Regulation, F (2,68) = 4.4, ε = .96, p = .018, and a Regulation x Caudality interaction, F (4,136) = 3.7, ε = .62, p = .020. The ERP was more positive for up-regulation than passive viewing at Cz and Pz, both p s < .004. In the 400–700 ms time window, there was a Regulation x Group x Caudality interaction, F (4,136) = 4.9, ε = .72, p = .004, but none of the post hoc tests were significant. In the 700–1000 ms, there were Regulation x Caudality, F (4,136) = 5.8, ε = .65, p = .002, and Regulation x Group x Caudality, F (4,136) = 5.2, ε = .65, p = .004, interactions. In the relationship group, the ERP was less positive for up- and down-regulation than passive viewing at Pz, both p s < .002. In the break-up group, none of the post hoc tests were significant. In the 1000–3000 ms time window, there was a Regulation x Group x Caudality interaction, F (4,136) = 2.7, ε = .78, p = .048. In the relationship group, the ERP was less positive for down-regulation than passive viewing at Cz and Pz, both p s < .041, and for up-regulation than passive viewing at Pz, p = .005. In the break-up group, none of the post hoc tests were significant. Inspection of the data revealed that even though the break-up group showed a less positive ERP for down-regulation at Cz (and at Pz to a lesser extent), the variation in ERP amplitudes was larger in the break-up group (down-regulation effect at Cz = -1.7 μV, SD = 4.0) than the relationship group (down-regulation effect at Cz = -1.6 μV, SD = 3.0), which explains why the effect did not reach significance in the break-up group.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g007

To explore any associations between the LPP amplitude and self-reports measures, Pearson correlation coefficients were computed between regulation effects in the LPP amplitude and regulation effects in infatuation ratings, attachment ratings, valence ratings, arousal ratings, positive affect, and negative affect, across groups. Because the regulation effects were largest at electrodes Cz and/or Pz, LPP regulation effects were averaged across these two electrodes. In the 700–1000 ms time window, the up-regulation effect in the LPP amplitude was negatively correlated with the up-regulation effect in negative affect, r (34) = -.40, p = .015, see Fig 8 . This correlation was not inflated by the possibly outlying data point (i.e., up-regulation effect in negative affect = 1.5), because the correlation was even greater and more significant after exclusion of this data point, r (33) = -.44, p = .008. As can be seen in Fig 8 , the more participants showed an enhanced LPP in response to up-regulation compared to passive viewing between 700–1000 ms, the more their negative affect decreased as a result of love up-regulation. The other correlations between the up-regulation effects in the LPP amplitude in any of the time windows and the up-regulation effects in self-reports were not significant, -.31 < all r s(34) < .32, all p s > .063. None of the down-regulation effects in the LPP amplitude in any of the time windows were significantly correlated with down-regulation effects in self-reports, -.20 < all r s(34) < .24, all p s > .17.

A negative up-regulation effect in negative affect means a reduction in negative affect due to love up-regulation. A positive up-regulation effect in the LPP amplitude means that the LPP was enhanced for love up-regulation.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.g008

To summarize, up-regulation elicited a more positive ERP than passive viewing at midline centro-parietal electrodes between 300–400 ms. In addition, up- and down-regulation elicited a less positive ERP than passive viewing mostly at midline parietal electrodes between 700–3000 ms in the relationship group. The more love up-regulation enhanced the LPP amplitude between 700–1000 ms, the greater the decrease in negative affect by love up-regulation.

Because love feelings may be more or less intense than desired, it would be helpful if people could up- and down-regulate feelings of romantic love at will. In two studies, we examined preconceptions about, strategies for, and the feasibility of love regulation.

As expected, participants had the preconception that love is somewhat uncontrollable, as indicated by their scores on the series of questions assessing the perceived controllability of love feelings. Moreover, a few participants reported that they are unable to decrease love feelings when heartbroken. Some participants even stated that love feelings should not be up-regulated to maintain long-term relationships, because declining love feelings would indicate that the relationship is not meant to be. Research, however, has shown that infatuation (i.e., passionate love) and attachment (i.e., companionate love) typically do decline over time [ 14 , 16 ], so having this opinion might limit one’s chances of having long-lasting relationships. However, the mean score on the perceived control questions approached the midpoint of the scale, indicating that participants did not entirely reject the idea of controllable love. In addition, participants perceived some aspects of love to be more controllable than other aspects. Participants perceived feelings of attachment as more controllable than feelings of infatuation and they felt more in control of the intensity of love feelings than of who they are in love with. Finally, the more participants use the reappraisal strategy to regulate emotions in their daily life, the more they perceived love feelings as controllable, which provides a hint that reappraisal may be an effective love regulation strategy. Nevertheless, the questions about perceived control over love feelings have a couple of limitations. First, the two studies were conducted in different countries, in different languages, and with relatively small samples with different gender ratios. Second, in order to not be too statistically conservative in this explorative study, we did not correct for the number of statistical tests employed. Please note that the tests we performed are not independent, which reduces the chance of type I errors [ 62 ]. In addition, we used two-sided tests even when we had an a priori directional hypothesis. This was done to not increase the chance of Type I errors and to not exclude the possibility of observing any effects that were contrary to the hypothesis, again, because of the exploratory nature of the study. Finally, to the extent that the measures in Studies 1 and 2 overlapped, we base the conclusions above only on findings that replicated in both studies. This greatly reduces the chance that our conclusions are based on country-, language-, or gender-specific effects, or on spurious findings. It would be interesting to test whether perceived control over love feelings varies between regulation directions (i.e., whether people think it is easier to down-regulate love than to up-regulate love, or vice versa) in future studies.

We asked participants what they typically do or think when they are heartbroken and when maintaining long-term relationships. Participants reported the use of prototypical emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal, distraction, and situation selection. Only one participant mentioned using suppression. Research has shown that expression suppression does not actually alter the intensity of feelings and that it has negative effects on cognitive and social functioning [ 21 ], so it might not be an adaptive strategy for regulating love feelings.

Importantly, responses to the questions suggested that there was a dissociation in the use of certain strategies for regulating actual love feelings (i.e., love regulation) versus feeling better during heartbreak (i.e., emotion regulation) or maintaining long-term relationships. In the context of heartbreak, reappraisal was often used, especially to decrease love feelings rather than to feel better. In contrast, distraction was used during heartbreak more to feel better than to decrease love feelings. It has been shown that people prefer to use distraction over reappraisal in situations in which emotions are very intense [ 63 ], which is often the case during heartbreak. Reappraisal may be more advantageous in the long run though, because decreasing love feelings might help people to move on after a break-up.

Some participants reported avoiding beloved-related cues, such as pictures or conversations, when heartbroken, which is a situation selection strategy [ 21 ]. It has been proposed that romantic love shows parallels to drug addiction [ 2 , 64 ]. Beloved-related cues elicit love feelings [ 38 ], just like drug-related cues increase drug craving [ 65 ], so avoiding beloved-related cues may reduce ‘craving’ for the beloved in the short term. However, one type of treatment for substance dependence and other mental disorders is exposure therapy, which is based on the mechanism of extinction [ 66 ]. Because avoidance of beloved-related cues might prevent extinction of the love feelings, it may not be a suitable strategy for down-regulating love feelings in the longer term.

In the context of long-term relationships, participants often mentioned the importance of communication/honesty and of undertaking (new) activities with their beloved. While communication/honesty was used more to maintain long-term relationships than to prevent love from declining, undertaking (new) activities with the beloved was mostly used to prevent love from declining. Previous work suggests that doing exciting things with the beloved may indeed be a successful strategy for love up-regulation [ 67 , 68 ]. Correspondingly, research on long-term romantic love has shown that married couples who engaged in novel and challenging activities together reported increases in love, closeness, and relationship quality [ 69 , 70 ]. Thus, undertaking novel and exciting activities with the beloved, which is a situation selection strategy [ 21 ], may be an effective behavioral strategy for up-regulating love feelings. Surprisingly, reappraisal was mentioned only infrequently in the context of maintaining long-term relationships. Given that reappraisal is an effective and healthy emotion regulation strategy [ 21 , 22 ], it may be an adaptive strategy to prevent love feelings from declining in long-term relationships.

The four open questions about the use of behavioral and cognitive strategies in the contexts of heartbreak and long-term relationships have some limitations. First, these data were analyzed qualitatively rather than quantitatively. Second, the other questionnaires and tasks used in both studies restricted the samples to participants who were in love (Study 1), who were in a romantic relationship, or who had recently experienced a romantic break-up (Study 2). Therefore, participants will have answered questions that did not match their current status (e.g., answering questions about heartbreak while in a happy relationship) or prior experience (i.e., some participants may have never been heartbroken or in a long-term relationship, in which case they replied what they think they would do in those circumstances). It is important to note that these four strategy questions were used more to explore what types of strategies people employ in their love life to aid the design of future studies on love regulation rather than to provide a stringent test of a priori hypotheses. Nevertheless, the current findings await confirmation in future studies with quantitative analyses and matching of questions with prior experience and/or current status.

In the four open strategy questions, we did not ask participants about the effectiveness of the strategies they listed. In Study 2, in contrast, we did assess the effectiveness of explicit love up- and down-regulation using the cognitive reappraisal strategy. We measured regulation success by asking participants how much infatuation and attachment they experienced after each regulation condition, because self-report is the only way to assess phenomenological experience [ 39 ]. When instructed to up-regulate love feelings by thinking about positive aspects of the partner or the relationship or imagining positive future scenarios, participants reported increased levels of attachment. Although love up-regulation numerically increased feelings of infatuation, this effect was not statistically significant. Thus, love up-regulation using reappraisal may be more successful for up-regulating attachment than infatuation. Future research could test whether other strategies may be more effective for up-regulating infatuations levels. Because long-term relationships are threatened by diminishing levels of infatuation and attachment over time [ 14 , 16 ], up-regulation of love feelings might help to stabilize long-term relationships. Although it has been shown before that people idealize their beloved [ 32 , 33 ] and that partner idealization is associated with greater relationship satisfaction [ 34 ], the current study is unique in showing that people are capable of up-regulating their love feelings deliberately and intentionally.

When instructed to down-regulate love feelings by thinking about negative aspects of the partner or the relationship or imagining negative future scenarios, participants reported decreased levels of infatuation and attachment, as expected. This has important implications for people whose love feelings are stronger than desired. For example, this finding suggests that after the dissolution of a long-term relationship, when levels of attachments are presumably higher than levels of infatuation [ 14 ], love regulation using reappraisal may be used to cope with the break-up by decreasing feelings of attachment. In addition, the current findings suggest that love down-regulation using reappraisal may be used to decrease feelings of infatuation, for example when early stage love feelings are unreciprocated or when someone develops a crush on someone else than their partner. Although previous studies have shown that people can implicitly derogate the attractiveness of people other than the current partner [ 71 , 72 ], the current investigation is unique because it reveals that people can deliberately down-regulate their love feelings for their (ex-)partner.

Because self-reports are the only way to assess subjective feelings [ 39 ], they are often used in behavioral and neuroimaging studies on emotion regulation as a way to assess regulation success (e.g., [ 49 , 57 , 73 , 74 ]). However, self-reports do suffer from desirability biases and demand characteristics [ 40 , 41 ]. Participants were not informed of the exact research purpose or hypothesis before testing, but they were instructed to increase or decrease their love feelings using cognitive reappraisal. So when they were asked to rate infatuation and attachment levels at the end of each block, their responses may have been biased by their perception of the study’s hypothesis. Still, the instructions mentioned ‘love feelings’ whereas the ratings mentioned ‘infatuation’ and ‘attachment’, which may have made our expectations a little less obvious. Also, even though we did not have different expectations about the feasibility of increasing and decreasing love, and participants had no reason to assume we had, the up-regulation effects in self-reported infatuation and attachment were numerically smaller (0.1 to 0.3 points on a 1–5 scale) than the down-regulation effects (0.5 to 1.0 points on a 1–5 scale), which makes it less likely that participants responded according to a perceived hypothesis rather than according to their feelings. Nevertheless, the current results await replication in studies in which the hypothesis would be more obscure to participants. This could for example be established by instructing participants to think about positive/negative aspects or future scenarios without mentioning that this is supposed to change the intensity of their love feelings. Also, note that the self-reports regarding valence, arousal, positive affect, and negative affect discussed next are less susceptible to demand characteristics since participants were not instructed to change how positive, negative, or aroused they felt.

Because it is important to dissociate the concept of love regulation from the well-established concept of emotion regulation, we asked participants how negative or positive they felt after each regulation condition. Participants who were in a romantic relationship with their beloved experienced more unpleasant feelings, less positive affect, and more negative affect following love down-regulation. This was expected, as down-regulation of love feelings for a current long-term partner is usually undesirable. However, also participants who had recently experienced a break-up unexpectedly experienced more unpleasant feelings after love down-regulation. It may be that love down-regulation by focusing on negative aspects of the partner or the relationship or imagining negative future scenarios makes people feel bad because it involves negative thoughts. Although the current study did not study the long-term effects of love down-regulation using reappraisal, it has recently been shown that thinking negative thoughts about the relationship has adaptive features when recovering from a romantic break-up [ 75 ]. So, it is important to investigate both the short- and the long-term effects of love regulation, as those may be dissociated.

Love up-regulation resulted in decreased positive affect in participants who were in a relationship, which was unexpected. This may have occurred because of the effort it takes to apply cognitive reappraisal [ 18 ]. It could be that people who are in a happy relationship (as indicated by self-reported relationship quality) may prefer to just look at their partner, rather than to have to come up with positive aspects of the partner or the relationship, or positive future scenarios on demand. We did not test the long-term effects of love regulation, but it might be that even though it may be cumbersome at this moment to use reappraisal to up-regulate love feelings, it may have beneficial long-term effects in the context of romantic relationships. Future studies are needed to replicate this unexpected effect, to determine why it occurs, to explore if and how it can be reduced, and to test if it is perhaps accompanied by an advantageous long-term effect. Even though love up-regulation resulting in decreased positive affect in participants who were in a relationship is in contrast to the hypothesis, it does show that participants were not just regulating their emotions. In that case, love up-regulation would have resulted in more positive feelings in both groups. This suggests that it is important to distinguish between the effects of love regulation on love feelings and on affect, as a desired effect in love feelings might not result in better affect in the short run.

Love regulation did not change subjective arousal (cf. [ 76 ]. It could be that the five-point rating scale we used was too coarse to detect any changes in arousal due to love regulation. It may be better to use a finer scale in future studies. Alternatively or additionally, recent work has shown that reappraising anxiety as excitement (i.e., changing the valence from negative to positive) improved performance in anxiety-provoking tasks compared to trying to calm down (i.e., reducing arousal) [ 77 ], so it may be more beneficial to change valence rather than arousal when regulating love feelings. More research is needed to test this suggestion.

Unlike the self-reported infatuation and attachment levels, the LPP amplitude is not a direct measure of love intensity. The advantage of the LPP amplitude over self-reported feelings is that it is not susceptible to social desirability biases and demand characteristics. Because the LPP amplitude is typically enhanced in response to both positive and negative stimuli, the LPP does not reflect whether a stimulus elicits positive or negative feelings. Instead, the LPP amplitude has been used as an objective measure of regulation success [ 19 ] because it reflects the affective and motivational significance of a stimulus and the resulting motivated attention instead [ 42 ]. So, the LPP amplitude in response to a picture of the partner indicates how emotionally or motivationally significant the partner is and how much attention is being paid to him/her. The instruction to up-regulate love feelings resulted in a more positive ERP between 300–400 ms (cf. [ 27 ]. The latency and the midline centroparietal topography of this regulation effect confirms that regulation instructions modulated the LPP component [ 42 ]. The enhanced LPP indicates that love up-regulation enhances the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to the (ex-)partner. Because stronger love feelings would result in enhanced significance of the partner, the enhanced LPP with love up-regulation corroborates the self-report finding that people are able to up-regulate their love feelings deliberately.

Love down-regulation decreased the LPP amplitude between 700–3000 ms in participants who were in a romantic relationship, which indicates that love down-regulation reduced the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to the partner. Because weaker love feelings would result in reduced significance of the partner, the reduced LPP with love down-regulation corroborates the self-report finding that people are able to down-regulate their love feelings deliberately. It is important to note that the ERP reflects brain activation elicited by events, which are the presentations of partner and neutral pictures in this case. A reduced LPP amplitude by down-regulation is therefore not at odds with the increased self-reported negative affect at the end of the down-regulation block. That is, a reduced affective and motivational significance of, and motivated attention to the partner pictures (as reflected by the LPP amplitude) may very well be accompanied by an increase in general negative affect that is not linked to the 3-sec presentation of a picture and will therefore not be reflected in the ERP (e.g., because the baseline correction removed the effect). It is interesting that the down-regulation effect occurred a few hundred milliseconds later than the up-regulation effect (cf. [ 78 ]), which suggests that love down-regulation takes more time to take effect than love up-regulation. The down-regulation effect in the LPP amplitude did not reach significance in participants that had experienced a break-up, which is ironic because love down-regulation might benefit them more than people who are in a happy relationship. Greater interindividual variation is the likely cause of the down-regulation effect not being significant in the break-up group. This variation may have been due to the break-up group being rather heterogeneous in terms of time since break-up, intensity of love feelings for the ex-partner, and levels of positive and negative affect, since factors like these may affect love down-regulation success.

In contrast to the hypotheses, and to the notion that the LPP amplitude is modulated by regulation instruction according to the regulatory goal [ 19 ], the LPP amplitude was numerically, but not significantly, enhanced for down-regulation between 300–400 ms in both groups, and significantly reduced for up-regulation between 700–3000 ms in participants who were in a romantic relationship. Interpreting the LPP amplitude as reflecting the affective and motivational significance of, and the resulting motivated attention to a stimulus [ 42 ], the significantly reduced LPP amplitude for up-regulation between 700–3000 ms in participants who were in a romantic relationship suggests that, even though up-regulation initially (i.e., between 300–400 ms) increases the significance of, and attention to a current partner, it reduces it eventually (i.e., after 700 ms). Interestingly, the up-regulation effect in the LPP amplitude between 700–1000 ms showed significant individual differences. Even though the LPP was reduced by love up-regulation at the group level, participants who actually showed a more enhanced LPP amplitude as a result of love up-regulation in this time window also showed a greater decrease in negative affect as a result of love up-regulation. Because correlation does not imply causation, this effect could be interpreted in several ways. It might be that love up-regulation only leads to a reduction in negative affect when it is successful (as indicated by an enhanced LPP). Future research will need to replicate this effect and clarify its interpretation.

The unexpected LPP findings challenge the interpretation of the regulation effects in the LPP amplitude. It is important to note that the observed pattern resembles some previous emotion regulation studies that have revealed numerically or significantly enhanced LPP amplitudes for down-regulation [ 27 , 48 , 57 , 76 ] and numerically reduced LPP amplitudes for up-regulation [ 46 ] as well. There are several potential factors that could have caused these unexpected effects in the current and previous studies, such floor and ceiling effects [ 27 , 46 , 48 ], presentation of regulation instructions in a blocked rather than an intermixed fashion [ 47 , 78 ], letting participants choose between different regulation strategies [ 57 ], or switching between up- and down-regulation. More research is needed to systematically test these and other factors to better understand the effects of regulation task characteristics on the LPP amplitude. For example, the first author is currently working on studies testing whether floor and ceiling effects cause the unexpected effects of emotion regulation instructions on the LPP. In addition, future studies could directly compare the effects of presentation of regulation instructions in a blocked versus an intermixed fashion, and the effects of letting participants choose between different regulation strategies versus instructing them to use one particular strategy. In addition, it would be informative to compare the effects of having participants perform both up- and down-regulation in a testing session versus only one of the two. Studies like those will provide more information about what exactly the LPP amplitude reflects in regulation tasks. Depending on the conclusions of those studies, the LPP amplitude may or may not have limited usability as a measure of regulation success. Alternative measures that could have merit as an objective measure of love regulation success in future studies are behavioral measures, skin conductance, heartbeat-related measures [ 79 ], facial electromyography [ 80 ], and activation of brain regions that have been associated with love [ 81 ].

To conclude, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study concerning explicit regulation of love feelings. We argue that love regulation targets actual love feelings and we recognize that that in turn may affect emotions and relationship characteristics. The results showed that people have the preconception that love is somewhat uncontrollable. Nevertheless, they use various behavioral and cognitive strategies to cope with romantic break-ups and to maintain long-term relationships. In the context of heartbreak, distraction was used to feel better after a break-up (i.e., emotion regulation), while reappraisal was used to down-regulate love feelings. In the context of long-term relationships, communication/honesty was important for maintaining long-term relationships, while undertaking (new) activities with the beloved was used to prevent love feelings from declining (i.e., love up-regulation). These preconceptions of, and strategies for love regulation were replicated in two independent samples. Importantly, people were able to up-regulate their love feelings by thinking about the positive aspects of their partner and/or relationship and imagining positive future scenarios. People were also able to down-regulate their love feelings by thinking about negative aspects of their partner and/or relationship and imagining negative future scenarios.

This study, being the first of its kind, provides many suggestions for future research. In this study, we only tested the short-term effects of love regulation. For daily life applicability, it would of course be important that the effects of love regulation are long-lived and/or that people are able to perform love regulation habitually to obtain a sustained effect. Therefore, future studies should examine the long-term effects of love regulation, including its effects on well-being and relationship stability and satisfaction, as well as ways in which love regulation can become habitual. It would also be interesting to examine the effectiveness of behavioral and cognitive strategies other than reappraisal for regulating love feelings, including distraction, avoidance, and undertaking (new) activities with the beloved. In addition, it is important dissociate the effects of love regulation on love feelings and on affect, as a desirable effect on love feelings may be accompanied by an undesirable effect on affect, or vice versa. Love up- and down-regulation have numerous applications, ranging from stabilizing long-term relationships including marriages, reducing heartbreak after romantic break-ups, ameliorating unwanted crushes and forbidden loves, and perhaps even coping with the death of a beloved. In short, love regulation may increase the positive effects and decrease the negative effects of love on individuals and on society and therefore deserves much attention from the scientific community.

Supporting Information

S1 appendix. questions about perceived control over love feelings..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.s001

S1 Text. Neutral IAPS pictures.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087.s002

Acknowledgments

We thank Annemieke van Arum, Mandy van Dijk, Liesbeth Janssen, and Ginger Sassen for help with the data collection.

Author Contributions

• Conceptualization: SJEL JWvS.
• Formal analysis: SJEL.
• Investigation: JWvS.
• Methodology: SJEL JWvS.
• Resources: JWvS.
• Software: SJEL.
• Supervision: JWvS.
• Visualization: SJEL.
• Writing - original draft: SJEL.
• Writing - review & editing: SJEL JWvS.
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The Changing Landscape of Love and Marriage

Celebrities breaking up, making up, and having kids out of wedlock. Politicians confessing to extramarital affairs and visits to prostitutes. Same-sex couples pushing for, and sometimes getting, legal recognition for their committed relationships. Today’s news provides a steady stream of stories that seem to suggest that lifelong love and (heterosexual) marriage are about as dated as a horse and carriage. Social conservatives have been sounding the alarm for some time about the social consequences of the decline of marriage and the rise of unwed parenting for children and for society at large. Are we really leaving behind the old model of intimacy, or are these changes significant but not radical? And what are the driving forces behind the change we see?

In the United States, marriage historically has been an important and esteemed social institution. Historian Nancy Cott argues that, since colonial times, Americans have viewed marriage as the bedrock of healthy families and communities, and vital to the functioning of democracy itself. But today, nearly half of all marriages end in divorce. People are getting married later than they used to; the median age at first marriage is now 28 for men and 26 for women, compared to 23 and 20 respectively in 1960. The proportion of adults who never marry remains low but has been climbing in recent years; in 2006, 19% of men and 13% of women aged 40–44 had never married. Roughly one-third of all births are to unmarried parents, and unmarried cohabitation has gone from being a socially stigmatized practice to being seen as a normal stage in the adult life course, especially as a prelude to marriage. More than half of all American marriages now begin as cohabitations. Many of the same patterns have occurred in Europe, although divorce is lower there (see Figure 1 ).

Marriage Dissolution by Country

Two conclusions from these demographic trends seem undeniable: Marriage has lost its taken-for-granted, nearly compulsory status as a feature of adult life, and as a result both adults and children are experiencing more change and upheaval in their personal lives than in the past. Sociologists have entered the fray to try to make sense of these trends, both by offering causal explanations and by predicting the depth and future direction of changes in intimacy.

How and Why Intimacy Is Changing

Two prominent sociologists have offered different but related theories about what is happening to intimacy in modern Western nations today. The British theorist Anthony Giddens argues that we are witnessing a “transformation of intimacy,” and the American family scholar Andrew Cherlin suggests that we are witnessing the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage.

In his 1992 book The Transformation of Intimacy , Giddens observes that intimacy is undergoing radical change in contemporary Western societies. The romantic love model, which emphasizes relationship permanence (epitomized in the marriage vow of “till death do us part”) and complementary gender roles, is being displaced by a new model of intimacy, which Giddens calls “confluent love.” The confluent love model features the ideal of the “pure relationship,” meaning a relationship that is entered into for its own sake and maintained only as long as both partners get enough satisfaction from it to stick around. Partners in a pure relationship establish trust through intense communication, yet the possibility of breakup always looms. Giddens sees the rise of confluent love resulting from modernization and globalization. As family and religious traditions lose influence, people craft their own biographies through highly individualized choices, including choice of intimate partners, with the overarching goal of continuous self-development. Giddens argues that pure relationships are more egalitarian than traditional romantic relationships, produce greater happiness for partners, and foster a greater sense of autonomy. At the same time, the contingent nature of the relationship commitment breeds psychological insecurity, which manifests in higher levels of anxiety and addiction.

Cherlin’s deinstitutionalization argument focuses more specifically on the present and future of marriage. The social norms that define and guide people’s behavior within the institution of marriage are weakening, according to Cherlin. People today experience greater freedom in how to be married, and in when and whether to marry at all. Several factors have contributed to marriage’s deinstitutionalization, including the rise of unmarried childbearing, the changing division of labor in the home, the growth of unmarried cohabitation, and the emergence of same-sex marriage. These large-scale trends create a context in which people actively question the link between marriage and parenting, the idea of complementary gender roles, and even the connection between marriage and heterosexuality. Under such conditions, Cherlin argues, people feel freer to marry later, to end unhappy marriages, and to forego marriage altogether, although marriage stills holds powerful symbolic significance for many people, partly as a marker of achievement and prestige. The future of marriage is hard to predict, but Cherlin argues it is unlikely to regain its former status; rather, it will either persist as an important but no longer dominant relationship form, or it will fade into the background as just one of many relationship options.

The Persistent Pull of Marriage

Several recent empirical studies suggest that the transformation of intimacy predicted by Giddens is far from complete, and the deinstitutionalization of marriage described by Cherlin faces some powerful countervailing forces, at least in the U.S. context. In her interview study of middle-class Americans, Ann Swidler found that when people talk about love and relationships they oscillate between two seemingly contradictory visions of intimacy. They often speak about love and relationships as being hard work, and they acknowledge that relationship permanence is never a given, even in strong marriages. This way of talking about intimacy reflects the confluent love Giddens describes. But the same people who articulated this pragmatic and realistic vision of intimacy would also sometimes invoke elements of romantic love ideology, such as the idea that true love lasts forever and can overcome any obstacles.

Swidler speculates that people go back and forth between these two contradictory visions of love because the pragmatic vision matches their everyday experience but the romantic love myth corresponds to important elements in the institution of marriage. In other words, the ongoing influence of marriage as a social institution keeps the romantic model of intimacy culturally relevant, despite the emergence of a newer model of intimacy that sees love very differently. Swidler’s findings at least partially contradict the idea of a wholesale transformation of intimacy, as well as the idea that marriage has lost much of its influence as a cultural model for intimate relationships.

Other studies have also challenged Giddens’ ideas about the nature and extent of change occurring in intimate relationships. A 2002 study by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons used data from a national survey of American adults to test Giddens’ predictions about the effects of “pure relationships” on their participants. They found support for some of the positive effects described by Giddens: People in pure relationships appear to have a greater sense of autonomy and higher relationship satisfaction. But the survey results did not support the idea that pure relationships lead to higher levels of anxiety and addiction. A 2004 British interview study of members of transnational families (i.e., people with one or more close family members living in another country) found that people often strike a balance between individualistic approaches to marriage and attention to the marriage values of their home countries, families and religions. Study authors Carol Smart and Beccy Shipman conclude that Giddens’ theory of a radical transformation of intimacy ignores the rich diversity of cultural values and practices that exists even in highly modernized Western nations. And sociologist Lynn Jamieson has critiqued Giddens’ theory for ignoring the vast body of feminist research that documents ongoing gender inequalities, such as in housework, even among heterosexual couples who consider their relationships to be highly egalitarian.

In his recent book The Marriage-Go-Round , Cherlin documents the fact that the deinstitutionalization of marriage has not gone as far in the U.S. as in many other Western countries. Americans have established a pattern of high marriage and remarriage rates, frequent divorce and separation, and more short-lived cohabitations, relative to other comparable countries. The end result is what Cherlin calls a “carousel of intimate partnerships,” leading American adults, and any children they have, to face more transition and upheaval in their personal lives. Cherlin concludes that this unique American pattern results from the embrace of two contradictory cultural ideals: marriage and individualism.

The differing importance placed on marriage is obvious in the realm of electoral politics, for example. The current leaders of France and Italy, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, have weathered divorces and allegations of extramarital affairs without any discernible effect on their political viability. In the U.S., by contrast, President Bill Clinton endured an impeachment which many interpreted as a kind of punishment for his extramarital liaison with an intern, and more recently the revelations of extramarital dalliances by South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and former North Carolina senator John Edwards were widely viewed as destroying their prospects as future presidential candidates.

What Young People Want

To understand where intimacy in America is headed, we might look to youth as a harbinger of future developments. Today’s mainstream media paints a picture of young people having substantially different attitudes toward intimacy compared to older generations. In some ways, young people’s attitudes toward relationships today are quite similar to the attitudes of their parents. A 2001 study by Arland Thornton and Linda Young-DeMarco compares the attitudes of high school students across time from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. They find strong support for marriage among both male and female students across the two-decade period. The percentage of female students who rated “having a good marriage and family life” extremely important was roughly 80% throughout this time period, and the percentage of male students hovered around 70%.

Some studies track changes in young people’s specific expectations regarding intimate partnerships. For example, a study by psychologist David Buss and colleagues examined college students’ preferences for mate characteristics over a period of several decades. They found that both male and female students rank mutual love and attraction as more important today than in earlier decades. Changing gender roles also translated into changes in mate preferences across the decades, with women’s financial prospects becoming more important to men and men’s ambition and industriousness becoming less important to women. Overall, gender differences in mate preferences declined in the second half of the 20 th century, suggesting that gender has become a less important factor in determining what young people look for in intimate partnerships.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family , we compared the relationship attitudes and values of lesbian/gay, bisexual, and heterosexual 18–28 year olds. Notably, people in all of these groups were highly likely to consider love, faithfulness, and life-long commitment as extremely important values in an intimate relationship. These findings indicate that romantic love is widely embraced by most young adults, regardless of sexual orientation, which contests stereotypes and contrary reports that sexual minorities have radically different aspirations for intimacy in their lives. Yet, we also found modest differences that indicate that straight women are especially enthusiastic about these relationship attributes. They are more likely to rate faithfulness and lifelong commitment as extremely important compared to straight men and sexual minorities. Our findings are similar to other studies that consistently show that while both men and women highly value love, affection, and life-long marriage, women assign greater value to these attributes than men.

In his recent book The Age of Independence , sociologist Michael Rosenfeld argues that same-sex relationships and interracial relationships both have emerged in the last few decades in large part because of the same social phenomenon: young people today are less constrained by the watchful eyes and wishes of their parents. Unmarried young adults are much less likely to be living with their parents than in generations past, giving them more freedom to make less traditional life choices. And making unconventional choices along one dimension may make people more willing to make unconventional choices along other dimensions. Thus, while people’s aspirations for romantic love may not be changing substantially, partner choice may be changing over time as taboos surrounding unconventional relationships erode. In our study, we find that sexual-minority young adults report being more willing to date someone of a different race or enter into less financially secure relationships than heterosexual young adults, lending support to Rosenfeld’s claim that nontraditional relationship choices breed further departures from tradition.

Why Intimacy Matters

If the ideas of today’s young adults are any indication, Americans still place a high value on traditional, romantic love ideals for their relationships, including the ideal of lifelong marriage. Yet, all evidence suggests that many of us do not follow through. What difference does it make if our behaviors around intimacy are changing? Some social scientists see these shifts as alarming, whereas others welcome the changes as long overdue. What does it all mean for our society, our lives and those of our children?

In 2004, sociologist Paul Amato outlined the typical positions on this “so what” question. The marital decline position argues that changes in intimacy are a significant cause for concern. From this perspective, the current decline in lifelong marriage and the corresponding increase in single-parent and disrupted families are a key culprit in other social ills like poverty, delinquency, and poor academic performance among children. This is because stable marriages promote a culture in which people accept responsibility for others, and families watch over their own to protect against falling prey to these social ills. In short, marriage for the long haul groups people together in families where we check each other’s behavior and take care of each other—marriage helps keep our societal house in order.

The marital resilience perspective , in contrast, contends that changes in family life have actually strengthened the quality of intimate relationships, including marriages. From this perspective, in the past many people stayed in bad marriages because of strong social norms and legal obstacles to exit. Today, however, no-fault divorce provides an opportunity to correct past mistakes and try again at happiness with new partners. This is a triumph for individual freedom of choice and opportunities for equality within intimate relationships.

Perhaps today’s intimacy norms dictate more individualism and a corresponding reduction in the responsibility we take for those we love or loved. Maybe we are better for it because we have more freedom of choice—after all, freedom is one America’s most cherished values. Americans in general seem to be willing to live with mixed feelings on the new norms for intimacy. Most of us value the commitment and security of a lifelong partner, but we also want the option of exit. And, almost half of people who marry use this option. But, some evidence suggests that the “carousel of intimate relationships” may be taking its toll on us. Sociologists Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Linda Waite recently compared the health of middle-aged Americans who were married once and still with their partner to those who were never married, those who were married then divorced and remarried, and those who were married, divorced, and not remarried. They found that those who experienced divorce reported more chronic conditions, mobility limitations and depression years later, and remarriage boosted health some (particularly mental health), but not to the level of those who never divorced in the first place. Those who divorced and did not remarry had the worst health, even after accounting for many factors that may make one more likely both to have poor health and to divorce. Having loved and lost may have some lasting consequences.

What about the kids? This is the question that lingers in academic and policy debates, as well as amongst friends and neighbors who are considering severing ties with their significant others. A fair amount of research suggests that kids are more likely to avoid most social ills and develop into competent, successful adults if they are raised by two happily and continuously married parents. Marital happiness is key. A number of studies have found that frequently quarrelling parents who stay married do not do their kids many favors. Children of these types of marriages have an elevated risk of emotional and behavioral problems as well. Most children who are raised by caring parents—one or two of them, married or not—end up just fine. Further, if our social policies provided greater support to all varieties of families, not just those characterized by lifelong heterosexual marriage, we might erase the association between growing up with happily married parents and children’s well-being. More family supports, such as childcare subsidies, might translate into happily-ever-after for most kids regardless of family form.

Finally, what do new rules of intimacy mean for society? If social order is substantially buttressed by traditional marriage, and a new model of intimacy is weakening the norm of lifelong, heterosexual marriage, will these changes erode social cohesion and stability? If we think this is a threat, it seems a few policy adjustments could help to promote social order. If marriage has the benefits of status, institutional support, and legitimacy, granting the right to marry to same-sex couples should bolster their relationships, making them more stable and long-lasting and therefore benefiting the adults and children in these families, and society more generally. This would bring some Americans into the marriage fold, but many who already have access choose not to enter or they enter and later exit marriage.

Can healthy, well-functioning societies be maintained without reinforcing marriage as the ideal family form? Evidence from other Western nations suggests that different models of intimacy are compatible with societal well-being, but social policy must be aligned with the types of relationships that individuals choose to form. Many comparable countries have lower marriage rates and higher cohabitation rates than the U.S. (see Figure 2 ). Some of these countries extend significant legal protection and recognition to nonmarital relationships, and these countries do as well as, or sometimes better than, the U.S. on key measures of social and familial well-being. For example, Swedish children who live with only one parent do better, on average, than American children of this same circumstance. Many observers argue that this is attributable to Swedish pro-family policies that grant significantly longer periods of paid maternity and sick leave and government-subsidized, high-quality childcare. All parents are eligible for these family supports, minimizing the differences in care children receive across family types.

Cohabitations as Proportion of Unions

In the end, current research suggests a paradox. Most people, including young adults, say things to researchers that suggest they hold fast to the ideal of an exclusive, lifelong intimate partnership, most commonly a marriage. Yet often people behave in ways more aligned with the “pure relationship” that Giddens argues is the ascendant model of intimacy. Perhaps this contradiction indicates that it is harder than ever for people to live out their aspirations in the area of intimacy. Or perhaps it suggests that we are indeed in the midst of a transition to a brave new world of intimacy, and people’s willingness or ability to articulate new relationship values has not yet caught up to the changes in their actual behavior.

Recommended Resources

• Cherlin Andrew J. The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. Alfred A. Knopf; 2009. Describes how Americans’ simultaneous embrace of the contradictory values of marital commitment and individual freedom has resulted in a “carousel of intimate partnerships” featuring shorter relationships and more frequent transitions. [ Google Scholar ]
• Coontz Stephanie. Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage. Viking; 2005. Points out that the linkage of marriage and romantic intimacy is a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that has involved a tradeoff between marital stability and personal freedom and happiness. [ Google Scholar ]
• Giddens Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford University Press; 1992. Argues that romantic love is being replaced in modern societies by the ideal of the “pure relationship,” in which intimacy is maintained for its own sake and only as long as both parties believe its benefits outweigh its costs. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gross Neil. The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered. Sociological Theory. 2005; 23 :286–311. Challenges Giddens’ account of the transformation of intimacy by suggesting that “regulative” traditions have lost influence but “meaning-constitutive” traditions remain powerful in modern intimacy. [ Google Scholar ]
• Stacey Judith. In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age. Beacon Press; 1996. Examines the fluid and contested nature of the “postmodern family condition” and argues that most contemporary social problems are not the result of innovations in family form. [ Google Scholar ]
• Swidler Ann. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. University of Chicago Press; 2001. Uses interviews with middle-class Americans to show that people simultaneously maintain inconsistent views on love, oscillating between a romantic love ideology and a more pragmatic, contingent vision of the nature of intimacy. [ Google Scholar ]

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Sure, your heart thumps, but let’s look at what’s happening physically and psychologically

“They gave each other a smile with a future in it.” — Ring Lardner

Love’s warm squishiness seems a thing far removed from the cold, hard reality of science. Yet the two do meet, whether in lab tests for surging hormones or in austere chambers where MRI scanners noisily thunk and peer into brains that ignite at glimpses of their soulmates.

When it comes to thinking deeply about love, poets, philosophers, and even high school boys gazing dreamily at girls two rows over have a significant head start on science. But the field is gamely racing to catch up.

One database of scientific publications turns up more than 6,600 pages of results in a search for the word “love.” The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is conducting 18 clinical trials on it (though, like love itself, NIH’s “love” can have layered meanings, including as an acronym for a study of Crohn’s disease). Though not normally considered an intestinal ailment, love is often described as an illness, and the smitten as lovesick. Comedian George Burns once described love as something like a backache: “It doesn’t show up on X-rays, but you know it’s there.”

Richard Schwartz , associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a consultant to McLean and Massachusetts General (MGH) hospitals, says it’s never been proven that love makes you physically sick, though it does raise levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that has been shown to suppress immune function.

Love also turns on the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is known to stimulate the brain’s pleasure centers. Couple that with a drop in levels of serotonin — which adds a dash of obsession — and you have the crazy, pleasing, stupefied, urgent love of infatuation.

It’s also true, Schwartz said, that like the moon — a trigger of its own legendary form of madness — love has its phases.

“It’s fairly complex, and we only know a little about it,” Schwartz said. “There are different phases and moods of love. The early phase of love is quite different” from later phases.

During the first love-year, serotonin levels gradually return to normal, and the “stupid” and “obsessive” aspects of the condition moderate. That period is followed by increases in the hormone oxytocin, a neurotransmitter associated with a calmer, more mature form of love. The oxytocin helps cement bonds, raise immune function, and begin to confer the health benefits found in married couples, who tend to live longer, have fewer strokes and heart attacks, be less depressed, and have higher survival rates from major surgery and cancer.

Schwartz has built a career around studying the love, hate, indifference, and other emotions that mark our complex relationships. And, though science is learning more in the lab than ever before, he said he still has learned far more counseling couples. His wife and sometime collaborator, Jacqueline Olds , also an associate professor of psychiatry at HMS and a consultant to McLean and MGH, agrees.

Spouses Richard Schwartz and Jacqueline Olds, both associate professors of psychiatry, have collaborated on a book about marriage.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

More knowledge, but struggling to understand

“I think we know a lot more scientifically about love and the brain than we did a couple of decades ago, but I don’t think it tells us very much that we didn’t already know about love,” Schwartz said. “It’s kind of interesting, it’s kind of fun [to study]. But do we think that makes us better at love, or helping people with love? Probably not much.”

Love and companionship have made indelible marks on Schwartz and Olds. Though they have separate careers, they’re separate together, working from discrete offices across the hall from each other in their stately Cambridge home. Each has a professional practice and independently trains psychiatry students, but they’ve also collaborated on two books about loneliness and one on marriage. Their own union has lasted 39 years, and they raised two children.

“I think we know a lot more scientifically about love and the brain than we did a couple of decades ago … But do we think that makes us better at love, or helping people with love? Probably not much.” Richard Schwartz, associate professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

“I have learned much more from doing couples therapy, and being in a couple’s relationship” than from science, Olds said. “But every now and again, something like the fMRI or chemical studies can help you make the point better. If you say to somebody, ‘I think you’re doing this, and it’s terrible for a relationship,’ they may not pay attention. If you say, ‘It’s corrosive, and it’s causing your cortisol to go way up,’ then they really sit up and listen.”

A side benefit is that examining other couples’ trials and tribulations has helped their own relationship over the inevitable rocky bumps, Olds said.

“To some extent, being a psychiatrist allows you a privileged window into other people’s triumphs and mistakes,” Olds said. “And because you get to learn from them as they learn from you, when you work with somebody 10 years older than you, you learn what mistakes 10 years down the line might be.”

People have written for centuries about love shifting from passionate to companionate, something Schwartz called “both a good and a sad thing.” Different couples experience that shift differently. While the passion fades for some, others keep its flames burning, while still others are able to rekindle the fires.

“You have a tidal-like motion of closeness and drifting apart, closeness and drifting apart,” Olds said. “And you have to have one person have a ‘distance alarm’ to notice the drifting apart so there can be a reconnection … One could say that in the couples who are most successful at keeping their relationship alive over the years, there’s an element of companionate love and an element of passionate love. And those each get reawakened in that drifting back and forth, the ebb and flow of lasting relationships.”

Children as the biggest stressor

Children remain the biggest stressor on relationships, Olds said, adding that it seems a particular problem these days. Young parents feel pressure to raise kids perfectly, even at the risk of their own relationships. Kids are a constant presence for parents. The days when child care consisted of the instruction “Go play outside” while mom and dad reconnected over cocktails are largely gone.

When not hovering over children, America’s workaholic culture, coupled with technology’s 24/7 intrusiveness, can make it hard for partners to pay attention to each other in the evenings and even on weekends. It is a problem that Olds sees even in environments that ought to know better, such as psychiatry residency programs.

“There are all these sweet young doctors who are trying to have families while they’re in residency,” Olds said. “And the residencies work them so hard there’s barely time for their relationship or having children or taking care of children. So, we’re always trying to balance the fact that, in psychiatry, we stand for psychological good health, but [in] the residency we run, sometimes we don’t practice everything we preach.”

“There is too much pressure … on what a romantic partner should be. They should be your best friend, they should be your lover, they should be your closest relative, they should be your work partner, they should be the co-parent, your athletic partner. … Of course everybody isn’t able to quite live up to it.” Jacqueline Olds, associate professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

All this busy-ness has affected non-romantic relationships too, which has a ripple effect on the romantic ones, Olds said. A respected national social survey has shown that in recent years people have gone from having three close friends to two, with one of those their romantic partner.

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“Often when you scratch the surface … the second [friend] lives 3,000 miles away, and you can’t talk to them on the phone because they’re on a different time schedule,” Olds said. “There is too much pressure, from my point of view, on what a romantic partner should be. They should be your best friend, they should be your lover, they should be your closest relative, they should be your work partner, they should be the co-parent, your athletic partner. There’s just so much pressure on the role of spouse that of course everybody isn’t able to quite live up to it.”

Since the rising challenges of modern life aren’t going to change soon, Schwartz and Olds said couples should try to adopt ways to fortify their relationships for life’s long haul. For instance, couples benefit from shared goals and activities, which will help pull them along a shared life path, Schwartz said.

“You’re not going to get to 40 years by gazing into each other’s eyes,” Schwartz said. “I think the fact that we’ve worked on things together has woven us together more, in good ways.”

Maintain curiosity about your partner

Also important is retaining a genuine sense of curiosity about your partner, fostered both by time apart to have separate experiences, and by time together, just as a couple, to share those experiences. Schwartz cited a study by Robert Waldinger, clinical professor of psychiatry at MGH and HMS, in which couples watched videos of themselves arguing. Afterwards, each person was asked what the partner was thinking. The longer they had been together, the worse they actually were at guessing, in part because they thought they already knew.

“What keeps love alive is being able to recognize that you don’t really know your partner perfectly and still being curious and still be exploring,” Schwartz said. “Which means, in addition to being sure you have enough time and involvement with each other — that that time isn’t stolen — making sure you have enough separateness that you can be an object of curiosity for the other person.”

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The Research on Love: A Psychological, Scientific Perspective on Love

Dr. Nina Mikirova

And now here is this topic about love, the subject without which no movie, novel, poem or song can exist. This topic has fascinated scientists, philosophers, historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, and songwriters. I decided to look at this subject from a scientific point of view. It was very interesting to research and to write this article, and I am hoping it will be interesting to you as a reader.

Whereas psychological science was slow to develop active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject.  The following is a comprehensive review of the central and well-established findings from psychologically-informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships as presented in the article: “Love. What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?”  by H. Reis and A. Aron. A brief summary of the ideas from this article is presented below.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOVE RESEARCH

Most popular contemporary ideas about love can be traced to the classical Greek philosophers. Prominent in this regard is Plato’s Symposium. It is a systematic and seminal analysis whose major ideas

have probably influenced contemporary work on love more than all subsequent philosophical work combined. However, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.

The first of these was led by Charles Darwin, who proposed that reproductive success was the central process underlying the evolution of species. Evolutionary theorizing has led directly to such currently popular concepts as mate preference, sexual mating strategies, and attachment, as well as to the adoption of a comparative approach across species.

A second important figure was Sigmund Freud. He introduced many psychodynamic principles, such as the importance of early childhood experiences, the powerful impact of motives operating outside of awareness, the role of defenses in shaping the behavioral expression of motives, and the role of sexuality as a force in human behavior.

A third historically significant figure was Margaret Mead. Mead expanded awareness with vivid descriptions of cultural variations in the expression of love and sexuality. This led researchers to consider the influence of socialization and to recognize cultural variation in many aspects of love.

The emerging women’s movement during the 1970s also contributed to a cultural climate that made the study of what had been traditionally thought of as ‘‘women’s concerns’’ not only acceptable, but in fact necessary for the science of human behavior. At the same time, a group of social psychologists were beginning their work to show that adult love could be studied experimentally and in the laboratory.

WHAT’S PSYCHOLOGY GOT TO DO WITH LOVE

What is Love?  According to authors, Reis and Aron, love is defined as a desire to enter, maintain, or expand a close, connected, and ongoing relationship with another person. Considerable evidence supports a basic distinction, first offered in 1978, between passionate love (“a state of intense longing for union with another”) and other types of romantic love, labeled companionate love (“the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined”).

The evidence for this distinction comes from a variety of research methods, including psychometric techniques, examinations of the behavioral and relationship consequences of different forms of romantic love, and biological studies, which are discussed in this article.  Most work has focused on identifying and measuring passionate love and several aspects of romantic love, which include two components: intimacy and commitment.  Some scholars see companionate love as a combination of intimacy and commitment, whereas others see intimacy as the central component, with commitment as a peripheral factor (but important in its own right, such as for predicting relationship longevity).

In some studies, trust and caring were considred highly prototypical of love, whereas uncertainty and butterflies in the stomach were more peripheral.

Passionate and companionate love solves different adaptation problems. Passionate love may be said to solve the attraction problem—that is, for individuals to enter into a potentially long-term mating relationship, they must identify and select suitable candidates, attract the other’s interest, engage in relationship-building behavior, and then go about reorganizing existing activities and relationships so as to include the other. All of this is strenuous, time-consuming, and disruptive. Consequently, passionate love is associated with many changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior. For the most part, these changes are consistent with the idea of disrupting existing activities, routines, and social networks to orient the individual’s attention and goal-directed behavior toward a specific new partner.

Considerably less study has been devoted to understanding the evolutionary significance of the intimacy and commitment aspects of love. However, much evidence indicates that love in long-term relationships is associated with intimacy, trust, caring, and attachment; all factors that contribute to the maintenance of relationships over time.  More generally, the term companionate love may be characterized by communal relationship; a relationship built on mutual expectations that oneself and a partner will be responsive to each other’s needs.

It was speculated that companionate love, or at least the various processes associated with it, is responsible for the noted association among social relatedness, health, and well-being. In a recent series of papers, it was claimed that marriage is linked to health benefits. Having noted the positive functions of love, it is also important to consider the dark side. That is, problems in love and love relationships are a significant source of suicides, homicides, and both major and minor emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Love matters not only because it can make our lives better, but also because it is a major source of misery and pain that can make life worse.

It is also believed that research will address how culture shapes the experience and expression of love. Although both passionate and companionate love appear to be universal, it is apparent that their manifestations may be moderated by culture-specific norms and rules.

Passionate love and companionate love has profoundly different implications for marriage around the world, considered essential in some cultures but contraindicated or rendered largely irrelevant in others. For example, among U.S. college students in the 1960s, only 24% of women and 65% of men considered love to be the basis of marriage, but in the 1980s this view was endorsed by more than 80% of both women and men.

Finally, the authors believe that the future will see a better understanding of what may be the quintessential question about love: How this very individualistic feeling is shaped by experiences in interaction with particular others.

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Creating love in the lab: The 36 questions that spark intimacy

Around the time of the Summer of Love in 1967, Arthur Aron, then a UC Berkeley graduate student in psychology, kissed fellow student Elaine Spaulding in front of Dwinelle Hall, and formed a romantic and professional partnership. Among the couple's most enduring claims to fame are 36 questions that break down the barriers to intimacy, a fitting topic this Valentine's Day.

By Yasmin Anwar

February 12, 2015

Around the time of the Summer of Love in 1967, Arthur Aron, then a UC Berkeley graduate student in psychology, kissed fellow student Elaine Spaulding in front of Dwinelle Hall. What they felt at that moment was so profound that they soon married and teamed up to investigate the mysteries of attraction and intimacy.

“I fell in love very intensely,” said Aron, a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and research professor at Stony Brook University in New York. “Given that I was studying social psychology, just for fun I looked for the research on love, but there was almost none.”

So he took it on. In the nearly 50 years that Arthur and Elaine Aron have studied love, they have developed three dozen questions to create closeness in a lab setting. The result is not unlike the accelerated intimacy that can happen between strangers on an airplane or other close quarters.

Those 36 questions were recently popularized in a Modern Love column in the New York Times, and have broken down emotional barriers between thousands of strangers, resulting in friendships, romance and even some marriages. Examples of the questions include:

Would you like to be famous? In what way?

Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?

If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

The latest adaptation of the 36-question method brings together two couples who don’t know one another. Each of the four participants must answer the questions out loud. This variation was recently filmed on campus for a Valentine’s Day segment on NBC’s Today Show , and is scheduled to air Feb. 14.

Rekindling old flames

Aron, 69, who handed out the question cards for the on-camera experiment, hopes the segment captures the poignancy of the pairs revealing their deepest hopes, dreams and worries. The questions come in three sets of 12 and grow increasingly intense, though participants need not divulge more than they’re comfortable revealing.

“When I came in towards the end of each set of questions, there were people crying and talking so openly. It was amazing,” he said. “They all seemed really moved by it.”

Aron and fellow researchers used the two-couples approach last year in a study on how “self-disclosure” can rekindle romance in long-term couples.

“The theory is, when you’re first in a romantic relationship, there’s an intense excitement, but then you grow used to each other,” Aron said. “If you do something new and challenging, that reminds you of how exciting it can be with your partner, it makes your relationship better.”

Arthur and Elaine Aron working together during their younger years (photo courtesy of Arthur Aron)

The Arons, who live in Tiburon, Marin County, and whose son, Elijah, writes for television in Los Angeles, have experimented with this format themselves, using it to deepen connections with their couple friends: “It’s a great way to spend an evening,” Aron said.

Speeding up intimacy among strangers

Originally formulated for a 1997 study called “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness,” the 36 questions, or variations thereof, have been used in hundreds of studies, including several by UC Berkeley psychologist Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, who studies cross-race friendships, among other things.

Aron uses the questions regularly in his lectures and freshman classes, pairing up students randomly or experimenting with cross-race friendships to better understand prejudice. The questions have even been used to improve understanding between police officers and community members in cities where tensions run high.

Whether this sense of closeness can last in a real-world setting is not guaranteed. While some connections that began in a lab endure, others run their course, just as in real life.

Interestingly, when Arthur and Elaine Aron first looked into how to manipulate a sense of closeness in a lab setting, they were not looking at the romantic implications.

“We had not created the 36 questions to help you fall in love,” wrote Elaine Aron, a psychologist and author of The Highly Sensitive Person (Broadway Books, 1996), in a Psychology Today blog post .

“To do a good job of that, we would have needed to do a study with people who, above all, came into it really wanting to fall in love, and we were not in that business,” she wrote. “More important, we would need to follow up over time to know if the relationships lasted, an expensive process, and funding research on love is not easy.”

Nonetheless, that Summer of Love feeling that inspired Aron to study the underlying mechanisms of intimacy continues as he works on numerous studies and projects, many of which require the 36-question approach.

As for his answer to Question No. 1: Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest? He shrugged and pondered.

“Socrates,” he said. “Presuming I could get him alive.”

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Modern love lines: An inquiry on experiences and generational views on online dating and relationships

Angelika marie a. cortez, christine joy a. dela cruz, darbhelen g. floresca, jossa vivienne s. torino, chester alan r. merza & agustin d. cortez, jr., volume 1 issue 1, presented in 1st international student research congress 2024, january 19, 2024.

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With the use of technology, dating has already modernized; as looking for a potential partner has now become fast and easy through the emergence of different dating apps and sites. The study aimed to determine the generational views and experiences of six generation Y and eight-generation Z in online dating and relationships or a total of fourteen participants. The study is a qualitative research and with the use of one-on-one dialogic semi-structured online interviews as a mode of data collection. Qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis and were validated using investigator triangulation. For the results, there were no differentiating themes in generational experiences and insights. In contrast, there were evident comparisons in the views of generation Y and generation Z on online dating and relationships. In conclusion, the diverse experiences in online dating and relationships of the participants from different generations propelled intersecting generational perspectives and insights into love and intimacy.

Keywords: online dating and relationships, generation Y, generation Z, views, experiences, insights

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Cite this article:

Cortez, A.M.A., Dela Cruz, C.J.A., Floresca, D.G., Torino, J.V.S., Merza, C.A.R. & Cortez, A.D. (2024). Modern love lines: An inquiry on experiences and generational views on online dating and relationships. International Student Research Review, 1(1), 39-47. https://doi.org/10.53378/isrr.01246

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