What is love? How do we define it? Is love one thing or a set of many things? Are there different types of love? Is love the same for different types of relationships? Even as far back as the ancient Greeks, people have struggled with the nature of love. Poets have written about love perhaps as long as poets have been writing.
Psychologists may lack the eloquence of poets but through empirical research, we can study the nature of love systematically. We can observe people in different situations, interview them about their life experiences and develop questionnaires to investigate people's attitudes and behaviors. This way, definitions of love are drawn not only from personal opinion but from scientific investigations.
Despite the fact that love is one of the major human emotions (some would even say the most important one), love has only fairly recently became the subject of scientific. According to Sigmund Freud (1910), the study of love in the past was left to "…the creative writer to depict for us the 'necessary conditions for loving... In consequence it becomes inevitable that science should concern herself with the same materials whose treatment by artists has given enjoyment to mankind for thousands of years."
While research on this subject has grown tremendously over the last 20 years, early explorations into the nature and reasons for love drew considerable criticism. During the 1970s, U.S. Senator William Proxmire railed against researchers who were studying love and derided the work as a waste of taxpayer dollars (Hatfield, 2001).
Since that time, research has revealed the importance of love in child development and adult health. But what exactly is love? How do psychologists define this important emotion?
Why Do We Fall In Love? (Based on the psychology of falling in love)
You were walking down the street, nothing was unusual and then suddenly she came out from a nearby shop and it happened that you fell in love with her at the first sight! Huhh!! What happened?!!
The answer is simple, its all related to how your mind works. If you are single or currently not in a relationship your mind will always be on a hunt for your long awaited partner. Even if you think that you don't care about relationships now,like most people say, if someone matched your criteria then you will fall in love with him.
"Love (the bastardized version most of us give and receive):
This is conditional love. I'll love you if you do this, or act that way, or perform in some way that meets my expectations. Most of us received conditional love as children. Most of us needed then to hide our hating, our sexuality, our tears and/or our vulnerabilities because those human qualities were not accepted by parents or society. So we put on a performance by denying those unapproved aspects of ourselves to get the maximum number of strokes. It was not real acceptance of ourselves we received as children, just an absence of condemnation of the aspects we hid.
Conditional love is widespread today among adults in most relationships. We couldn't possibly love them if they do this, or they dislike us, or they have the wrong views, etc. If you don't act the way I think you should act, then I'll reject you. You are totally unacceptable to me if you lie, cheat, two-time me, hate me, treat my family wrong, don't agree with me on issues, etc. But if you do jump through my required hoops, then I'll love you (conditionally, obviously). Conditional love created many trauma knots in us as children which we then later as adults need to untie.
How are factor analyses used in the study of love?
Is love one entity or is it made up of many different parts? One way to explore the structure of love is through factor analysis. This is an important statistical technique that shows how different items group together. It is used to investigate if a single idea is made up of separate sub-categories. Researchers create questionnaires based on a series of items, words or scenarios related to love. They then ask research participants to rate their love relationships using these questionnaires. Through factor analyses, researchers can then identify clusters of items that inter-correlate (or group together). These clusters, or factors, can then be labeled as components of love.
Are there different types of love?
Some researchers suggest that there are many types of love. Others suggest one core feature to love that cuts across different types of relationships. For example, in 1977 using factor analysis of 1500 items related to love, John Lee categorized 6 major types of love: eros (erotic desire for an idealized other), ludus (playful or gamelike love), storge (slowly developing attachment), mania (obsessive and jealous love), agape (altruistic love), and pragma (practical love). In their own 1984 factor analytic study, Robert Sternberg and Susan Gracek identified one overarching factor, which they termed interpersonal communication, sharing and support (later called intimacy).
What is the triangular theory of love?
Drawing from previous research, Robert Sternberg proposed the triangular theory of love in a 1986 paper. In this model, all love is composed of three elements: intimacy, passion and commitment. Intimacy involves closeness, caring, and emotional support. Passion refers to states of emotional and physiological arousal. This includes sexual arousal and physical attraction as well as other kinds of intense emotional experiences. Commitment involves a decision to commit to loving the other and trying to maintain that love over time. Using different combinations of these three elements, Sternberg described eight different kinds of love: nonlove (low on all 3 elements), liking (high on intimacy only), infatuated love (passion only), empty love (commitment only), romantic love (intimacy and passion), companionate love (intimacy and commitment), fatuous love (passion and commitment), and consummate love (all three together).
How does love differ for lovers, family and friends?
Research suggests that the feeling of intimacy, emotional connection and closeness is central to all types of love. What may differ across relationships is the degree of passion as well as the level of commitment. We can speculate that all love relationships would have high levels of intimacy; romantic love would have high levels of passion; and familial and long-term romantic relationships high levels of commitment. In fact, Sternberg and Gracek found that the intimacy component of love cut across all close relationships, with similar ratings for family, friendship and romantic relationships.
In a 1985 study by Keith Davis, spouses or lovers did not differ that much from close friends on liking (similar to Sternberg's concept of intimacy), but did differ on loving (which they conceptualized as liking plus passion and commitment).
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