The New Psychology of Love 9780300159318

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
Part I. Biological Theories
2. A Dynamical Evolutionary View of Love
3. A Behavioral Systems Approach to Romantic Love Relationships: Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex
4. The Evolution of Love
5. The Drive to Love: The Neural Mechanism for Mate Selection
6. A Biobehavioral Model of Attachment and Bonding
Part II. Taxonomies of Love
7. Styles of Romantic Love
8. Searching for the Meaning of “Love”
9. A Duplex Theory of Love
10. Giving and Receiving Communal Responsiveness as Love
Part III. Implicit Theories of Love
11. A Prototype Approach to Studying Love
Part IV. Cultural Theories of Love
12. Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love: The Influence of Gender, Personality, and Local Ecology on Emotional Investment in Romantic Relationships
13. Passionate Love : Cross-Cultural and Evolutionary Perspectives
14. Individualism, Collectivism, and the Psychology of Love
15. Conclusion: The Nature and Interrelations of Theories of Love
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

The New Psychology of Love

EDITED BY ROBERT J. STERNBERG AND KARIN WEIS

The New Psychology of Love

Yale University Press New Haven & London

Copyright 䉷 2006 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Set in Sabon Roman type by Westchester Book Services. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York. ISBN-13: 978-0-300-11697-7 ISBN-10: 0-300-11697-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9

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Contents

Preface

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1 Introduction Karin Weis

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Part I Biological Theories 2 A Dynamical Evolutionary View of Love Douglas T. Kenrick

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3 A Behavioral Systems Approach to Romantic Love Relationships: Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex 35 Phillip R. Shaver and Mario Mikulincer 4 The Evolution of Love David M. Buss

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5 The Drive to Love: The Neural Mechanism for Mate Selection 87 Helen Fisher 6 A Biobehavioral Model of Attachment and Bonding 116 James F. Leckman, Sarah B. Hrdy, Eric B. Keverne, and C. Sue Carter

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Part II Taxonomies of Love 7 Styles of Romantic Love 149 Clyde Hendrick and Susan S. Hendrick 8 Searching for the Meaning of “Love” Ellen Berscheid 9 A Duplex Theory of Love Robert J. Sternberg

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10 Giving and Receiving Communal Responsiveness as Love Margaret S. Clark and Joan K. Monin

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Part III Implicit Theories of Love 11 A Prototype Approach to Studying Love Beverley Fehr

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Part IV Cultural Theories of Love 12 Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love: The Influence of Gender, Personality, and Local Ecology on Emotional Investment in Romantic Relationships 249 David P. Schmitt 13 Passionate Love: Cross-Cultural and Evolutionary Perspectives 274 Debra Lieberman and Elaine Hatfield 14 Individualism, Collectivism, and the Psychology of Love Karen K. Dion and Kenneth L. Dion 15 Conclusion: The Nature and Interrelations of Theories of Love 313 Karin Weis Contributors Index

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Preface

In the mid-1980s, the senior editor of this volume, Robert J. Sternberg, thought that the field of love had become sufficiently advanced that there was room for an edited volume to be published on the psychology of love. In 1988, The Psychology of Love was published by Yale University Press. The volume was edited by Robert J. Sternberg and Michael Barnes. It had sixteen chapters, representing pretty much the full range of theories of love available at the time. The volume has sold extremely well over the years, and has been a useful reference for those readers wanting an overview of the range of theories that attempt to capture the nature of love. The chapters were written to provide not only theories but also the data that had been collected to support them. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, The Psychology of Love was out of date. New theories had been proposed, and some of the theories that had existed in 1988 had been modified. Some of the old theories were no longer attracting the same level of attention they once had. And the theories that were attracting attention had been bolstered by new data that were not available in 1988. Michael Barnes, who was a graduate student when The Psychology of Love was conceived, has left the field of psychology, so Sternberg teamed up with a current graduate student at the University of Heidelberg, Karin Weis, to launch The New Psychology of Love. Together, they

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decided on a plan for the book, selected authors for the various chapters, and edited the chapters. The editors are pleased to present The New Psychology of Love. Each chapter addresses the following questions: 1. How would you define love? 2. What theory of love do you propose or utilize? 3. What evidence is there a. favoring this theory? b. disfavoring the theory? 4. How is your approach to love similar to and different from related approaches? 5. What do you view as the practical implications of your theory? Because the questions are uniform, it is possible to compare the various theories and the data that have been collected to test them. Part I of the book, on biological theories, examines a “dynamical evolutionary view of love” (Douglas T. Kenrick), a behavioral systems approach to romantic love relationships (Phillip R. Shaver and Mario Mikulincer), the evolution of love (David M. Buss), the drive to love (Helen Fisher), and a biobehavioral model of attachment and bonding (James F. Leckman, Sarah B. Hrdy, Eric B. Keverne, and C. Sue Carter). Part II, on taxonomies of love, considers styles of romantic love (Clyde Hendrick and Susan S. Hendrick), searching for the meaning of “love” (Ellen Berscheid), a duplex theory of love (Robert J. Sternberg), and giving and receiving communal responsiveness as love (Margaret S. Clark and Joan K. Monin). Part III, on implicit theories of love, has a single chapter, which presents a prototype approach to studying love (Beverley Fehr). Part IV, on cultural theories of love, deals with evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives on love in terms of emotional investment (David P. Schmitt), cross-cultural and evolutionary perspectives on passionate love (Debra Lieberman and Elaine Hatfield), and individualism, collectivism, and the psychology of love (Karen K. Dion and Kenneth L. Dion). The conclusion, by Karin Weis, provides a discussion of the entire book. We are grateful to Jonathan Brent for contracting the book, to Keith Condon for his support in seeing the book through the publication process, and to Cheri Stahl for her editorial assistance throughout the project.

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Introduction karin weis

Much of the universe of human interactions, as well as of people’s perceptions and understandings of the world in general, is centered on relations between couples. Coupling helps people to put order in their world and to come to a better understanding of what is happening around them. When the United States did not yet exist, and Columbus had not yet arrived in the Americas, people on the North American continent were already trying to make sense of their everyday lives and of the phenomena they encountered. Such phenomena included thunderstorms, droughts, the spectacular settings of their homes in the canyons of the Southwest, and their relationships to each other, both within their tribe and with other nations. They tried to organize their lives around construals of places and events that gave them meaning. This is why, from the earliest age on, children of the Pueblo Indians learned about the world in terms of contrasts. They learned about pairings such as day and night, sun and moon, men and women. Their world was ordered around such divisions (Iverson, 1992). This book is also about pairs, in that it is concerned with the relationships of humans to each other, and in particular with the dyadic relationships that two humans form. It is about a special kind of relationship involving these pairs of humans that in English is labeled with one word, love.

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Introduction

Let us return to the present and look at three different relationships between humans. Consider the following examples. Maria and Linda have been friends for six years, ever since they started to study together and both were new in town. Usually they see one another once or twice a week to chat or go out at night. Maria has had problems with depression for a long time. Sometimes during the past few years she has had difficulties completing school assignments. She has always been afraid of exams, but in general she has done well. Now it is time for final exams, and Maria, confronted not only with the stress of showing her learning but also with the prospect of having to search for a job and move to a town where she does not know anybody, feels severe depression coming on again. She cannot sleep, has trouble preparing scripts for learning, and is terribly afraid of failing the oral exam. She has already missed one exam, because she was too panicked to show up. Although Linda has to learn the material for her own exams, she helps Maria prepare her scripts, simulates taking the exam with her, and goes to see her friend every day. The weekend before the exam, Maria’s situation deteriorates; she is panicky and frightened to be alone. Linda moves in with Maria for the weekend and stays until the following Tuesday, when the exam is scheduled. To make sure Maria actually takes the exam, Linda goes there with her and waits until the exam is over. Maria passes the exam with a B. Jonnie, while playing, ran after his ball and did not see a car coming down the street. The car hit him, and his right leg is broken; he needs to stay in the hospital for a few days. He is a shy child and very frightened of the new environment. His mother takes off from work while he is in the hospital and remains with him more or less continually during his waking hours. She makes sure he has his favorite toys to play with and that he gets some distraction during the short time she spends at home. While she is at home, she cooks his favorite meals, then takes them to the hospital so he does not have to eat the food served there. Martin and Julia attend the same college. They first meet during preparations for a student council meeting. Martin is immediately enchanted. He loves Julia’s long black hair and could just sink into her dark brown eyes. She has the most beautiful voice he has ever heard, and always makes smart and entertaining contributions to their conversations. He starts inviting her to go out with him and his friends. Martin spends a lot of time dreaming of the life he wants to build with Julia and of the family they will have. Julia, however, does not respond to his love. She finds he is increasingly intrusive, and finally tries to avoid him whenever she can. Thus, as we have seen, love is not a uniform phenomenon. There are

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countless variations on the forms these relationships can take: the love the mother feels for her child as she spends all the time possible with him in the hospital, the love friends feel for one another that makes them go out of their way to help in times of need, and the passionate love people feel when they fall in love. There is also altruistic love, in which people help others with whom they do not have a close relationship or whom they may not even know. Just as diverse as the appearances of love are the theories of love that try to fathom it. Some of them deal mainly with one aspect of love, most often romantic love. Some of them expand their focus to kinds of love that include eldercare or the affection between parents and their children. Others deal with sexual behavior and with why most people do not feel sexually attracted to close relatives. There is one thing all these theories have in common: they have come a long way. When The Psychology of Love was published in 1988, it was the first book of its kind, in that it covered a broad spectrum of psychological theories on love. At that time, the study of love was relatively new to the field of psychology. In earlier times, psychologists had surrendered the study of love to poets, songwriters, philosophers, and the like. Only recently had the study of love begun to make its way from the status of a frivolous topic to that of a suitable topic for behavioral-scientific study. One of the main reasons for its having been largely ignored was that love was considered to be too elusive for psychologists to study. It did not seem as though it could be subjected to systematic measurement and analysis (Berscheid, 1988). Since then, much has changed in the study of love. Researchers now have a much broader spectrum of theories and the methods for assessing them. New scales have been developed, such as the Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale (Hendrick and Hendrick, 2002), the Love Stories Scale (Sternberg, Hojjat, and Barnes, 2001), and the “Sexy Seven Measure” (Schmitt et al., 2003). Biological methods of assessment also have greatly improved. As the scientific study of love has become much more accepted, the number of researchers and the number of studies conducted have increased many times over. As a result, today there is much more empirical evidence at hand than there was a decade or two ago. New aspects of love have been studied, and the focus has shifted. Intercultural research and topics such as sexual desire and mate selection have taken center stage. As a result, the time has come for The New Psychology of Love, which keeps pace with the latest research in the field of love. This book consists of four parts that deal with the different theories of love: biological theories, taxonomies, implicit theories, and cultural theories. Part I, “Biological Theories,” concerns five theories that look at love on the

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basis of biology and evolutionary theory. Part II, “Taxonomies of Love,” consists of four theories that attempt to group the phenomenon of love into different styles. Part III, “Implicit Theories of Love,” contains only one chapter, which deals with laypeople’s conceptions of love. Part IV, “Cultural Theories of Love,” puts love in the context of culture. Finally, the conclusion integrates the theories of love introduced in the previous chapters.

Part I: Biological Theories The biological theories constitute the largest group. In chapter 2, “A Dynamical Evolutionary View of Love,” Douglas T. Kenrick proposes that love is a set of decision biases that evolved to serve genetic interests, that is, to facilitate reproduction. These biases influence people’s attention, memory, and decision-making. For example, when one interacts with a stranger, altruistic behavior is less likely than when one interacts with relatives with whom one shares genes. Kenrick emphasizes the dynamic aspect of love that arises out of continual bidirectional interactions between partners that shape the responses to each person’s actions and subsequent reactions. Therefore, romantic love is an instinctive part of human nature. Humans encounter a variety of different problems related to survival and reproduction such as mate-seeking, mate retention, and parental care—and these problems require various solutions, with different decision biases evolved for every goal system. There are different kinds of love that are relevant to these various domains. The love one feels for one’s partner is different from the love one feels for one’s offspring. Kenrick acknowledges the existence of cultural differences in love and corresponding behaviors. They arise, he believes, because of social variations and variations in the physical ecology. Behaviors that are adaptive in one environment are not necessarily adaptive in a different environment. In chapter 3, “A Behavioral Systems Approach to Romantic Love Relationships: Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex,” Phillip R. Shaver and Mario Mikulincer assume that there are three behavioral systems: attachment, caregiving, and sex. The goal of the attachment system is to ensure a person’s safety by making him or her stay close to others who can provide support and care. The attachment system is activated, for example, when proximity is not maintained and threats are encountered. In this case, the proximity of the caregiving person is sought again. The goals of the caregiving system are altruistic in that it provides support and care to others in need. The focus of this system is on another person’s well-being and development. The sexual system has as its primary goal the passing on of genes to the next

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generation. Therefore, one must be sensitive to signals of fertility and interest in people of the opposite sex, be able to increase one’s own attractiveness to these others, and have available strategies to arouse the interest of the potential partner. These behavioral systems involve specific goals and a set of strategies that include several behaviors that serve to attain the corresponding goal. If goals repeatedly cannot be achieved, secondary strategies (hyperactivation and deactivation) can come into play to cope with the resulting distress. They enable the individual to try to reach the goal in another way. “Hyperactivating strategies” consist of an intensification of the primary strategy to force the partner to behave according to one’s own goals. For example, if the partner does not do what one wishes, one can protest and try to make the partner take care of one’s needs. “Deactivating strategies,” on the contrary, consist of turning off the entire system to avoid frustration and distress because one cannot reach one’s goals. One stops trying to make the partner behave as one wishes. These strategies are used when a partner does not respond, or even punishes the system’s primary strategy. For example, if one partner frequently is rejected when seeking his or her partner’s proximity, then at some point he or she no longer even tries to get close to the partner, in order to avoid being rejected. Chapter 4, “The Evolution of Love,” by David M. Buss, states that love is an adaptation that evolved in the course of evolution to solve problems of reproduction. It provides sexual access, signals sexual fidelity, and indicates commitment, for example. Therefore, it is universal and not limited to Western cultures. Experiences of love can differ, however, depending on the circumstances. For example, a person never has to experience jealousy if his or her partner never gives cause for it. Buss suggests that love is a device for achieving commitment and appears primarily in the context of long-term mating. Love is associated with several developments in human evolution. Since males cannot detect female ovulation, they tend to stay with one woman and to have sex with her throughout the menstrual cycle. Also, males at some point started to invest intensely in their offspring and to guard their partners from rivals, while females concentrated their reproductive resources on only one man. According to Buss’s theory, men are more likely than women to fall in love at first sight, and they are also more likely to express themselves violently when they lose the love of their beloved one. Women, on the contrary, are more likely to be jealous and to dismiss the possibility of having sex without love. Chapter 5, “The Drive to Love: The Neural Mechanism for Mate Selection,” by Helen Fisher, suggests that there are three interrelated motivation systems: attachment, attraction (romantic love), and the sex drive. The sex

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drive is associated with the desire to have sexual contact with others. It can be directed at a number of potential partners. Attraction in mammals corresponds to what we label “romantic love” in humans. It is associated with focusing on one particular mate, showing him or her one’s affiliation, and trying to guard the partner from rivals. Attachment is characterized by feelings of security and comfort as well as by seeking proximity. In humans, it is also known as companionate love. Fisher puts the three systems into the context of their neural correlates. The sex drive is related in particular to testosterone; romantic love is related to norepinephrine and serotonin; and attachment is related to oxytocin and vasopressin. There may even be a general arousal component underlying all drives (involving the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) that produces motivation, and a more specific constellation of brain systems that evokes the specific thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are connected with every biological need related to love. This view implies that rejection, as well as monogamy and adultery, for example, is associated with specific neural correlates. Romantic love is a mating drive similar to many other basic drives. In Chapter 6, “A Biobehavioral Model of Attachment and Bonding,” James F. Leckman, Sarah B. Hrdy, Eric B. Keverne, and C. Sue Carter refer to the conscious subjective experience that arises from bonding and attachment, and that also exerts an influence on them, rather than to the term love. By observing various species of mammals, they find that humans exhibit comparatively few universal fixed behaviors. They point out that there is evidence of romantic love in most cultures and that parental love and romantic love have many features in common. For example, both kinds of love lead to an increased sense of responsibility for the well-being of the beloved one and to the urge to behave according to the other person’s needs. Furthermore, the importance of oxytocin and opioids for bonding in mammals has been illustrated in various studies. Early life experiences are important for interactions between parents and their offspring; however, infant responsiveness is also influenced by genetic determinants. The behavior therefore is a result of the interaction of both genes and environmental influences. As a result, it is possible to design intervention programs to enhance parental sensitivity and security of attachment in children.

Part II: Taxonomies of Love Three of the theories presented in this volume are taxonomies that categorize the various phenomena associated with love into different styles or kinds of love. In chapter 7, “Styles of Romantic Love,” Clyde Hendrick

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and Susan S. Hendrick follow the categorization of Lee (1973), who suggested six types of love: eros (passionate love), ludus (game-playing, uncommitted love), storge (friendship love), pragma (calculating love), agape (altruistic love), and mania (obsessional love). Each style consists of a certain combination of attitudes and beliefs. It is possible to generate a profile of a specific love style for any person at any given time, thereby making it possible to assess the extent to which the person exhibits each of the six love styles. The love styles moderate the experience of falling in love and loving, in that they influence, for example, how quickly or passionately someone falls in love. They are related to several personality traits. Eros, for example, is positively related to agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness, and negatively related to neuroticism, whereas ludus is positively related to neuroticism and negatively related to agreeableness and conscientiousness. Furthermore, the love styles are also related to sexual attitudes such as permissiveness (ludus) and responsible sexuality (eros). Gender differences in regard to the various love styles also were found, in that men seem to endorse game-playing, uncommitted love more than women, who instead see love as friendship or calculating love. The taxonomy can be used in couples therapy to help people understand themselves and their partners by means of their personal love styles. Chapter 8, “Searching for the Meaning of ‘Love,’ ” by Ellen Berscheid, suggests classifying love into four different kinds: attachment love, compassionate love, companionate love/liking, and romantic love. Attachment love seems to be unlearned, and serves the need for protection. The experience of a threat causes the individual to seek proximity to another individual. Attachment can then provide shelter. Compassionate love is concerned about the other’s welfare and can also be labeled altruistic love. Bowlby’s caregiving system is the basis of this kind of love. Companionate love can also be labeled affection, liking, or pragmatic love. It is based on principles of reward and punishment. That means that people who are rewarding are liked, and people who are punishing are disliked. The fourth kind of love, romantic love, incorporates sexual desire, and therefore also has been labeled passionate love or erotic love. It is proposed that each of these different types of love is activated for different reasons and has different consequences. It is possible to experience more than one type of love in an individual relationship. Berscheid also elaborates on the difference between “love” and “being in love.” To “be in love” refers to only one type of love, and for a person to “be in love” with someone, that someone has to be both liked and sexually attractive. The term love, on the contrary, is more universal and seems to refer to many different types of love.

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Chapter 9, “A Duplex Theory of Love,” by Robert J. Sternberg, consists of two subtheories, the triangular theory of love and the theory of love as a story. The triangular theory suggests that love comprises three components: intimacy, commitment, and passion, which together constitute the vertices of a triangle. The geometry of a love triangle then depends on both the amount of love (size of the triangle) and the balance of love (form of the triangle). As a function of the existence of one or more of these components in a specific relationship, one can distinguish eight different kinds of love. For example, passionate love involves intimacy plus passion, whereas companionate love involves intimacy plus commitment. There are various kinds of love triangles, such as real triangles and ideal triangles, and action and feeling triangles. The theory of love as a story suggests that the interaction of our personal attributes with the environment gives rise to stories about love. Every person has his or her own story of love, and seeks to fulfill it in his or her life. Some examples of stories are the fairy tale, involving a prince and a princess; the horror story, involving a terrorizer and a victim; and the business story, involving two business partners. The success of a relationship depends in part on the similarity or compatibility of the stories of the two partners. Chapter 10, “Giving and Receiving Communal Responsiveness as Love,” by Margaret S. Clark and Joan K. Monin, centers on communal responsiveness, an unconditional reaction that focuses on the welfare of the partner; attends to his or her expressed needs, desires, or goals; and does not exploit his or her vulnerabilities. There are five forms of responsiveness: (1) helping (for example, when a person is injured or is in need of a particular object or action); (2) support for reaching future goals (for example, listening or providing advice); (3) creating something in collaboration with another person (for example, dancing or playing a game together); (4) exhibiting caring behaviors when the other person has transgressed (for example, being forgiving when the partner has forgotten a lunch appointment because he or she is so busy); (5) symbolic, when there is no clear need apparent and one nevertheless shows that one cares for the other. The processes related to communal responsiveness are the same ones that are often mentioned when people describe a loving relationship. Communal responsiveness provides individuals with a feeling of security and comfort. Communicating needs and disclosing oneself contribute to the sense of being in a loving relationship. At the same time, even seemingly acceptable behaviors have the potential to undermine communal responsiveness. Communal responsiveness is not the only way in which love can be defined, but it is the kind of love that can be distinguished from other kinds, in that it is not

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associated with the anxiety and distress that arise, for example, from feelings of intense passion.

Part III: Implicit Theories of Love There is only one theory in this book that belongs to the category of implicit theories: “A Prototype Approach to Studying Love” (chapter 11), by Beverley Fehr. Fehr examines not how she, as a scientist, views love, but what ordinary people believe love to be. She finds that companionate kinds of love are considered a central part of love. There also seem to be some gender differences as to how love is seen. Women in general subscribe to a more companionate conception of love, whereas men hold a passionate concept. Women have more of a friendship orientation in love and are also more pragmatic; men report having fallen in love at first sight more often and foster romantic beliefs, such as that true love lasts forever. These prototypes—how people think love typically is—have implications for their relationships. Studies have shown that when features of love that are very prototypical are violated, love is perceived as more subverted than when less prototypical features are violated. Couples who view love in a very prototypical way report greater relationship satisfaction and greater love for one another. Prototypes are also used to analyze different kinds of love, suggesting that all kinds of love have some core features in common.

Part IV: Cultural Theories of Love Three more theories emphasize cultural aspects of love. In chapter 12, “Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love: The Influence of Gender, Personality, and Local Ecology on Emotional Investment in Romantic Relationships,” David P. Schmitt introduces a general love dimension labeled “emotional investment.” It comprises many core features of love, including the intimacy, passion, and commitment components of Sternberg’s duplex theory of love. The construct of emotional investment is positively related to both extraversion and agreeableness, meaning that higher scores on one dimension are associated with higher scores on the other dimension. However, kinds of love differ in their degree of relatedness to personality traits. Schmitt reports a study he and his colleageus conducted with fifteen thousand participants from forty-eight nations. They found that the concept of love is relatively similar across cultures. Emotional investment in a relationship is positively correlated with the level of development of a country, secure attachment, and individualism, but also with short-term mating in-

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terests and divorce rates. In cultures in which children are exposed to high levels of stress, such as result from economic difficulties or a harsh physical environment, the children tend to express lower levels of emotional investment. Another finding is that in most countries, there are gender differences in emotional investment, with men usually scoring lower than women. In Chapter 13, “Passionate Love: Cross-Cultural and Evolutionary Perspectives,” Debra Lieberman and Elaine Hatfield suggest that although passionate love is a cultural universal, cultural values influence the exact meaning that is attributed to the term love. They state that the concept of romantic love, for example, fits in well in individualistic American culture, but less well in collectivistic Chinese culture, where people are expected to consider not only their own feelings but also their obligations to other people, such as their parents. For some traits, such as the importance of good looks in mate preferences, however, gender has an even greater impact than culture. The authors observe that the differences between Western and Eastern cultures are diminishing because young people increasingly adopt patterns typical of the West, such as endorsing gender equality in love and sex, and marrying for love rather than entering into arranged marriages. They also deal with mechanisms that serve to avoid inbreeding. In this context it is important to be able to recognize who is related to oneself and who is not (kin detection), in order to judge who is an appropriate sexual partner. Furthermore, the emotion of disgust serves to avoid situations in which sexual contact with close relatives could occur. In chapter 14, “Individualism, Collectivism, and the Psychology of Love,” Karen K. Dion and Kenneth L. Dion argue that the beliefs people of a given culture have about the relation of the individual and the group influence the understanding of love. In individualistic societies, marriage is based on love. Individualism is associated with a relatively permissive view of love as well as a lower likelihood of ever having been in love and a lower sense of perceived success in one’s family life. Collectivist cultures view love as based on friendship and altruistic goals, and emphasize caregiving rather than intense affect. There are also cultural differences as to how intimacy in relationships develops. Couples in the United States try to maintain a high level of intimacy during their marriage while at the same time trying to keep some space for themselves to develop autonomously. In Japan, couples in the first years of their marriage have to attend to the needs of others in their extended family, and tend to develop greater intimacy later in their marriage. These observations are expanded to eldercare. People in collectivist cultures see affection and attachment as main reasons for the care of their elders. In individualistic cultures, duty and the perception of eldercare as a burden

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prevail. However, in individualistic cultures, parents try to maintain a higher degree of independence from their adult children.

Conclusion In chapter 15, “Conclusion: The Nature and Interrelations of Theories of Love,” Karin Weis discusses the theories that are introduced in this book and integrates them in various ways. For example, the chapter explores whether the different kinds of love have a common denominator, or at least whether parts of them do. Furthermore, it summarizes some of the findings on the influence of context, personality, time, and culture on love. It also takes another look at the various mechanisms proposed in this book to achieve goals that are associated with love and relationship issues. Last, some more open questions are pointed out and areas in which further research is needed are described.

References Berscheid, E. (1988). Some comments on love’s anatomy. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (2002). Linking romantic love with sex: Development of the Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 19, 361–378. Iverson, P. (1992). Taking care of the earth and sky. In A. M. Josephy, Jr. (ed.), America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus. New York: Vintage Books. Lee, J. A. (1973). The Colours of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving. Toronto: New Press. Schmitt, D. P., Alcalay, L., Allik, J., Ault, L., Austers, I., Bennett, K. L., et al. (2003). Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: Tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 85– 104. Sternberg, R. J., Hojjat, M., and Barnes, M. L. (2001). Empirical tests of aspects of a theory of love as a story. European Journal of Personality, 15(3): 199–218.

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Biological Theories

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A Dynamical Evolutionary View of Love douglas t. kenrick

The first step in scientific analysis—carefully describing the phenomenon of interest—has been a notoriously wobbly one for researchers interested in studying love. A big part of the problem is that “I love you” is a sentence that can be spoken with utter sincerity by a mother to her newborn infant, by a young man to a woman he met yesterday at a beach resort in Mexico, and by a heterosexual woman to her best female friend. What, if anything, does maternal love have to do with romantic infatuation, and what might either have to do with platonic love between friends? Even within the category of romantic love, when a woman and a man say “I love you” to one another, does it mean the same thing? Psychologists working to empirically and theoretically nail down exactly what love is have come up with some consensus that it is more than one thing, and may be half a dozen or more (e.g., Fehr and Russell, 1991; Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986; Sternberg, 1986). Most of the empirical work has focused on the phenomenology of love, trying to dissect the inner feelings that make up the experience of love. For example, some researchers have asked how many different facets make up the feeling of love (e.g., Aron and Westbay, 1996; Sternberg, 1986), and others have explored how those various facets might combine into different kinds of love for different people (e.g., Fehr and Russell, 1991; Sprecher and Regan, 1998). Some researchers

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have tried to determine whether there are different physiological systems undergirding different facets of love (e.g., Diamond, 2003). In this chapter I will consider the different types of love from a dynamic evolutionary perspective. The central assumptions of the dynamical evolutionary model are the following: 1. Love is at base a set of evolved decision biases. This assumption incorporates a network of other assumptions based on the modern integration of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology (e.g., Kenrick, 2001; Kenrick, Sadalla, and Keefe, 1998; Lumsden and Wilson, 1981; Tooby and Cosmides, 1992). The mind, on this view, is composed of a set of innate biases that affect what we pay attention to, how we interpret events, what we retrieve from memory, and how we make decisions. Those biases are designed to promote behaviors that, on average, would have served to enhance reproduction. Because powerful social bonds were essential to our ancestors’ survival and reproduction, decision biases designed to facilitate those bonds would have been highly adaptive. 2. The decision biases that drive loving relationships differ for men and women. Female mammals are required to make a very high minimum investment, whereas males are not, a very simple fact that makes the mating game very different for men and women (Geary, 1998; Trivers, 1972). Although research on the phenomenology of love suggests similar experiences for men and women, general evolutionary principles lead us to expect key differences in the determinants and consequences of intense social bonds in women as compared with men. 3. The mind is modular, with very different decision biases operating in different domains of social life. Different problems need solving in different types of strongly bonded relationships. Finding a lover and keeping that lover are two different problem sets involving very different decision biases. The same can be said about caring for offspring and keeping friendships. Thus, although different types of love have the surface similarity of serving to promote social bonds, they may, from a functional perspective, involve motivations as distinct and specialized as those distinguishing hunger, thirst, or fear. 4. Decision biases in one individual interact in a dynamic way with those in other individuals. Each decision bias affecting loving bonds involves an “if-then” contingency rule in which inputs from other people determine whether the actor picks one option or another. Any given person’s responses change the inputs for other individuals, each operating on his or her own decision rules, which in turn play out in the context of de-

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cisions made by many others. Not only does it take two to tango, but two rarely tango alone in a dark basement; instead, their carefully coordinated maneuvers are typically executed within a larger ballroom crowd who often change partners as they move in time to the same rhythms. 5. Cultural norms surrounding love emerge out of interactions between dynamically connected individuals and features of the nonsocial environment. There is considerable cross-cultural variation in the expression of powerful social bonds, with some societies being relatively more polygynous (multiple wives marrying the same man), some being somewhat polyandrous (same woman, multiple husbands), and so on (e.g., Crook and Crook, 1988). Cross-cultural variations are neither infinite nor arbitrary, however, because our individual decision biases are ultimately based on evolved mechanisms that were designed to solve recurrent problems faced by our ancestors. On this view, the human mind is a coloring book rather than a blank slate—there is flexibility in the choice of palettes, but the overall pattern is constrained by some strongly suggestive lines (Kenrick, Becker, Butner, Li, and Maner, 2003).

Instincts, Mental Modules, and Domain Specificity Because loving relationships often involve powerful emotions, some of which seem to override conscious decision-making, feelings of love seem like an intuitively reasonable place to search for human instincts. Of course, social scientists are rather suspicious of intuition as a form of scientific evidence. If anything, psychologists favor viewpoints that violate intuition (Krueger and Funder, 2004). Directly contradicting the intuition that romantic love might be an instinctive part of human nature, a popular view in the social sciences held that love was a historically and culturally ephemeral construction. Many social scientists in fact believed that the particularly powerful and consuming feelings of romantic love found in modern Western societies were absent in other societies and other periods of history (see Jankowiak and Fisher, 1992). Although that position was appealingly counterintuitive to social scientists, cross-cultural research has combined with physiological research to indicate that it was also quite wrong (Diamond, 2003; Jankowiak and Fischer, 1992). Feelings of love are universal across our species, and they are based at least partly in innate mechanisms. Are we therefore justified in calling them instinctive? The word instinct historically had several meanings, with different implications for thinking about the varieties of love. William James (1890) viewed

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Biological Theories

an instinct as an innate capacity to act “to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance” (vol. 2, p. 383). The prototypical Jamesian instinct would be a sneeze—a reflexive impulse automatically triggered by particular sensory inputs (nasal irritation, in this case). James did expand his concept of instinct to include more complex and cognitively involving social inclinations, as in his famous query: “Why does the maiden interest the youth so that everything about her seems more important and significant than anything else in the world?” (vol. 2, p. 386). William McDougall’s (1908) view of instinct was more similar to modern concepts of emotion: “an inherited or innate psycho-physical disposition which determines its possessor to perceive, and to pay attention to, objects of a certain class, to experience an emotional excitement of a particular quality upon perceiving such an object, and to act in regard to it in a particular manner, or, at least, to experience an impulse to such action” (p. 29). McDougall viewed instincts as linked to seven powerful emotions: (1) fear, (2) disgust, (3) wonder (linked to curiosity), (4) anger, (5) subjection (humiliation or embarrassment), (6) elation (pride), and (7) parental instinct (tenderness, empathy). To these seven, McDougall added two social motivations without distinct emotions—the reproductive instinct and the gregarious instinct. Instincts were never presumed to be inflexible and/or insensitive to environmental inputs. On the contrary, James believed that instincts are “not always blind or invariable” (vol. 2, p. 389) and that, indeed, “every instinctive act, in an animal with memory, must cease to be ‘blind’ after being once repeated.” Indeed, an innate response system that operated without environmental inputs, and without environmental calibration, would hardly be functional. So, although many twentieth-century social scientists misconceived instinct as incompatible with learning, this was always a bad rap, whether applied to humans or to other animals (Alcock, 2001). Instinctive behavioral programs often involve more than a simple onestep, stimulus-emotion-response link: rather, they involve a complex sequence that unfolds over time. For example, Lehrman (1965) noted that ring dove courtship involved a series of stages, with one set of stimuli triggering certain hormonal and behavioral responses early in courtship, followed by physiological changes that led the birds to attend to different stimuli and act in different ways later. Morris (1958) observed a similar sequential series of lockstep behavioral escalations in the mating ritual of a small fish called the stickleback. The view of instinctive behavior as involving multiple stages calibrated to responses by the opposite sex may better

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represent the sequential complexities of courtship in humans as well as other animals (Kenrick and Trost, 1987). MODERN VIEWS OF MODULARITY

Many modern evolutionary psychologists share with James the notion that the human mind is composed of relatively independent modules. Examples include different memory systems for food location versus song learning in birds, special mechanisms for different features of human language, specialized learning mechanisms governing food aversion and fear as opposed to other types of learning, and particularized logical abilities for ¨ hman and Mineka, 2001; detecting cheaters on social contracts (e.g., O Pinker, 1994; Rozin and Kalat, 1971; Sherry and Schacter, 1987; Sugiyama, Tooby, and Cosmides, 2002). McDougall’s view of instinct also persists in modern evolutionary conceptions of emotions or motivations as goaloriented systems designed to facilitate adaptive responses to particular classes of recurring threats or opportunities faced by humans (e.g., Cottrell and Neuberg, 2005; Plutchik, 1980). Modern psychologists have come a long way since James and McDougall in our understanding of innate behavioral mechanisms, but we have a long way to go toward specifying the particulars. An especially interesting set of questions concerns how many different sets of recurrent human problems are governed by different evolved modules. These issues have particular relevance to questions about the different forms of love. DOMAINS OF SOCIAL LIFE

The dynamical evolutionary model posits a set of domains encompassing the various problems regularly confronted in human social life (Kenrick, Li, and Butner, 2003; Kenrick, Maner, and Li, 2005). Humans everywhere have repeatedly confronted several sets of problems involving the following: • Affiliation: Our ancestors always lived in small, highly interdependent groups (Sedikides and Skowronski, 1997). To survive and eventually reproduce, each individual human needed to cooperate with a group of friends. • Status: Humans everywhere want to know where their fellows stand in the local dominance hierarchy (Goldberg, 1981). For both sexes, status directly increases access to resources. For males, there are additional biological payoffs for attaining status, because females use status cues to help decide which males they will select as mates (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, and Linsenmeier, 2002; Sadalla, Kenrick, and Vershure, 1987).

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Biological Theories

• Self-protection: Ancestral humans frequently faced threats from members of other groups (Baer and McEachron, 1982), as well as occasional harsh competition from members of their own group (Daly and Wilson, 1988). Any ability or inclination to recognize cues associated with such threats would have been highly adaptive. • Mate-seeking: Natural selection is centrally linked to differential reproduction, and we are here today not because our ancestors all lived long and happy lives, but because they managed to reproduce. Because ancestral males and females contributed different resources to their offspring, the two sexes are presumed to use slightly different criteria to select mates (e.g., Li et al., 2002). • Mate retention: In most mammals, courtship is all over after mate selection, which usually involves males displaying and females choosing. But because human offspring are helpless at birth and require substantial resources to survive, modern humans are the descendants of ancestral pairs in which males cooperated with females (Geary, 1998). Indeed, although there are cultural variations in the shape and number of pair bonds, all human societies have some form of long-term marital bonds between males and females (Daly and Wilson, 1983). • Parental care: The ultimate function of human parental bonds is offspring care. Parents and children tend to bond to each other, but the constraints on parent-to-parent and parent-to-child bonds, and the rules of exchange associated with each, are very different. Because solutions to problems in one domain are often inconsistent with solutions to problems in another, humans are presumed to have a modularized set of executive goal systems designed to deal with the separate problem sets in particular ways. A domain-general model (e.g., do what is rewarding, or what results in equitable benefit-to-cost ratios) is not specific enough to work across different social domains (e.g., a passionate kiss is rewarding from a lover, but may be punishing from a friend; a man might expect a friend to share the bill in a restaurant [or pick up the next one], but be disappointed if a woman did so in the early stages of courtship). At the base of each social goal system is a set of evolved decision biases. For example, inclusive fitness considerations lead to the assumption that the rules for sharing resources differ for unrelated affiliates as opposed to offspring. Because a child shares half of one’s genes, whereas an unrelated acquaintance does not, the costs of providing any resource for one’s child are accordingly discounted. An abundance of evidence suggests that human decision-making, just like decision-making in other species, is indeed highly

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influenced by kinship considerations (Alcock, 2001; Laham, Gonsalkorale, and Von Hippel, 2005; Smith, Kish, and Crawford, 1987). The model also assumes that decision rules vary predictably as a function of interactions between particular individual differences and environmental inputs. For example, because developing offspring are always highly costly for a female to carry, deliver, and nurse, ancestral females, as compared with ancestral males, were selected to have higher thresholds for considering courtship offers from potential mates. There is abundant evidence consistent with this assumption (e.g., Buss and Schmitt, 1993; Clark and Hatfield, 1989; Kenrick and Luce, 2000).

Where Does Love Fit into the Social Domains? Webster’s ninth New Collegiate Dictionary offers the following as its first three definitions of love: (1) “strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties” (e.g., maternal love); (2) “attraction based on sexual desire”; and (3) “affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests.” This multiplicity of meanings is consistent with subsequent research on the experience of love (e.g., Fehr and Russell, 1991; Sternberg, 1986). The different types of love may be more relevant to one social domain than to another. Passionate love based on sexual desire is most likely to arise in the mate search domain, for example, whereas the less intense affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests is more relevant to mate retention, the strong affection arising out of kinship comes into play in the parental care domain, and love between friends fits nicely into the coalitional domain. Does some common underlying physiological or phenomenological component tie together the different types of love? This is an interesting question, and possible answers have focused on hormones such as oxytocin and on feelings of attachment (e.g., Zeifman and Hazan, 1997). Yet the differences may be functionally more important than the similarities. For example, once testosterone comes into play in romantic passion, the experience and its behavioral consequences are entirely different from the pure effects of oxytocin-induced attachment. Is each type of love a separate emotion, in the sense of anger or fear, that comes into play whenever a particular domain of problems is activated? For example, is passionate love the motivational component of the mate search executive system? This is an interesting question, but I am inclined to think any such mapping will be inexact at best. For example, although passionate love is largely confined to the mate search domain, the feelings (and under-

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lying hormonal states) associated with love of a child and love of a longterm mate, and even love of a friend, may overlap considerably (though perhaps less than perfectly). Furthermore, although testosterone-driven sexual arousal plays a central motivational role in some of the most salient phases of early courtship, it probably plays a minor role in many others (e.g., the longing for a new lover during periods of separation; the intense interest in everything the lover has to say at 3 a.m., after sexual urges have been fully satisfied). Finally, although psychological research, like the dictionary, has focused on the positive affective experiences associated with love, negative affect may also play an occasional role in maintaining strong social bonds. For example, some behaviors associated with the maintenance of long-term bonds may be motivated by the nasty and selfish emotion of sexual jealousy. And besides the positive awe one feels in gazing on one’s infant, parental love is defined perhaps as much by incessant worrying about the child’s welfare as by feelings of parental rapture. Furthermore, an interesting feature of various types of love is the relative suppression of negative emotions. Imagine if a friend or a lover spit out half the food you offered, then woke you up by screaming in your ear at midnight, and kept up this barrage of maltreatment for several months on end. Unless you are a candidate for canonization, you would be inclined to scream back, and you might soon terminate the relationship. However, most infants act the same way, yet surprisingly few are left on the doorsteps of orphanages. Instead, their onesided and high-volume demands are more typically met with sympathetic and cooing reassurances. Thus the different social domains and the various affective and emotional components of love do not map precisely onto one another, and such mapping may not provide the best way to understand the diverse functions encompassed by the various meanings of the term love. LOVE AS AN ARRAY OF DECISION BIASES

From the perspective offered here, a fuller understanding of love in all its forms can come from considering the decision biases that underlie strong social bonds across the different domains. Table 2-1 suggests a set of possible biases that would serve to smooth interactions with closely bonded others (aka the people we love). Note that the mechanisms underlying these biases in social decision-making are not necessarily conscious, “rational,” or complex. Instead, they are often based in simple predispositions to be selectively attentive to certain features of the social environment (akin to the inclination to rapidly notice emotion in other people’s faces), and to expe-

Table 2-1 Functions of strong social bonds in different domains, and of accompanying cognitive biases

Social Domain Coalition formation

Status

Functions of Strong Bonds

Examples of Cognitive Biases

To cement reciprocal alliances

Attention to commonalities over differences

To gain benefits of group cooperation

Dampened attention to short-term inequity

To ride coattails of successful associates

Dampened critical thinking for respected authorities

To share benefits of backing the winning team

Informational biases favoring own group, disfavoring other groups

To prevent loss of resources to, and injury by, out-group members or treacherous ingroup members

Biased perceptions of infractions by ingroup vs. out-group members

To gain access to desirable reproductive partners

Males relatively more attentive to physical attractiveness and youth

Attention to commonalities with winTo inspire followers to ners, distance self from losers follow Self-protection

Gaining mates

Lowered thresholds for seeing negative inclinations in out-group members

Females more attentive to status Males have lower thresholds for perceiving interest by potential mates, and for feeling passionate love Females have higher thresholds for trusting potential suitors

Retaining mates Maintain reproductive bonds

Attenuate inequity detection mechanisms Hypervigilance to potential infidelities, and to potential interlopers with sex-linked desirable characteristics Assume worst in potential interlopers

Familial care

Nurture close kin

Relatively lowest attention to inequity in families as opposed to other relationships Hyperattention to offspring’s wellbeing

The table offers examples and is not meant to be exhaustive.

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Biological Theories

rience certain feelings in response to those features (e.g., to feel fear when we see an angry face on a large man who is walking toward us). The biases suggested in table 2-1 have not all been empirically verified, but there is some support for most of them. For example, subjects in one study got feedback that their team had done quite well on a trivia game, and were asked to assign relative responsibility for their success to themselves and their partner. When playing with strangers, people demonstrated the typical “self-serving bias,” giving themselves the majority of the credit. When playing with a close relative, on the other hand, they tended toward an “other-serving bias,” giving relatively more credit to the other (Ackerman, Ledlow, and Kenrick, 2003). In other studies, participants have played various resource dilemma games with strangers, friends, or relatives (e.g., Ledlow and Linder, 2003). People who believe they are playing with kin are more generous and cooperative than those playing with strangers. Friends are generally treated less well than kin, but better than strangers. Given its theoretical importance, there is surprisingly little social psychological research on kin relationships (Daly, Salmon, and Wilson, 1997). However, that picture is beginning to change (e.g., Laham et al., 2005; Park and Schaller, 2003). There is much more research examining how men and women think about potential mates. For example, one series of studies explored responses to attractive males and females at various levels of cognitive processing. Unsurprisingly, attention measured via an eye tracker indicated that men look more at beautiful women. Also unsurprisingly, men dedicate greater “downstream” processing to those women, as indicated by biased estimates of the frequency of good-looking women in rapidly presented arrays (Maner, Kenrick, Becker, Robertson, Hofer, Neuberg, Delton, Butner, and Schaller, 2003). In a Concentration-type game, men show especially good abilities to remember the locations of beautiful women (Becker, Kenrick, Guerin, and Maner, 2005). Women also favor beautiful women at all levels of processing, but show an interesting “disjunction” in processing handsome men. Women visually attend to handsome male strangers for a few seconds, but seem to quickly terminate further processing downstream (failing to remember handsome men any better than average-looking men, and failing to show the frequency estimation bias that men show toward beautiful women). Men asked to judge whether neutral faces are showing subtle signs of emotion tend to project sexual arousal onto neutral facial expressions, but only if the faces are attractive women and if the men have had a mating motive activated (Maner et al., 2005). Another series of studies found women to be more suspicious of a man’s professions of love, and men to be

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more likely to attribute sexual motivation to women—except in the case of their own sisters (Haselton and Buss, 2000). These findings are all consistent with a differential parental investment model, which posits that females have more to lose from an ill-chosen mating decision than do males (e.g., Kenrick, Groth, Trost, and Sadalla, 1993; Kenrick, Sadalla, Groth, and Trost, 1990). We thus far have only a rough idea of the qualitative nature of several of these decision biases. Additional research and theory could allow us to convert those qualitative biases into quantitative decision weights. This would allow more precise theory-driven predictions, as well as a better understanding of how those biases play out in complex social dynamics, where small differences in individual biases can have large effects at the group level (Kenrick, Becker, et al., 2003). These decision biases are at base cold, hard economic rules designed to serve selfish genetic interests. Yet they are accompanied by affective states that may be warm and fuzzy or even hot and steamy. Why feelings sometimes accompany otherwise cold decision rules is an interesting question. Presumably the experienced feeling is accompanied by hormonal changes, which perhaps help keep attention on task until a goal is reached. Consider, for example, that the central nervous system operates very rapidly and can change the direction of conscious processing in milliseconds, whereas the autonomic nervous system involves the secretion of hormones that linger for a while despite momentary attentional shifts. Once sexual hormones enter the bloodstream in sufficient quantities, for example, they will dissipate slowly until copulation signals the release of other hormones, which terminate that goal state (and the next higher executive priority can take over). LOVE AND INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS

Understanding the inner experience of any one actor will not be sufficient if we want to understand how love works. This is because all social bonds involve a continual dynamic interaction. Consider parental love. As I write this, my fifteen-month-old son has been playing in a nearby room with his babysitter. When I pass by and hear his voice, I am strongly motivated to pick him up and play with him (his smile provides a reward whose power I would not have predicted before I had children). If I try to return to work on my overdue chapter, he becomes obviously and loudly upset. His agony motivates me to stay and settle him with the babysitter before sneaking out of his field of view. He prefers my company to that of his babysitters, but if his mother is around, I take second priority. He prefers the company of his grandmother over that of the babysitters, but not as much as that of his parents. All of this, I would argue, is a function of

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Biological Theories

interactions between evolved psychological decision rules and experience. Experience is clearly critical—he did not know his grandmother until he interacted with her, for example. But many of these experiences are themselves a function of decision biases built into the human species and leading to reliable social dynamics. Grandma has been more motivated to win his affections than are his babysitters, but not as motivated as his mother, who cannot bear to be separated for more than a few hours. Are these family dynamics merely a function of American culture? Even assuming the remote possibility of an arbitrary culture unbiased by the preferences of the biological organisms who constructed it, such an explanation seems unlikely in this case. For one thing, cross-cultural research finds similar family dynamics the world over (e.g., Geary, 1998; Hrdy, 1999). For another, grandparental fondness follows the rules of inclusive fitness in ways very likely invisible to the grandparents themselves (Laham et al., 2005). Grandparental investment tends to go along more “certain” kinship lines. That is, a mother’s mother is closer to her grandchildren than is a father’s mother, and a father’s father is least likely to invest in the grandchildren. Certainty in this case refers to the fact that, because of internal fertilization, the mother is virtually always sure the baby has half her genes, whereas the father cannot be completely sure. There are two steps at which paternity is uncertain for a father’s father, but none for a mother’s mother. Most important, people were less close to their mother’s father and their father’s father only when those grandparents had more “genetically certain” grandchildren (e.g., through daughters rather than sons). If they have no daughters, grandparents seem to invest more resources in their son’s children, taking the next best bet from an inclusive fitness standpoint. The individual decision rules (as in table 2-1) take the form of “if-then” statements contingent on inputs from other people. In turn, any individual’s decisions become contingencies for the other people around him or her. The different decision rules thus have important consequences for understanding how social dynamics vary across different relationships. Consider the very simple case of how interacting with kin versus non-kin might change the dynamics of the classic prisoner’s dilemma (figure 2-1). The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic economic game modeled on the conflict of interest faced by two prisoners being interrogated by the police. If the prisoners cooperate with one another by remaining silent, they share a better outcome than if both agree to testify for the prosecution (compare the upper left box in the left figure with the lower right box in the same figure). The dilemma arises because if prisoner A testifies, while B does not, A wins a bigger reward and B gets the worse outcome, and vice versa. Thus, each will be inclined to testify against the other to avoid this worst-case scenario. The same set of

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Prisoner A

Prisoner B

C

D

6B

7B

9B

2B 2A

D

9A

7A

6A

C

A & B unrelated, r=0

8A 5.5B

5.5A

3A 3B

D

C

8B

4.5A 4.5B

A & B brothers, r = .5

Figure 2-1. Considerations of inclusive fitness lead to more positive outcomes in situations that would pose dilemmas for unrelated associates. When the payoffs for each player in a traditional prisoner’s dilemma (left) are recalculated to be his own plus half of his brother’s, cooperation (C) replaces defection (D) as the dominant strategy (Kenrick and Sundie, in press). Reprinted by permission of Guilford Press.

payoffs creating a difficult dilemma for a pair of unrelated individuals, however, may have a different outcome if the two players are first-degree kin (who share, on average, 50 percent of their genes) (Kenrick and Sundie, in press). Thus, from a genetic perspective, each brother gets to share in half the other’s rewards, and the payoff matrix on the right reflects that each now benefits from cooperation, regardless of what the other one does. Hence, the temptation to testify, and the consequent dilemma, evaporate. The fact that one person’s decision biases interact with those of the people in his or her social network adds complexity to social life, but may also help organize our relationships into meaningful patterns. Because I am making decisions with you in mind, and vice versa, our interactions can harmonize. Of course, both of us are interacting with many other people as well, and those people all have their own decision biases. Rather than leading to a hopelessly complex disorder, the result is often “self-organization”—the emergence of order out of initial randomness. Computer simulations demonstrate why this self-organization is likely to be found for cooperation, such that some neighborhoods will become highly cooperative, and others highly competitive, as people try to match the behaviors of their neighbors (Kenrick, Li, and Butner, 2003). The same kind of normative self-organization can emerge for mating strategies. It will be difficult to behave in a sexually unrestricted way if the majority of one’s neighbors are faithfully married, and it will be harder to settle down into a monogamous marriage if most

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Biological Theories

of one’s neighbors are promiscuous partygoers. Although a neighborhood may start out with a mix of mating strategies, small random variations in frequencies may throw it slightly in one direction or the other, with the eventual result being strong local norms that tend to become selfmaintaining (Kenrick, Li, and Butner, 2003). Another consequence of the different decision rules used in the various domains is that there will be different social geometries associated with each domain. For example, long-term mateships tend to be more dyadic than affiliative networks (a new friend may bring more benefits than costs for your current friends, but a new mating partner usually brings more costs than benefits for your current long-term mate). SOCIAL DYNAMICS AND CULTURAL NORMS

The decision rules underlying behaviors in each domain are “if-then” statements in which the “if” is provided by inputs from the social environment, and the “then” is presumed to be a variable strategic response designed to result in behaviors better adapted to one contingency than another. Regular variations in the social and physical ecology determine whether one response or another will be adaptive. For example, when there is a relatively high ratio of women to men, men are in a position to engage in more unrestricted behaviors, and societal norms tend to become more promiscuous (Guttentag and Secord, 1983). When the reverse occurs and there are relatively many men competing for the attentions of relatively few mating-age women, men are required to be more committal, and societal norms favor long-term monogamous commitments. There is evidence that such ecological factors have direct and immediate impact on psychological judgments about relationships. For example, men exposed to a large number of available and beautiful females report less commitment to their current partner (Kenrick, Gutierres, and Goldberg, 1989; Kenrick, Neuberg, Zierk, and Krones, 1994). On the other hand, women are unaffected by exposure to good-looking men, but do decrease commitment to current partners after they are exposed to available successful men (Kenrick, Neuberg, et al., 1994). Self-evaluations, on the other hand, seem calibrated to information about one’s same-sex competitors. Men lower their self-appraised mate value after exposure to highly successful rather than attractive men, whereas women do the opposite, lowering their self-assessments after exposure to other women who are beautiful rather than successful (Gutierres, Kenrick, and Partch, 1999). Cross-cultural variations in the norms surrounding love are often simple extensions of these dynamic links between variable strategies and features

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of the physical and social environment. For example, polyandry in animals is rare, but is more likely to be found when resources are scarce. Polyandry often involves cooperation between brothers, who have less to lose by raising one another’s offspring (unrelated males in a polyandrous arrangement may have no genetic relationship at all to the offspring). In humans, polyandry is likewise rare, but also is found under circumstances of resource scarcity, and also is likely to involve brothers as the polyandrous mates of the same female (Crook and Crook, 1988). On the other hand, polygyny is more common in animals, but tends to be correlated with different ecological conditions than is polyandry, in this case variable distribution in the quality of male resources (with some males controlling much richer territories than others, for example) (Orians, 1969). In humans, polygyny is also associated with high variance in male resources, and high-status wealthy males are much more likely to attract multiple wives (Crook and Crook, 1988). Cross-cultural variations in age differences between women and their husbands are consistent with assumptions of an evolutionary life history model that considers the interactions between human social ecology and sex differences in resources contributed to offspring. In North American society, women in their late teens and twenties commonly marry older men. This has often been attributed to the particular norms of American society, but this theory has difficulty explaining why the same pattern is found not only in Germany and Holland but also in India, the Philippines, Africa, South America, and small islands around the world (Harpending, 1992; Kenrick and Keefe, 1992; Otta, Queiroz, Campos, Da Silva, and Silveira, 1998). The evolutionary life history model suggests that this pattern is so widespread because of the basic biological difference in resources invested in offspring. Human females contribute bodily resources directly, but this ability lessens in their mid-thirties, and terminates completely at menopause. Males, on the other hand, contribute other resources, which generally continue to accumulate as the male’s age increases. The Tiwi of Australia provide a rare exception to this general pattern, with young Tiwi men usually marrying much older women (often women past menopause). This arrangement at first seems to go against any biological model, evolutionary or otherwise, raising a question of how the members of this society manage to reproduce themselves. The answer is that Tiwi society actually shows hypertrophied versions of several other human tendencies. The society is polygynous, so the first (older) wife is not usually the woman who produces a man’s children. By marrying an older woman, a young man cements alliances with powerful older men who control the marriages of all their younger daughters. The control of Tiwi patriarchs is so

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total that all young women are married to one of them (indeed, they are betrothed at birth). The norms require that all women be married, including the older widows, but older patriarchs with younger wives are not interested in marrying widows. Instead, a young man who marries a patriarch’s aging female relative puts himself in line to be given a young wife (Hart and Pillig, 1960). Thus, rather than canceling all the rules of human reproduction, Tiwi society is one in which the normative rules have been shuffled slightly. Nevertheless, the usual human sex differences manifest themselves, though in another form. Most of the cultural variations in romantic relationships, formerly believed to be completely arbitrary, may instead involve biologically sensible interactions of basic human evolved tendencies with local social and physical ecological factors.

Conclusion The dynamic evolutionary model of love presumes that powerful bonds serve several distinct functions for human beings. The bonds with lovers, friends, long-term mates, and family members are consequently associated with very different evolved decision biases. The effects of those decision biases unfold in a dynamic way because the other players possess decision biases of their own. Consequently, there are different social dynamics and social geometries associated with the various kinds of love objects. Because those decision biases are flexibly calibrated to recurrent ecological factors, there will be biologically meaningful variations within and across societies that are linked to features of the prevailing social and physical environment. From this perspective, the key question is what the different forms of love do, not what they feel like. Most of the key questions raised by this perspective remain to be answered. Foremost among these are two: What is the precise nature of the decision biases associated with each type of social bond? Which features of the social and physical environment interact with those biases to create the various forms of social relationships found across human societies?

Acknowledgment Thanks to Mark Schaller for helpful feedback on this chapter.

References Ackerman, J. M., Ledlow, S. E., and Kenrick, D. T. (2003, February). Friends are family, friends are strangers: Social cognition in social relationships. Paper presented

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A Behavioral Systems Approach to Romantic Love Relationships: Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex phillip r. shaver and mario mikulincer

In The Psychology of Love (Sternberg and Barnes, 1988), Shaver, Hazan, and Bradshaw proposed that romantic love be conceptualized in terms of three behavioral systems discussed by Bowlby (1969/1982) in his ethological theory of attachment. Bowlby viewed attachment, caregiving, and sex (along with affiliation, exploration, and a few others) as innate motivational systems that had evolved over thousands of years because they increased the likelihood that infants would survive to reproductive age and be likely to contribute their genes to the next generation. In 1988, Bowlby’s theory was unfamiliar to most personality and social psychologists. It was so focused on infant-parent relationships, in which the infant’s attachment system and the parent’s caregiving system serve complementary functions, that most psychologists who studied adolescents and adults did not view it as relevant to their work, even though Bowlby (1979, p. 129) claimed that the attachment system is active “from the cradle to the grave.” If he had said more about the caregiving and sexual systems, he undoubtedly would have portrayed them as active across the life span as well. The few personality-social psychologists who studied love in the 1980s generally adopted a descriptive and atheoretical approach, attempting to delineate different types of love, often viewing them as attitudes, while saying relatively little about why these states exist (e.g., Hendrick and Hendrick,

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1989; Rubin, 1973). For example, Walster and Walster (1978) distinguished passionate from compassionate love without providing a theory about their developmental origins or adaptive functions. In one of the few theoretically oriented approaches to romantic love, Berscheid and Walster (1974) applied Schachter’s (1964) two-factor theory of emotion, noting that the experience of romantic love consists of both diffuse physiological arousal and a cognitive interpretation of what is causing it (usually something in the social environment). This approach inadvertently robbed romantic love of an independent existence and function, viewing love, like anger or euphoria (two emotions studied by Schachter), as just another case of mislabeled arousal. Both the attitude approach and the two-factor approach to love fit well with a belief common among social psychologists in the 1980s that romantic love was a cultural invention of Western civilization (e.g., Averill, 1985; De Rougement, 1940), which made appeals to biological or evolutionary concepts seem misguided. Times have changed. Today, “evolutionary psychology” (e.g., Buss, 1999; Simpson, 1999) is a well-accepted approach to the study of cognition, emotion, and social behavior. And attachment theory, which is an evolutionary psychological theory, is central to both developmental and social psychology. As attachment theory has become more familiar to social psychologists, cultural anthropologists also have changed their tune with respect to the cross-cultural universality of romantic love (e.g., Chisholm, 1999; Jankowiak, 1995). This intense emotion has been expressed in the literature, poetry, and everyday thoughts of the members of every culture that has been well studied. At the time when Shaver et al. (1988) were preparing their chapter for the Sternberg and Barnes book, Hazan and Shaver (1987) published an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP) that contained the rudiments of a behavioral systems approach to romantic love as well as a simple measure of attachment styles in romantic relationships. That article became one of the ten most cited papers in JPSP’s thirty-five-year history. Thus, our task in the present chapter is not to defend or argue for attachment theory, or for behavioral systems theory more generally, as an approach to love, but to summarize what has been learned about the theory’s potential and limitations since 1988. We also want to explain what remains to be done to conceptualize love in terms of innate behavioral systems and the individual differences in parameters of these systems. Because there is now abundant empirical information about the three behavioral systems, it is possible to say something about their interrelations.

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We begin with a brief summary of Shaver et al.’s (1988) chapter. We then explain Bowlby’s theory and its key motivational construct, the behavioral system, and describe the normative and individual-difference components of the attachment, caregiving, and sexual behavioral systems. At the same time we introduce a model of behavioral system activation and suppression and show how systematic individual differences in parameters of behavioral systems help to explain the dynamics of romantic love. Next, we summarize what has been learned about how these individual differences affect the quality of romantic relationships as well as the dynamic interplay among the attachment, caregiving, and sexual systems within the context of these relationships. Toward the end of the chapter we discuss the desirability of theoretical integration, especially with the triangular theory of love (Sternberg, 1987) and interdependence theory (e.g., Holmes and Cameron, 2005; Thibault and Kelley, 1959).

Love as Attachment In his classic trilogy Attachment and Loss—one of the most cited sources in contemporary psychology—Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980) attempted to describe how and explain why infants become emotionally attached to their primary caregivers and emotionally distressed when separated from them. Bowlby (1969/1982), along with Harlow (1959), rejected classical psychoanalytic and Pavlovian behavioral frameworks that portrayed emotional bonds as secondary effects of feeding. Instead, he viewed human infants as naturally relationship-seeking, naturally oriented to what Harlow called “contact comfort,” and naturally inclined to seek proximity to comforting figures in times of need. On this basis, Bowlby reasoned that the formation of an infant’s emotional tie to its primary caregiver depends on this natural tendency to seek proximity, on the caregiver’s responsiveness to the infant’s bids for proximity, and on the caregiver’s ability to provide protection and comfort in times of need. Specifically, these caregiving “attachment figures,” according to Bowlby, need to provide a “safe haven” (protection, support, and relief) in times of need and a “secure base” that allows the infant to engage in exploratory and play behaviors in a safe environment. In his writings, Bowlby (1979) also emphasized that the need for comforting figures and the emotional attachment to security providers are evident across the entire life span and can explain the experience of familial emotions, including love. In his own words:

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Biological Theories Many of the most intense of all human emotions arise during the formation, the maintenance, the disruption and the renewal of affectional bonds— which for that reason are sometimes called emotional bonds. In terms of subjective experience, the formation of a bond is described as falling in love, maintaining a bond as loving someone, and losing a partner as grieving over someone. Similarly, the threat of loss arouses anxiety and actual loss causes sorrow, whilst both situations are likely to arouse anger. Finally, the unchallenged maintenance of a bond is experienced as a source of security, and the renewal as a source of joy. (Bowlby, 1979, p. 69)

Following Bowlby’s lead, Shaver et al. (1988) proposed that romantic bonds in adulthood are emotional attachments and are conceptually parallel to infants’ emotional bonds with their primary caregivers. In their terms, “for every documented feature of attachment there is a parallel feature of love, and for most documented features of love there is either a documented or a plausible infant parallel” (p. 73). Love in both infancy and adulthood includes eye contact, holding, touching, caressing, smiling, crying, clinging, a desire to be comforted by the relationship partner (parent, romantic lover, or spouse) when distressed, the experience of anger, anxiety, and sorrow following separation or loss, and the experience of happiness and joy upon reunion. Moreover, formation of a secure relationship with either a primary caregiver or a romantic partner depends on the caregiver/partner’s sensitivity and responsiveness to the increasingly attached person’s proximity bids. This responsiveness causes the attached person to feel more confident and safe, happier, more outgoing, and kinder to others. Furthermore, in both kinds of relationships, when the partner is not available or not responsive to the person’s proximity bids, the person can become anxious, preoccupied, and hypersensitive to signs of love or its absence, to approval or rejection. Separation or nonresponsiveness, up to a point, can increase the intensity of both an infant’s and an adult’s proximity-seeking behavior, but beyond some point they can lead to defensive distancing from the caregiver or partner so as to avoid the pain and distress caused by the frustrating relationship. All of these parallels led Shaver et al. (1988) to conclude that infants’ bonds with parents and romantic love in adulthood are variants of a single underlying process. Shaver et al. (1988) took a further step and contended that the same three attachment patterns or styles observed by Ainsworth et al. (1978) in their classic studies of infants’ attachments to their parents—secure, anxious, avoidant—can be seen in the different ways adults relate to their romantic partners. Hazan and Shaver (1987) developed a self-report measure of adult attachment style suitable for use in experiments and surveys. In its original

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form, the measure consisted of three brief descriptions of feelings and behaviors in close relationships that were intended to characterize adult romantic analogues of the three infant attachment styles. Research participants were asked to read the descriptions and place themselves into one of the three attachment categories according to their predominant feelings and behaviors in romantic relationships. The three descriptions were worded as follows: Secure: I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me. Avoidant: I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, others want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being. Anxious: I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner, and this sometimes scares people away. In both a newspaper survey of community members and a more typical study of university students, Hazan and Shaver (1987) found that the frequencies of the three attachment styles in adulthood were similar to those found in infancy, and that participants’ accounts of their romantic love relationships were systematically related to their attachment styles. People who classified themselves as securely attached described their love relationships as friendly, warm, trusting, and supportive. They emphasized intimacy as the core feature of these relationships; and they believed in the existence of romantic love and the possibility of maintaining intense love over an extended time period. People with an avoidant style described their romantic relationships as low in warmth, lacking in friendly interactions, and low in emotional involvement. They believed that love fades with time and that the kind of romance depicted in novels and films does not really exist. In contrast, people who reported having an anxious style characterized their romantic relationships as involving obsession and passion, strong physical attraction, desire for union or merger with their partner, and proneness to fall in love quickly and perhaps indiscriminately. They characterized their lovers as untrustworthy and nonsupportive, and they reported intense bouts of jealousy and anger toward romantic partners as well as worries about rejection and abandonment. Hazan and Shaver’s seminal study was followed by hundreds of others

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that have examined the interpersonal and intrapersonal correlates of adult attachment style (see reviews by Shaver and Hazan, 1993; Shaver and Mikulincer, 2002). However, because Hazan and Shaver’s (1987) study focused mainly on the conceptualization and assessment of individual differences in attachment style, researchers subsequently conducted many studies focused on these individual differences without paying much attention to central issues in Bowlby’s theory, such as the dynamics of the attachment behavioral system or the functioning of the other behavioral systems (sex and caregiving) involved in romantic love. More recently this imbalance has begun to be corrected, and more studies have been directed at the normative functioning of the attachment system in adulthood (see Shaver and Mikulincer, 2002, for a review) and the relations among the attachment, caregiving, and sexual systems (e.g., Collins and Feeney, 2000; Kunce and Shaver, 1994; Schachner and Shaver, 2004). In the following section, we discuss Bowlby’s (1969/1982) key motivational construct, the behavioral system, and describe the operating parameters of the three major behavioral systems thought to be involved in romantic relationships: attachment, caregiving, and sex. In table 3-1, we present a schematic summary of the normative and individual-difference parameters of these three systems.

Operating Parameters of the Attachment, Caregiving, and Sexual Behavioral Systems In explaining the motivational basis of proximity-seeking, caregiving, and sexual behaviors, Bowlby (1969/1982) borrowed from ethology the concept behavioral system—a species-universal neural program that governs the choice, activation, and termination of behavioral sequences so as to produce a functional change in the person-environment relationship that has adaptive advantages for survival and reproduction. Each behavioral system involves a specific set-goal (e.g., attaining a sense of safety and security, relieving others’ distress and promoting their welfare, passing one’s genes to the next generation by becoming pregnant or impregnating a partner) and a set of interchangeable, functionally equivalent behaviors that constitute the primary strategy of the system for attaining its particular goal state (e.g., attaining safety and security through proximity-seeking, protecting or comforting another person, sexually seducing another person). These behaviors are automatically “activated” by certain stimuli or kinds of situations that make a particular set-goal salient (e.g., loud noises that signal danger, an encounter with a distressed or needy person, the appearance in one’s life of

Table 3-1 Schematic summary of the normative and individual-difference parameters of the attachment, caregiving, and sexual behavioral systems Parameter

Attachment System

Caregiving System Provision of protection and support of others in times of need

Sexual System

Biological function

Protection from danger by maintaining proximity to supportive others

Passing one’s genes to the next generation

Set-goal

Safety from danger and Reduction of others’ threats; alleviation of one’s suffering; fostering own distress their growth and development

Having sex (and, usually indirectly, achieving pregnancy)

Contextual triggers

Actual or symbolic threats; Others’ attachment unavailability of supporbehaviors or signals tive figures of need

Encounters with an attractive, sexually aroused or fertile partner

Primary strategy

Seeking actual or symbolic Empathic responsiveproximity to external or ness; perspectiveinternal supportive figures taking; and sensitive and effective helping

Sexual approach, sexual attraction, and sexual persuasion

Relational support or Availability of sensitive constraint of optimal and supportive others in functioning times of need

Willingness and abil- Ability to sexually atity to help; others’ ac- tract others; others’ acceptance of caregiving ceptance of sexual bids bids

Emotional benefits of Sense of security and beoptimal functioning ing loved; effective affect regulation

Sense of generativity, Joy, vitality, potency, love, and communion; and feelings of love and compassionate love intimacy

Hyperactivating strategies

Intense demands for partner’s attention and care; hypervigilance regarding threats and signs of rejection

Exaggeration of others’ needs; hypervigilance toward others’ distress; intrusive and coercive styles of caregiving

Intrusive and coercive sexual attempts; hypervigilance toward partner’s signals of sexual attraction or rejection

Deactivating strategies

Denial of attachment needs; avoidance of closeness and intimacy; compulsive self-reliance

Inhibition of empathic help; dismissal of others’ distress; distancing from needy others

Dismissal of sexual needs; distancing from a sexually aroused partner; sexual promiscuity as a form of selfaggrandizement

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an attractive potential sex partner), and “deactivated” or “terminated” by other stimuli or situations that signal attainment of the desired goal state (Bowlby, 1969/1982). Since each behavioral system was evolutionarily “designed” to increase the likelihood of adaptation to environmental demands, its optimal functioning has important implications for mental health and adjustment. Bowlby (1969/1982) also assumed that behavioral systems include “ontogenetically learned” adjustments reflecting a person’s history of transactions with the environment in which a behavioral system was activated and either succeeded or failed to attain the desired goal state. Since the ability of a behavioral system to achieve its set-goal depends on a person’s actual transactions with the world, each system includes cognitive-behavioral mechanisms, such as monitoring and appraising the effectiveness of behaviors emitted in a particular context, that allow flexible, goal-corrected adjustment of the system’s “programming” when necessary to put the individual back on the track of goal attainment. Over time, after operating repeatedly in certain environments, a person’s behavioral systems become molded by social encounters, “programming” the neural/behavioral capacities so that they fit the behavior of important relationship partners (e.g., parents) and yield effective action in that relational environment. Through this process, a person learns to conform his or her behavioral systems to contextual demands and forms reliable expectations about possible access routes and barriers to goal attainment. These expectations (which Bowlby, 1973, called “internal working models of self and others”) become part of a behavioral system’s programming and are the bases of both individual differences and within-person continuity of the system. Changes in a behavioral system’s programming can also include disengagement from the primary strategy following recurrent failure to attain the system’s set-goal. These failures are a major source of frustration, pain, and distress; they create negative working models of self and others (e.g., “I don’t have the resources necessary to help my partner,” “I cannot trust my partner in times of need”) and signal that the primary strategy should be replaced by alternative (secondary) strategies. Attachment theorists (e.g., Cassidy and Kobak, 1988; Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003) have emphasized two such secondary strategies: hyperactivation and deactivation of the system. Hyperactivating strategies are “fight” (or “persist” or “protest”) responses that intensify the primary strategy of a system in order to coerce a relationship partner to behave in accordance with the system’s goals (e.g., to provide greater support, accept more of one’s help, have sex or have it more often or in a more satisfying way); they keep a behavioral system chronically

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activated until its set-goal is achieved. These responses are learned in social environments that place (or placed, in the person’s developmental history) a person on a partial reinforcement schedule for persistence or insistence (through sporadic experiences of goal attainment). They are based on what a person interprets to be rewards for energetic, even strident, applications of the primary strategy, because these applications seem, at least sometimes, to succeed (or to have succeeded in the past). Unfortunately, while sometimes successful with at least some interaction partners, these responses depend on a heightening of distress and a persistence of worries about one’s own efficacy and social value. They can easily encourage intrusive, controlling, and aggressive responses that lead to relationship dysfunction, partner dissatisfaction, and eventual rejection or abandonment—ironically and tragically, the outcomes most dreaded by the hyperactivating person. In contrast, deactivating strategies are “flight” (or avoidance) responses that require turning off or (to use Bowlby’s term) terminating a behavioral system in an effort to avoid the frustration, pain, and distress caused by rebuffed efforts to attain the system’s goal. These responses are thought to develop during interactions with relationship partners who disapprove of and even punish expressions of a system’s primary strategy (e.g., proximityseeking, caring or helping, or showing sexual interest). In such social encounters, an individual learns to expect better outcomes if signs of the primary strategy are hidden or suppressed, and the behavioral system in question is deactivated despite not having attained its goal. The problem with these strategies is that they require a narrowing of interpersonal activities (e.g., being intimate, providing care, or engaging in enjoyable sexual intercourse), frequently result in failure to achieve important goals, and deter a person from realizing that not all new relationship partners make the same dysfunctional demands as previous partners did on a particular behavioral system. In short, some of life’s most rewarding experiences are forgone in an attempt to avoid certain kinds of frustration, disappointment, and punishment. THE ATTACHMENT BEHAVIORAL SYSTEM

The presumed biological function of the attachment system is to protect a person (especially during infancy and early childhood) from danger by assuring that he or she maintains proximity to caring and supportive others (attachment figures). The goal of the system is objective protection or support, and the concomitant subjective sense of safety or security (which Sroufe and Waters, 1977, called “felt security”). The negative emotions experienced by a person in relation to this behavioral system are especially

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intense when he or she encounters actual or symbolic threats and notices that an attachment figure is not sufficiently near, interested, or responsive (Bowlby, 1969/1982). In such cases, the attachment system is activated and the individual is driven to seek and reestablish actual or symbolic proximity to an external or internalized attachment figure (the system’s primary strategy) until the set-goal of felt security is attained. Bowlby (1969/1982, 1988) assumed that although the effects of attachment system activation are most easily observed during infancy, the system continues to function throughout life, as indicated by adults’ needs for proximity, support, and security (Hazan and Zeifman, 1999). Smooth functioning of the attachment system requires that an attachment figure be available in times of need, sensitive and responsive to the individual’s bids for proximity, and effective in alleviating the individual’s distress. Such positive interactions promote an inner sense of attachment security (based on expectations that key people will be available and supportive in times of need) and lead to the consolidation of security-based strategies of affect regulation (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003). These strategies are aimed at alleviating distress; forming comfortable, supportive intimate relationships; and increasing personal adjustment without generating negative side effects (strategies that Epstein and Meier, 1989, called “constructive ways of coping”). Security-based strategies consist of optimistic beliefs about distress management; faith in others’ goodwill; a sense of being loved, esteemed, understood, and accepted by relationship partners; and a sense of self-efficacy with respect to gaining proximity to a loving partner when support is needed. These strategies also involve acknowledging and expressing feelings of distress or vulnerability and seeking emotional support in order to downregulate distress in the service of problem-focused coping (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003). When a person’s attachment figures are not reliably available and supportive, a sense of attachment security is not attained, and the distress that activated the system is compounded by serious doubts and fears about the feasibility of attaining a sense of security: “Is the world a safe place or not?” “Can I trust my relationship partner in times of need or not?” “Do I have the resources necessary to bring my partner close to me?” These worries about self and relationship partners can cause a person’s mind to be preoccupied with threats and the need for protection, and can drastically interfere with the functioning of other behavioral systems. Negative attachment interactions indicate that the primary attachment strategy, proximity and support-seeking, has to be replaced by either hyperactivating or deactivating strategies. Hyperactivation of the attachment sys-

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tem (which Bowlby, 1969/1982, called “protest”) is manifested in energetic, insistent attempts to get a relationship partner, viewed as insufficiently available or responsive, to pay attention and provide care and support. The strategies include clinging and controlling responses, cognitive and behavioral efforts to establish not only physical contact but also perceived self-other similarity and “oneness,” and overdependence on relationship partners as a source of protection (Shaver and Mikulincer, 2002). Hyperactivation keeps the attachment system chronically activated, constantly on the alert for threats, separations, and betrayals, thereby exacerbating relational distress and conflicts (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003). This strategy interferes with good communication, emotional tranquillity, and mature personal development. Deactivation of the attachment system includes inhibition of proximityseeking and cultivation of what Bowlby (1980) called “compulsive selfreliance” and “detachment.” These strategies require denial of attachment needs; avoidance of closeness, intimacy, and dependence in close relationships; maximization of cognitive, emotional, and physical distance from others; and striving for self-reliance and independence (Shaver and Mikulincer, 2002). They also involve active inattention to threatening events and personal vulnerabilities, as well as inhibition and suppression of thoughts and memories that evoke distress and feelings of vulnerability, because such thoughts can cause unwanted activation of the attachment system, which the person believes will not result in desirable outcomes (Fraley, Davis, and Shaver, 1998).

The Caregiving Behavioral System According to Bowlby (1969/1982), the caregiving system was crafted by evolution to provide protection and support to others who are either chronically dependent or temporarily in need. Its goal is truly altruistic, and it responds to signals of need emitted by another person’s attachment system. The set-goal of the caregiving system is the reduction of another person’s suffering (which Bowlby, 1969/1982, called providing a “safe haven”) or fostering another person’s growth and development (which Bowlby, 1969/ 1982, called providing a “secure base for exploration”). The primary strategy for achieving these goals is to adopt what Batson (1991) called an empathic attitude—for example, taking the perspective of a relationship partner in order to sensitively and effectively help the partner reduce distress or encourage positive growth and development. The caregiving system is focused on another person’s welfare, and therefore directs attention to the

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other’s needs, wishes, emotions, and intentions rather than to one’s own emotional state. In the realm of romantic relationships, one partner’s caregiving system is automatically activated by the other partner’s attachment behaviors or signals of need, and the goal is to alter the needy partner’s condition until signs of increased safety, well-being, and security are evident. Smooth functioning of the caregiving system depends on an individual’s ability and willingness to empathically and effectively help a needy partner, and also on the partner’s responsiveness to the individual’s caregiving bids. These positive interactions promote an inner sense of what Erikson (1950) called “generativity”—a sense that one is more than an encapsulated self and is able to contribute importantly to others’ welfare. It is a truly altruistic, compassionate form of love (which Lee, 1977, called “agape”) aimed at alleviating distress and benefiting others. The sense of generativity includes feeling that one has good qualities and is able to perform good deeds; strong feelings of self-efficacy for being helpful when needed; confidence in one’s interpersonal skills; and heightened feelings of love, communion, and connectedness with respect to a relationship partner. In other words, as with the other behavioral systems, smooth functioning of the caregiving system leads to positive feelings toward the self, even though its primary goal is to benefit others. As in the case of the attachment system, dysfunctions of the caregiving system can trigger either hyperactivating or deactivating strategies. Hyperactivated caregiving strategies are intrusive, poorly timed, and effortful; they are intended to make one indispensable to a partner and feel competent as a caregiver. These goals can be achieved by exaggerating appraisals of others’ needs, adopting a hypervigilant attitude toward others’ distress, performing actions aimed at coercing others to accept one’s caregiving bids, and focusing on others’ needs to the neglect of one’s own. On the other hand, deactivating strategies result in inhibition of empathy and effective caregiving, combined with increased interpersonal distance precisely when a partner seeks proximity. Consequently, a deactivated caregiving system entails less sensitivity and responsiveness to others’ needs, dismissal or downplaying of others’ distress, suppression of thoughts related to others’ needs and vulnerability, and inhibition of sympathy and compassion.

The Sexual Behavioral System From an evolutionary perspective, the major function of the sexual system is to pass genes from one generation to the next (Buss and Kenrick, 1998). The set-goal of the system is to have sexual intercourse with an

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opposite-sex partner and either become pregnant oneself (in the case of women) or impregnate the partner (in the case of men). The goal often becomes particularly salient when a person encounters an attractive, sexually interested or aroused, or fertile opposite-sex partner. The primary strategy for achieving the set-goal is to approach such a partner, persuade him or her to have sex, and engage in genital intercourse. That is, the primary strategy of the sexual system consists of bringing fertile partners together to have sex by heightening sensitivity to signals of fertility and interest in opposite-sex partners, increasing one’s attractiveness as a potential sexual partner, and using effective persuasive techniques to seduce a potential partner. From this perspective, sexual attraction is a motivating force that drives individuals to look for either short-term or long-term mating opportunities with potential sex partners (e.g., Buss, 1999). (The less common case of homosexual attraction is beyond the scope of the present chapter, but it has been insightfully discussed in relation to attachment theory by Diamond, 2006.) Smooth functioning of the sexual system requires coordination of two partners’ motives and responses. It depends on one’s ability to attract a partner and convince him or her to have sex, and on the partner’s availability, sensitivity, and responsiveness to one’s sexual bids. These mutually coordinated interactions can lead to encounters in which both partners gratify their sexual needs and have enjoyable, orgasmic experiences. Moreover, they produce feelings of vitality and energy (which Ryan and Frederick, 1997, called “subjective vitality”); perception of oneself as attractive and potent; a strong sense of self-efficacy for attracting relationship partners and having sex when desired; feelings of being loved and esteemed; and enhanced feelings of love, gratitude, intimacy, and communion toward a particular relationship partner. Dysfunctions of the sexual behavioral system, like dysfunctions of the other systems, can be conceptualized in terms of hyperactivating and deactivating strategies. Hyperactivating strategies involve effortful, mentally preoccupying, sometimes intrusive, and even coercive attempts to persuade a partner to have sex. In the process, a person can overemphasize the importance of sexual activities within a relationship, exaggerate appraisals of a partner’s sexual needs, and adopt a hypervigilant stance toward a partner’s signals of sexual arousal, attraction, or rejection. In contrast, deactivating strategies are characterized either by inhibition of sexual desire and an erotophobic, avoidant attitude toward sex or a superficial approach to sex that divorces it from other considerations, such as kindness and intimacy. Deactivating sexual strategies include dismissal of sexual needs, distancing

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from or disparaging a partner when he or she expresses interest in sex, suppression of sex-related thoughts and fantasies, repression of sex-related memories, and inhibition of sexual arousal and orgasmic joy. They can also, paradoxically, promote sexual promiscuity driven by narcissism or selfenhancement without an intense sexual drive or even much enjoyment of sex per se (Schachner and Shaver, 2004).

Measurement Issues As explained earlier, Shaver et al.’s (1988) chapter in The Psychology of Love focused mainly on the conceptualization and measurement of individual differences in the attachment system. As a result, an enormous body of research has grown up around these individual differences without anyone paying much attention to variations in the other behavioral systems involved in romantic love: caregiving and sex. That is, we have highly reliable and construct-valid instruments for assessing hyperactivation and deactivation of the attachment system, but less programmatic and less theoretically sound assessment tools for studying individual differences in the caregiving and sexual systems. In the attachment realm, Hazan and Shaver’s (1987) initial three-category measure of adult attachment style was elaborated in several sophisticated psychometric studies (e.g., Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991; Brennan, Clark, and Shaver, 1998; Fraley and Waller, 1998), which indicated that attachment styles are best conceptualized as regions in a continuous twodimensional space. The first dimension, attachment avoidance, reflects the extent to which a person distrusts relationship partners’ goodwill, deactivates the attachment system, and strives to maintain behavioral independence and emotional distance from partners. The second dimension, attachment anxiety, reflects the degree to which a person worries that a partner will not be available in times of need, and engages in hyperactivating strategies. People who score low on both dimensions are said to be secure or securely attached. The two dimensions can be measured with reliable and valid self-report scales, such as the Experience in Close Relationships scale (ECR; Brennan, Wu, and Loev, 1998), and they are associated in theoretically predictable ways with affect regulation, self-esteem, psychological wellbeing, and interpersonal functioning (see Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003; Shaver and Clark, 1994; Shaver and Hazan, 1993, for reviews). In the caregiving domain, no assessment device has been constructed to assess hyperactivating and deactivating strategies. However, an item analysis of the existing self-report measures of caregiving responses reveals that they

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do tap aspects of these dysfunctions. For example, M. H. Davis’s (1983) Interpersonal Reactivity Index includes an Empathic Concern subscale that taps variations (mostly on the low end) of the deactivating dimension (e.g., “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me”) and a Personal Distress subscale that taps the self-focused aspects of the hyperactivating dimension (e.g., “Being in a tense emotional situation scares me”). Kunce and Shaver’s (1994) measure of caregiving within romantic relationships includes items gauging distance from a suffering partner and lack of sensitivity to signals of need (e.g., “I sometimes push my partner away even though s/he seems to need me,” “I sometimes miss the subtle signs that show how my partner is feeling”), as well as items tapping anxious, compulsive caregiving (e.g., “I tend to get overinvolved in my partner’s problems and difficulties”). However, relationship researchers still lack a reliable and valid measure that, like the ECR scale in the attachment domain, is explicitly designed to assess variations in hyperactivating and deactivating caregiving strategies. As in the caregiving domain, no research instrument has been designed to assess hyperactivation and deactivation of the sexual behavioral system. Still, we can gain important insights from scales designed to assess sexual attitudes and behaviors. For example, the erotophilia-erotophobia scale (Fisher, Byrne, White, and Kelley, 1988) assesses the tendency to respond to sexual stimuli in approach or avoidance terms, and this comes close to our understanding of the deactivation dimension (e.g., “I feel no pleasure during sexual fantasies”). The Revised Mosher Guilt Inventory (Mosher, 1988), the Sex Anxiety Inventory (Janda and O’Grady, 1980), and the Experience of Heterosexual Intercourse scale (Birnbaum and Laser-Brandt, 2002) assess some of the worry-related aspects of sexual system hyperactivation (e.g., “Bothersome thoughts disturb my concentration during sexual intercourse”).

Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex Within Romantic Relationships In this section, we present ideas and research concerning how individual variations in the parameters of the attachment, caregiving, and sexual systems affect the quality of romantic love. In our view, individual differences in these three systems are important for understanding romantic love, because the systems’ smooth functioning brings relationship partners together, increases physical and emotional closeness, and heightens feelings of love and gratitude toward the partner as well as feelings of being loved and

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esteemed by the partner. The smooth operation of these three systems is crucial for forming and maintaining intimate, satisfying, and long-lasting romantic relationships. With respect to Sternberg’s (1986) triangular theory of love, optimal functioning of the attachment, caregiving, and sexual systems enlarges the area of the “love triangle” by increasing the intensity of its three components: intimacy, commitment, and passion. As explained earlier, smooth functioning of the three behavioral systems tends to create feelings of communion, connectedness, and togetherness with a relationship partner, thereby sustaining the “intimacy” component of romantic love. The attachment and caregiving systems strengthen the “commitment” component of romantic love as conceptualized by Sternberg. Positive interactions with a partner who is available and responsive in times of need generate not only a sense of security but also feelings of gratitude and love, which in turn motivate the secure person to stay in the relationship and commit himself or herself to maintain it and promote the partner’s welfare. Moreover, positive interactions in which a person effectively promotes a partner’s welfare strengthen the caregiver’s emotional involvement in the relationship as well as his or her feelings of responsibility for the partner’s condition, thereby sustaining the “commitment” component of romantic love. Finally, the “passion” component of romantic love is closely related to the activation and functioning of the sexual behavioral system, which creates feelings of attraction, arousal, vitality, and excitement within the relationship. Attachment researchers have been successful in generating a large body of theory-consistent findings showing that secure attachment is associated with higher levels of relationship stability and satisfaction in both dating and married couples (see Mikulincer, Florian, Cowan, and Cowan, 2002; Shaver and Mikulincer, in press, for extensive reviews). Studies have also linked secure attachment with higher scores on measures of relationship intimacy and commitment (e.g., Collins and Read, 1990; Mikulincer and Erev, 1991; Shaver and Brennan, 1992; Simpson, 1990), as well as relationship-enhancing patterns of emotional reactions to partner behaviors and adaptive strategies of conflict resolution (e.g., Rholes, Simpson, and Orina, 1999; Scharfe and Bartholomew, 1995). There is also extensive evidence that secure attachment is associated with both positive expectations about a partner’s behavior (e.g., Baldwin, Fehr, Keedian, Seidel, and Thomson, 1993; Mikulincer and Arad, 1999) and relationship-enhancing explanations of a partner’s negative behaviors (e.g., Collins, 1996; Mikulincer, 1998). In the domain of caregiving, evidence is rapidly accumulating that relational episodes in which an individual sensitively attends to and empathically responds

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to a romantic partner’s attachment behaviors and signals of need lead to heightened feelings of intimacy and love (Reis and Patrick, 1996), and enhanced relationship satisfaction in both the caregiver and his or her partner (e.g., Collins and Feeney, 2000; B. Feeney, 2004; B. Feeney and Collins, 2003). There is also growing evidence that sexual interactions in which both partners gratify their needs contribute to relationship satisfaction and stability (see Sprecher and Cate, 2004, for an extensive review) and heighten feelings of love and commitment (e.g., Pinney, Gerrard, and Denney, 1987; Sprecher and Regan, 1998; Waite and Joyner, 2001). We believe that dysfunctions of the attachment, caregiving, and sexual systems, viewed in terms of the hyperactivation and deactivation dimensions, are crucial for understanding pathologies of romantic love, relational tensions and conflicts, and erosion of affectional bonds. In the domain of attachment, hyperactivating strategies lead anxiously attached people to feel chronically frustrated because of their unfulfilled need for demonstrations of love and support, to catastrophically appraise interpersonal conflicts, to exaggerate relational worries and doubts about a partner’s goodwill, and to intensify emotional and behavioral reactions to even minimal signs of a partner’s unavailability or disinterest (e.g., Collins, 1996; Shaver and Brennan, 1992; Simpson, Ickes, and Grich, 1999). As a result, these strategies may cause a partner to feel poorly served by the anxiously attached person’s frequent suspicions and demands for security; engulfed by his or her desire for merger; and controlled by his or her clinging behavior and hypervigilance. These negative feelings may cause partners to distance themselves from an anxiously attached person, which in turn is likely to intensify his or her insecurity. In this way, a self-amplifying dyadic cycle of dissatisfaction can be created that eventually destroys a romantic relationship. Deactivation of the attachment system also has negative effects on relationship quality and stability. It reduces a person’s emotional involvement, commitment, and intimacy (e.g., Collins and Read, 1990; J. A. Feeney and Noller, 1990; Shaver and Brennan, 1992), and can cause partners to feel frustrated because their bids for intimacy and affection are rebuffed and their signals of need and distress are dismissed or ignored. Moreover, avoidant individuals’ tendency to evade discussions of relational problems (e.g., Gaines, Reis, Summers, Rusbult, Cox, Wexler, Marelich, and Kurland, 1997; Scharfe and Bartholomew, 1995) may leave conflicts unresolved and increase a partner’s irritation and anger. As a result, relationship satisfaction erodes and the likelihood of dissolution increases. Dysfunctions of the caregiving system—failure to respond empathically to a partner’s needs and refusal to help the partner alleviate distress—are also

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an important source of relational tensions and conflicts that can reduce intimacy and commitment and evoke a host of relationship-damaging worries, attitudes, and behaviors (e.g., Collins and Feeney, 2000; B. Feeney, 2004; B. Feeney and Collins, 2003). Hyperactivating strategies are accompanied by heightened personal distress and doubts about caregiving efficacy when a partner needs help, which in turn impairs the effectiveness of caregiving responses and leaves the partner frustrated and overwhelmed by unresolved distress and frustration about one’s helplessness to deal with it. These strategies foster intrusive and controlling behaviors aimed at coercing others to accept one’s caregiving bids, which in turn result in rejection by the partner, increased relational distress, and acceleration of dysfunctional “caregiving” responses (Kunce and Shaver, 1994). Deactivating strategies involve distancing from a partner every time he or she expresses signs of vulnerability or distress, which in turn increases the needy partner’s attachment insecurities and strengthens negative representations of the avoidant person as unavailable, cold, and rejecting (Collins and Feeney, 2000). These insecurities and negative beliefs can erode a needy partner’s feelings of romantic love and decrease the likelihood of staying in a frustrating relationship. Hyperactivation of the sexual system within a romantic relationship can also have negative effects on romantic love and relationship satisfaction and stability. Chronic sexual system activation is accompanied by heightened anxieties and worries about one’s sexual attractiveness, the extent to which one is able to gratify one’s partner, and the partner’s responses to one’s sexual appeals (Birnbaum and Laser-Brandt, 2002). These anxieties and worries may encourage intrusive or aggressive responses aimed at coercing the partner to have sex, which in turn can heighten the frequency of sexrelated conflicts, thereby leading to relationship dissatisfaction (Long, Cate, Fehsenfeld, and Williams, 1996). Adoption of a distancing attitude every time a partner expresses sexual interest combined with inhibition of sexual arousal and orgasmic joy—all being common features of deactivating sexual strategies—can leave a partner sexually frustrated, heighten doubts about being attractive and loved, and encourage interest in alternative partners (e.g., Hurlbert, Apt, Hurlbert, and Pierce, 2000).

Interplay Among the Attachment, Caregiving, and Sexual Systems In The Psychology of Love, Shaver et al. (1988) formulated explicit hypotheses about how individual variations in the functioning of the attachment system might bias the functioning of the caregiving and sexual systems.

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Since the attachment system appears first in development (during the first year of life), its pattern of functioning and specific forms of dysfunction, either hyperactivation or deactivation, can affect the other two systems, which appear later in development. (Empathic reactions to a suffering or needy person appear as early as two or three years of age [e.g., Kestenbaum, Farber, and Sroufe, (1989)], and overt genital sexuality appears at puberty.) Although Shaver et al.’s (1988) rationale was based on Bowlby’s theoretical writings about the interplay of behavioral systems, there was no empirical evidence for their hypotheses about the ways in which attachment anxiety and avoidance might affect caregiving and sex. With the progress of research on adult attachment processes, however, this empirical gap is beginning to be filled (e.g., Collins and Feeney, 2000; Kunce and Shaver, 1994; Schachner and Shaver, 2004). In this section, we present a brief review of the accumulating evidence. ATTACHMENT AND CAREGIVING

According to Bowlby (1969/1982), activation of the attachment system interferes with nonattachment activities, which are conceptualized as products of other behavioral systems. This process was demonstrated in Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall’s (1978) research on the inhibition of children’s exploration in a laboratory “strange situation” when an attachment figure was asked to leave the room. The same kind of inhibition often occurs in romantic relationships (Kunce and Shaver, 1994) when a person who is asked to act as a caregiver for his or her needy partner feels insecure, distressed, or in need of support and comfort. Under such conditions, the caregiver generally turns to others for support rather than thinking first about providing support for a partner. Only when the caregiver restores his or her sense of attachment security and repairs his or her negative mood, can he or she easily direct attention and energy to caregiving and perceive a partner as someone who needs and deserves comfort and support. Reasoning along these lines, Shaver et al. (1988) hypothesized that securely attached people would be more likely than insecure people to provide effective care to a needy partner, because experiencing a sense of security is related to holding optimistic beliefs about distress management and maintaining a sense of self-efficacy when coping with distress. Furthermore, Shaver et al. (1988) hypothesized that attachment anxiety and avoidance would lead to different problems in caregiving. Specifically, avoidant people, who distance themselves from emotional partners and dismiss signals of need, should be less willing to feel compassionate toward a needy partner and less willing to provide care. In contrast, anxiously attached people, who

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seek closeness to romantic partners and are often preoccupied with their own needs, should react to others’ suffering with personal distress rather than empathy, which is likely to produce insensitive, intrusive, ineffective care. There is now considerable evidence that attachment security is associated with responsive and sensitive caring for romantic partners. For example, several studies have used self-report measures of caregiving responses and found that secure individuals describe themselves as more likely than insecure ones to provide emotional support to their distressed partners (e.g., Carnelley, Pietromonaco, and Jaffe, 1996; J. Feeney, 1996; J. Feeney and Hohaus, 2001; Kunce and Shaver, 1994). In addition, whereas avoidant people maintain distance from a needy partner, anxious ones get overly involved with their partner’s problems and exhibit compulsive, intrusive caregiving. These findings have been consistent across both self-reports and partner reports. Self-report findings on the link between attachment security and sensitive caregiving have been bolstered by observational studies in which dating couples were videotaped while one partner waited to undergo a stressful experience (e.g., B. Feeney and Collins, 2001; Simpson, Rholes, and Nelligan, 1992; Simpson, Rholes, Orina, and Grich, 2002). Overall, secure participants in these studies spontaneously offered more support to their distressed partners. Moreover, participants who were relatively secure and whose dating partners sought more support responded appropriately and provided more support, whereas secure participants whose partners sought less support actually provided less. In contrast, more avoidant people provided less support, regardless of how much support their partner sought. Similar findings were reported by Collins and Feeney (2000), who videotaped dating couples while one member disclosed a personal problem to a partner. ATTACHMENT AND SEX

Following Bowlby’s (1969/1982) ideas about the interference among behavioral systems, especially the attachment system’s apparently dominant influence in many cases of intersystem conflict, Shaver et al. (1988) hypothesized that anxiously attached people, who mainly seek their own protection and security, would have trouble attending accurately to their partner’s sexual needs and preferences. Anxious people were expected to have difficulty maintaining the relatively relaxed and secure state of mind that fosters mutual sexual satisfaction (Shaver et al., 1988). Avoidant attachment was also expected to interfere with or distort the sexual system (Shaver et al., 1988), but in this case the interference would derive from lack of care or emotional

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closeness. Avoidant attachment encourages emotional distance, whereas lovers’ mutual exploration of sexual needs and pleasures often requires or encourages psychological intimacy and a degree of openness (hence of vulnerability). This heightened closeness can cause avoidant people to feel uncomfortable during sexual intercourse. Evidence is accumulating that attachment processes shape sexual motives, experiences, and behaviors. Compared with insecure people, secure ones (i.e., those who are low on anxiety and avoidance) are more motivated to show love for their partner during sex, more open to sexual exploration, more likely to have a positive sexual self-schema, and less likely to experience negative emotions during sexual encounters (e.g., Brennan et al., 1998; Cyranowski and Andersen, 1998; Davis, Shaver, and Vernon, 2004; Hazan and Zeifman, 1994; Tracy, Shaver, Albino, and Cooper, 2003). There is also evidence that people scoring high on avoidance are less likely to have and enjoy mutually intimate sex, and are more likely to engage in sex to manipulate or control their partner, protect themselves from the partner’s negative feelings, or achieve other nonromantic goals, such as reducing stress or increasing their prestige among their peers (Davis et al., 2004; Tracy et al., 2003; Schachner and Shaver, 2004). Anxiously attached people tend to use sex as a means of achieving personal reassurance and avoiding abandonment, even when particular sex acts are otherwise unwanted (Davis et al., 2004; Tracy et al., 2003; Schachner and Shaver, 2004).

A Behavioral System Perspective on Relational Interdependence Our analysis of romantic love in terms of attachment, caregiving, and sex has much in common with interdependence theories of close relationships (e.g., Holmes and Cameron, 2005; Thibault and Kelley, 1959), which focus on interpersonal interactions as the units of analysis and emphasize the influence of one person’s responses on another person’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. As mentioned earlier, behavioral systems produce relational behavior (proximity-seeking, caregiving, or sexual bids), and are sensitive to the relational context in general and to the relationship partner’s particular responses on a specific occasion. In fact, the optimal functioning of the attachment, caregiving, and sexual systems depends on a partner’s availability, sensitivity, and acceptance (see table 3-1). Moreover, the quality of this functioning has important effects on a partner’s relational feelings and behaviors as well as one’s own behavioral system activation and functioning. In other words, the operation of each partner’s behavioral system

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is affected by his or her own working models, his or her partner’s working models, and the specific pattern of interaction that emerges between the two partners within a particular relational context. Unlike interdependence theory, however, our perspective on romantic love is not exclusively relational. Every person enters a particular relationship with a history of behavioral system functioning and with internal working models that shape relational feelings and behaviors, and that bias appraisals and interpretations of a partner’s emotions and behaviors. As a result, the power of a specific partner’s responses to modify one’s habitual pattern of behavioral system functioning is dramatically tempered by subjective appraisal biases induced by one’s own working models. In the domain of attachment, for example, anxious people’s hyperactivating strategies intensify the vigilant monitoring of attachment figure behaviors and slant perceptions in the direction of noticing or imagining insufficient interest, availability, and responsiveness. Avoidant individuals’ deactivating strategies interfere with the monitoring of cues concerning the availability or unavailability of an attachment figure, thus increasing the likelihood that genuine signals of attachment figure availability will be missed (Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003). As a result, partner responses are interpreted in ways that make them fit with and reinforce internal working models and habitual patterns of behavioral system functioning, thereby minimizing the power of these responses to change the operation of the behavioral system in question. Our analysis of behavioral system functioning is sensitive to both context and personality (as explained and demonstrated in our several reviews of the literature concerning the attachment-theory approach to love; e.g., Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003). On one hand, behavioral system activation and functioning can be affected by specific partner responses, which initiate a bottom-up process in the hierarchy of a person’s working models, activating congruent mental representations and producing immediate changes in behavioral system functioning. On the other hand, this functioning is affected by chronically accessible working models, which bias the appraisals of a partner’s intentions and responses. These biases are part of a top-down process by which a behavioral system functions in accordance with chronic working models. Overall, we acknowledge the importance of both the relational context in which a behavioral system is activated and person-specific variations resulting from relationship experiences and chronically accessible working models. The differences between interdependence theory and our behavioral system perspective on romantic love are specific cases of the general tension between “person” and “situation” emphases in personality and social psy-

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chology (e.g., Mischel and Shoda, 1995). No one doubts that securely attached people, for example, can be more or less secure, depending on relational context, but across such contexts (especially ones a particular person has chosen to enter) they are, on average, more secure than insecure. Thus, if a researcher wants to know how people will react in various relational contexts, it makes sense to characterize the contexts in terms of their shaping influence on behavioral system functioning and to understand the effects they have on up- or downregulating proximity, intimacy, caring, sexuality, and love. If one wishes to know, instead, how typical secure people’s brains or behavioral reactions differ on average from the brains and behavioral reactions of insecurely attached people (e.g., Gillath, Bunge, Shaver, Wendelken, and Mikulincer, 2005; Mikulincer, Gillath, and Shaver, 2002), a fairly generic lab situation may be adequate to reveal the differences. We have repeatedly found theoretically predictable effects of attachment style across a wide range of situations. This raises important questions about the specificity versus generality of individual differences in behavioral system functioning that researchers might wish to conceptualize and measure. In the personality field, going back to the time of Allport (1961) and early Eysenck (1947), there has been considerable discussion of the hierarchy of “habits” or “traits” one encounters when studying personality. Eysenck (1947) talked about a personality hierarchy that includes, from the bottom up, particular situation-specific behaviors, habitual kinds of behavior, aggregates of types of behavior, traits, and megatraits. The current “big five” personality scales (e.g., Costa and McCrae, 1982) include “facets,” which are lower-level traits, and each facet scale contains items that refer to even more specific proclivities and behaviors. Similarly, on the situational side, one can talk about my relationship with “Margaret,” my relationships with women, my relationships with peers of both genders, my relationships with people of all ages and genders, and even my relationships with “all sentient beings” (commonly mentioned in the literature of Buddhism). No doubt, in both the trait hierarchy and the hierarchy of relational situations there are many different levels of specificity or abstraction. When we look at things abstractly, we miss many particulars, and when we look at specific behaviors in specific situations, we miss many of a person’s general tendencies or traits. We think particular research questions should determine which phenomena, and at which levels, we decide to focus on. When studying the “secure” versus “insecure” mind, for example, we doubt that much will be gained by measuring specific working models concerning a specific relational context. However, when examining interpersonal interactions in a specific romantic relationship or a specific rela-

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tional context, we will reap benefits by measuring both generic and relationship-specific cognitions and emotions concerning attachment, caregiving, and sex.

Concluding Remarks Shaver et al. (1988) proposed that romantic love could be fruitfully conceptualized in terms of three behavioral systems identified by Bowlby (1969/1982): attachment, caregiving, and sex. This approach to romantic love was unique at the time in its placing of romantic love within an evolutionary and developmental framework, viewing it as a human universal rather than a culturally constructed artifact, and measuring some of its aspects in terms of individual differences noted by Ainsworth and her colleagues (1978) in studies of infant-caregiver attachment. Over the years, this formerly speculative approach to love has generated a large body of empirical evidence and has made contact with the expanding literature on evolutionary psychology. There is still a great deal of work to be done. We need parallel measures of behavioral system hyperactivation and deactivation for all of the behavioral systems discussed by Bowlby: attachment, caregiving, sex, exploration, affiliation, and anger/aggression. We need to learn more about how and why these systems develop either optimally or nonoptimally. We need to explore ways to intervene clinically or educationally to correct nonoptimal development. We need more studies, using more methods, at the interfaces of the attachment, caregiving, and sexual systems, including studies of physiological and neurological underpinnings. We need to do more to integrate our approach to love, caregiving, and sex with other insightful and wellvalidated approaches to these phenomena. In the present chapter we have provided a small example of integration by addressing points of tension and possible overlap among the attachment, triangular, and interdependence approaches to love. Hopefully, as we continue to explore love’s complexities, we will generate more useful ideas for a broader, more humane, and more applicable psychology of relationships, one that pays adequate attention to both persons and situations.

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Chisholm, J. (1999). Death, Hope, and Sex: Steps to an Evolutionary Ecology of Mind and Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collins, N. L. (1996). Working models of attachment: Implications for explanation, emotion, and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 810–832. Collins, N. L., and Feeney, B. C. (2000). A safe haven: An attachment theory perspective on support seeking and caregiving in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 1053–1073. Collins, N. L., and Read, S. J. (1990). Adult attachment, working models, and relationship quality in dating couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 644–663. Costa, P. T., Jr., and McCrae, R. R. (1982). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) Professional Manual. Odessa, Fla.: Psychological Assessment Resources. Cyranowski, J. M., and Andersen, B. L. (1998). Schemas, sexuality, and romantic attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1364–1379. Davis, D., Shaver, P. R., and Vernon, M. L. (2004). Attachment style and subjective motivations for sex. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1076–1090. Davis, M. H. (1983). Empathic concern and the muscular dystrophy telethon: Empathy as a multidimensional construct. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9, 223– 229. De Rougement, D. (1940). Love in the Western World. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Diamond, L. M. (2006). How do I love thee? Implications of attachment theory for understanding same-sex love and desire. In M. Mikulincer and G. S. Goodman (eds.), Dynamics of Romantic Love, pp. 275–292. New York: Guilford Press. Epstein, S., and Meier, P. (1989). Constructive thinking: A broad coping variable with specific components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 332–350. Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. New York: Norton. Eysenck, H. J. (1947). Dimensions of Personality. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Tubner. Feeney, B. C. (2004). A secure base: Responsive support of goal strivings and exploration in adult intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 631–648. Feeney, B. C., and Collins, N. L. (2001). Predictors of caregiving in adult intimate relationships: An attachment theoretical perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 972–994. ———. (2003). Motivations for caregiving in adult intimate relationships: Influence on caregiving behavior and relationship functioning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 950–968. Feeney, J. A. (1996). Attachment, caregiving, and marital satisfaction. Personal Relationships, 3, 401–416. Feeney, J. A., and Hohaus, L. (2001). Attachment and spousal caregiving. Personal Relationships, 8, 21–39. Feeney, J. A., and Noller, P. (1990). Attachment style as a predictor of adult romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 281–291.

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Fisher, W. A., Byrne, D., White, L. A., and Kelley, K. (1988). Erotophobia-erotophilia as a dimension of personality. Journal of Sex Research, 25, 123–151. Fraley, R. C., Davis, K. E., and Shaver, P. R. (1998). Dismissing-avoidance and the defensive organization of emotion, cognition, and behavior. In J. A. Simpson and W. S. Rholes (eds.), Attachment Theory and Close Relationships, pp. 249–279. New York: Guilford Press. Fraley, R. C., and Waller, N. G. (1998). Adult attachment patterns: A test of the typological model. In J. A. Simpson and W. S. Rholes (eds.), Attachment Theory and Close Relationships, pp. 77–114. New York: Guilford Press. Gaines, S. O., Jr., Reis, H. T., Summers, S., Rusbult, C. E., Cox, C. L., Wexler, M. O., Marelich, W. D., and Kurland, G. J. (1997). Impact of attachment style on reactions to accommodative dilemmas in close relationships. Personal Relationships, 4, 93– 113. Gillath, O., Bunge, S. A., Shaver, P. R., Wendelken, C., and Mikulincer, M. (2005). Attachment-style differences and ability to suppress negative thoughts: Exploring the neural correlates. NeuroImage, 28, 835–847. Harlow, H. F. (1959). Love in infant monkeys. Scientific American, 200, 68–86. Hazan, C., and Shaver, P. R. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511–524. Hazan, C., and Zeifman, D. (1994). Sex and the psychological tether. In K. Bartholomew and D. Perlman (eds.), Advances in Personal Relationships, vol. 5, Attachment Processes in Adulthood, pp. 151–177. London: Jessica Kingsley. ———. (1999). Pair-bonds as attachments: Evaluating the evidence. In J. Cassidy and P. R. Shaver (eds.), Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, pp. 336–354. New York: Guilford Press. Hendrick, C., and Hendrick, S. S. (1989). Research on love: Does it measure up? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 784–794. Holmes, J. G., and Cameron, J. (2005). An integrative review of theories of interpersonal cognition: An interdependence theory perspective. In M. W. Baldwin (ed.), Interpersonal Cognition, pp. 415–447. New York: Guilford Press. Hurlbert, D. F., Apt, C., Hurlbert, M. K., and Pierce, A. P. (2000). Sexual compatibility and the sexual desire-motivation relation in females with hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Behavior Modification, 24, 325–347. Janda, L. H., and O’Grady, K. E. (1980). Development of a sex anxiety inventory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 48, 169–175. Jankowiak, W. (ed.). (1995). Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? New York: Columbia University Press. Kestenbaum, R., Farber, E. A., and Sroufe, L. A. (1989). Individual differences in empathy among preschoolers: Relation to attachment history. In N. Eisenberg (ed.), Empathy and Related Emotional Competence, New Directions for Child Development, no. 44, pp. 51–64. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kunce, L. J., and Shaver, P. R. (1994). An attachment-theoretical approach to caregiving in romantic relationships. In K. Bartholomew and D. Perlman (eds.), Advances in Personal Relationships, vol. 5, pp. 205–237. London: Jessica Kingsley.

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4

The Evolution of Love david m. buss

“Love is blind,” according to a common saying. “Love is a recent invention, a mere few hundred years old,” some social scientists have argued. “Love is limited to Western cultures,” according to others. This chapter explains why all these beliefs are radically wrong. From an evolutionary perspective, love is an adaptation, or more accurately a complex suite of adaptations, designed to solve specific problems of survival and reproduction. It is an exquisitely honed set of psychological devices that for humans has served critical utilitarian functions in highly specific contexts. These functions are sufficiently numerous to give credence to another aphorism that gets closer to the truth: “Love is a many-splendored thing.” Solitary creatures such as giant pandas and porcupines have little need for love. They live alone and survive alone, coming together only briefly to mate before parting ways. Humans, in contrast, are “the social animal” (Aronson, 2004). Group living is what we do. Other humans are the “vehicles” on which our survival and genetic legacy depend. Some of those vehicles are so critical that we bestow upon them our psychological, emotional, and material investments. Some are so essential to our reproduction that we willingly sacrifice our lives so that they can thrive. Natural selection, the driving engine of the evolutionary process, favors the creation of adaptations. Adaptations are anatomical, physiological, or

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psychological solutions to recurrent problems of survival and reproduction, defined in the modern inclusive fitness formulation (Hamilton, 1964). A strict requirement for the evolution of adaptations is the cross-time statistical recurrence of an environmental structure. Statistical regularities can be of many sorts—a link between abrasive surfaces and damage to the skin; a correlation between a discrepancy in mate value and the odds of infidelity; a correlation between prolonged eye gaze and sexual interest; a correlation between symmetrical features and absence of environmental insults. When these statistical regularities recur generation after generation, and when they afford information that contributes to reproductive success, selection can exploit these statistical regularities to create adaptations designed to detect and act upon them. Thus, a callus-producing adaptation can solve the problem of damage due to repeated exposure to abrasive surfaces. A jealousy adaptation can alert an individual to an increased risk of a partner’s infidelity (Buss, 2000). Courtship initiation adaptations can be designed to respond to signals of sexual interest (Greer and Buss, 1994). And standards of attractiveness can form around cues recurrently associated with physical health (Sugiyama, 2005; Symons, 1979). Could the complex psychological state we call love, which includes emotional states, information-processing devices, and manifest acts of love, be an adaptation that evolved to solve problems of reproduction (Buss, 1988b)? This chapter explores several hypotheses about the adaptive functions of love. According to an earlier evolutionary analysis, love evolved to serve several functions (Buss, 1988b): • • • • • • •

Displaying reproductively relevant resources Providing sexual access Signaling sexual fidelity Promoting relationship exclusivity through mate-guarding Displaying commitment Promoting actions that lead to successful reproductive outcomes Providing signals of parental investment.

This chapter expands this evolutionary theory by postulating, and providing empirical evidence for, additional adaptive functions of love. Although conclusive proof does not yet exist to support any one of these hypotheses, enough empirical evidence exists to support the notion that a complete understanding of the psychology of love cannot be attained without understanding its functions—the adaptive problems it was designed to solve.

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The Universality of Love One straightforward prediction from the evolutionary theory proposed here is that the psychological circuits dedicated to love should be universal, not limited to Western cultures. Universality of psychological adaptation, of course, does not mean universality of manifest experience. Just as a person could go through life without ever having his or her jealousy circuit activated—if a partner never displayed cues for infidelity or defection, for example—so a person could go through life without experiencing love. Nonetheless, most humans should possess the psychological circuitry, and hence love should be experienced by some people in every single culture around the world—a testable prediction not generated by nonevolutionary theories of love. One testament to the universality of love and its obstinate refusal to be extinguished can be found in societies that have attempted to banish it (Jankowiak, 1995). In the nineteenth century, the Oneida Society articulated the view that romantic love was merely disguised sexual lust, and saw no reason to encourage such deceit. The Shakers, to take another example, declared romantic love undignified and threatening to the goals of the larger community, and thus sought to banish it. The Mormons in the nineteenth century also viewed romantic love as disruptive, and sought to discourage it. In all three societies, however, romantic love persisted among individuals, sometimes underground, refusing banishment, hidden from the harsh eyes of the group’s elders. Within cultures, as the story of Romeo and Juliet declares with universal resonance, love can be fueled by the efforts of others to suppress it. Lovers have no choice; they can quell their feelings temporarily or muffle their expression, but they cannot exorcise them entirely. Cultures that impose arranged marriage and permit polygyny provide a test case, for what system could be better designed to undermine love? Does love have any place within a mating system where a man’s first wife is chosen for him? Even when his elders choose a man’s first wife for him, such as in polygynous Arabic cultures, men often marry a second wife for love. Taita women, in fact, state that they prefer to be the second or third wife, not the first. They feel that they are more likely to be married for love, and hence anticipate that they will receive more favorable treatment from their husband and experience more emotional closeness (Jankowiak, 1995, p. 11). Another testament to the universality of love comes from studies that simply ask men and women whether they are currently in love. Susan Sprecher and her colleagues interviewed 1,667 women and men from three different cultures (Sprecher, Aron, Hatfield, Cortese, Potapova, and Levit-

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skaya, 1994). Seventy-three percent of the Russian women and 61 percent of the Russian men confessed to being currently in love. The comparable figures from Japan were 63 percent for women and 41 percent for men. Americans reported roughly the same levels, with 63 percent of the women and 53 percent of the men admitting that they were currently in love. Another study of ethnographies across cultures revealed that the overwhelming majority contained explicit references to the experience of love—observed declarations of love, love songs, expressions of pain upon unrequited love, and many others (Jankowiak and Fisher, 1992). Finally, in the most massive study ever conducted of mate preferences— in thirty-seven cultures located on six continents and five islands, consisting of 10,047 participants—“mutual attraction and love” proved to be at or near the top in every single culture (Buss, 1989; Buss, Abbott, Angleitner, Ashrian, Biaggio, et al., 1990). If the experience and expression of love were limited only to some cultures, the evolutionary theory of love would be a nonstarter. Available evidence suggests that love indeed is a universal experience; no cultures have been shown to lack the experience of love. Universality of love, however, does not imply that the psychological design of love adaptations is identical in women and men.

Sex Differences in the Psychological Design of Love Among the half-dozen or so most replicable findings in the human mating literature is that men place a greater premium than women on physical appearance in their selection of a long-term mate (Buss, 1989, 2003). It is not because men are superficial or brainlessly judge a book by its cover. Physical appearance provides a wealth of information about a woman’s youth and health, and hence her fecundity (probability that an act of sexual intercourse would lead to conception, barring use of modern birth control) and reproductive value (future reproductive potential). It is not that women do not value physical appearance. They do, and physical cues to health are important in women’s mate selection as well (Buss, 2003). But physical appearance provides additional cues to youth, a strong correlate of fecundity, which is more central to men’s than to women’s mate selection. The features of physical appearance that embody standards of female attractiveness all support the attractiveness-fertility link: clear skin, smooth skin, lustrous hair, long hair, symmetrical features, absence of open sores, pustules, or lesions, relatively small waist, relatively large breasts, and a low

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waist-to-hip ratio (see Sugiyama, 2005, for a recent comprehensive summary of the empirical evidence). Many of the qualities critical to women’s selection of a long-term mate are not readily assessed through physical appearance. These include a man’s ambition, industriousness, drive, and status trajectory—qualities linked with resource acquisition (Buss, 1989, 2003; Buss and Schmitt, 1993). These contrast with what women want in a short-term mate, such as signals of good genes, which can be evaluated partly through physical appearance (Gangestad and Thornhill, 1997; Sugiyama, 2005). Love, however, is not an emotion typically linked with casual sex. It emerges mainly in the context of longterm mating. Because love is an emotion tethered to long-term mating; because fecundity and reproductive value is so critical to men in selecting a long-term mate; and because physical appearance provides an abundance of cues to a woman’s fecundity and reproductive value, we can predict that men will experience “love at first sight” more often than women. The empirical evidence supports this prediction. Men, more than women, report falling in love at first sight (Brantley, Knox, and Zusman, 2002; Kanin, Davidson, and Scheck, 1970). This evidence supports one hypothesized sex difference in the design of the psychological circuitry of love. Other evidence centers on commitment. Short-term mating, on average, tends to be more costly and less beneficial for women than for men (Buss and Schmitt, 1993). By engaging in shortterm mating, women historically risked conceiving with a less than ideal man—perhaps one with inferior genes or one who would not stay to invest in her and her children. Although women can benefit from short-term mating in some circumstances (Greiling and Buss, 2000), casual sex historically did not translate into direct linear increments in reproductive success, as it did for men. Because men can reproduce with as little investment as a single act of sex, whereas women require an obligatory nine-month pregnancy to reproduce, selection has favored a more powerful motivation to desire and seek casual sex in men. Would you agree or disagree with the following statement: “Sex without love is OK”? If you are a man, the chances are that you would agree with this statement. Women, on average, disagree. Indeed, attitudes toward casual sex without love remain one of the largest sex differences in the sexual domain, as revealed by meta-analyses (Oliver and Hyde, 1993) and the cross-cultural evidence (Buss, 2003; Schmitt 2005). These findings support a critical hypothesis about sex differences in the

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psychological design of love. For women, love and sex are typically closely linked. Men find it easier to have sex without love. This brings us to another hypothesis anchored in an evolutionary theory of love: the emotional experience of love as a means to increase the odds of commitment. LOVE AS A COMMITMENT DEVICE

If love is a universal human emotion, why did evolution install it in the human brain to begin with? Keys to the mystery come from three unique departures of humans from their most recent primate ancestors: (1) the evolution of long-term mating, (2) the concealment of female ovulation, and (3) the heavy investment by men in their children. Chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, mate primarily when the female enters estrus. Her bright red genital swellings and olfactory scents send males into a sexual frenzy. Outside of estrus, males are largely indifferent to females. Among humans, ovulation is concealed or cryptic, at least for the most part. Although there might be subtle physical changes in women—a slight glowing of the skin or an almost imperceptible increase in her sexual desire—there is no solid evidence that men can actually detect when women ovulate (Buss, 2003). The concealment of ovulation coincided with several other critical changes. Men and women started having sex throughout the menstrual cycle, not just around ovulation. Men and women engaged in long-term pairbonded mating over the expanse of years or decades. And men, unlike their chimpanzee cousins, began investing heavily in offspring. Meat from the hunt went to provision the children, not just the mate and kin. It requires taking a step back to realize how extraordinary these changes are. Some females began allocating their entire reproductive careers to a single male, rather than to whomever happened to be the reigning alpha male when they happened to be ovulating. Males began to guard their partners against rival males who might be tempted to lure their mates. Surplus resources that in many species go to the female as a specific inducement to copulation now were channeled to the wife and children. Indeed, males now had added incentive to acquire surplus resources, mostly in the form of hunted meat. Long-term mating, in short, involved the allocation of reproductively relevant resources to a single mate over a virtually unprecedented span of time. Elementary economics tells us that those who hold valuable resources do not give them away indiscriminately. Indeed, evolution would ruthlessly select against those who frittered away reproductively valuable resources in long-term mateships that had no payoff. The evolution of long-term mating required installing in the human psychological architecture a set of circuits

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designed to ensure a reasonable reproductive payoff to allocating all of one’s resources to a single partner. It required some means for determining that one particular mate, above all other potential mates, would be there through thick and thin, through sickness and health. It required a solution to the problem of commitment. My own initial outline of an evolutionary theory of love (Buss, 1988b) accords with that of the evolutionary economist Robert Frank: that the emotion we call love is, in part, an evolved solution to the problem of commitment (Frank, 1988). If a partner chooses you for rational reasons, he or she might leave you for the same rational reasons: finding someone slightly more desirable on all of the “rational” criteria. This creates a commitment problem: How can you be sure that a person will stay with you? If your partner is blinded by an uncontrollable love that cannot be helped and cannot be chosen, a love for only you and no other, then commitment will not waver when you are in sickness rather than in health, when you are poorer rather than richer. Love overrides rationality. It is the emotion that ensures that you will not leave when someone more desirable comes along. Love, in short, may be a solution to the commitment problem, providing a signal to the partner of strong long-term intent and resolve. The causal arrow almost certainly also runs in reverse. Love may be the psychological reward we experience when the problem of commitment is successfully being solved. It is a mind/body opium that signals that the adaptive problems of mate selection, sexual congress, devotion, and loyalty have been met with triumph (Fisher, 2004). The scientific explanation is that evolution has installed in the human brain reward mechanisms that keep us performing activities that lead to successful reproduction. The downside is that the drug sometimes wears off (Fisher, 2004). Nothing in life comes with a guarantee. And after the drug wears off, we may leave a relationship that has outlasted its warrant, and fall in love with someone new. Commitment does not necessarily mean commitment for life. Love is both a solution to the commitment problem and an intoxicating reward for successfully solving it. The astonishingly intricate entwinement of love was first revealed in my own study (Buss, 1988b). I started by asking several hundred women and men to describe the behaviors that signal that a person is in love. A separate sample then diagnosed each of the 115 love acts on how much it indicated being in the thrall of love. Signals of commitment emerged as most diagnostic, but commitment can take many forms. A partner can commit resources such as food, shelter, and physical protection to a lover over the long term. A lover can commit sexual resources by remaining sexually faithful and by making love with wild aban-

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don. Lovers commit reproductive resources to their beloved, as in conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. And it follows that lovers commit parental resources to their children, the natural result of the love union. Many of these acts conveyed self-sacrifice: putting one’s own interests aside for the greater needs of the loved one, making a sacrifice of great importance for the partner, and giving up large amounts of free time to be with the partner. Other signals involved a sexual openness and trust that may be lacking in lesser relationships: trying out different sexual positions or acting out the lover’s deepest sexual fantasies. Emotional commitment emerged throughout the acts of love, including listening to problems with real attention and interest, giving up fun activities to be with the lover when he or she really needed it, and showing great concern for a partner’s problems. Several lovers described how their partner provided hope during their darkest hours of need, reaching down to pull them out of a pit of depression when the walls of life seemed steep and unscalable. These findings support another critical set of design features hypothesized to be linked to love—specialized forms of commitment. SNAKES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE

Unfortunately that is not the happy end to the evolutionary love story. There are snakes in the garden, troubles in emotional paradise. One sort of trouble comes from the dual strategies in the human menu of mating. Once the desire for love exists, it can be exploited and manipulated ruthlessly. Men deceive women about the depth of their loving feelings, for example, to gain short-term sexual access (Haselton, Buss, Oubaid, and Angleitner, 2005). As Ovid noted hundreds of years ago, “love is . . . a sexual behavior sport in which duplicity is used in order that a man might win his way into a woman’s heart and subsequently into her boudoir.” Women, in turn, have evolved defenses against being sexually exploited by imposing a longer courtship process before consenting to sex, attempting to detect deception, and evolving superior ability to decode nonverbal signals (Buss, 2003). Women, too, engage in deception, but of a different sort. Whereas men are more likely to feign love in order to get sex, women are more likely to use sex as a means of getting love (Buss, 2003). One strategy is the “bait and switch” tactic, whereby a woman might offer what appears to be “costless sex” in the context of short-term mating, and then intercalate herself into a man’s mind, transforming the relationship into one of long-term love. Just as women have evolved defenses against false declarations of love at the hands of men, so it is reasonable to assume that men have evolved

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defenses against being lured into long-term love when it is against their fitness interests to do so. The arms race of deception and detection of deception, of strategies and counterstrategies, continues with no end in sight. Because the reproductive interests of a man and a woman are rarely perfectly aligned, evolution has favored strategies in each sex that can be carried out only at the expense of the other sex. One of the most important domains of intersexual conflict centers around the dangerous emotion of jealousy.

The Dangerous Passion Jealousy poses a paradox. Consider these findings: 46 percent of a community sample stated that jealousy was an inevitable consequence of true love (Mullen and Martin, 1994). St. Augustine noted this link when he declared that “He that is not jealous, is not in love” (Claypool and Sheets, 1996). Shakespeare’s tormented Othello “dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves.” Women and men typically interpret a partner’s jealousy as a sign of the depth of his or her love; a partner’s absence of jealousy, as lack of love. Mathes (1986) asked a sample of unmarried, but romantically involved, men and women to complete a jealousy test. Seven years later, he contacted the participants and asked them about the current status of their relationship. Roughly 25 percent of the participants had married, while 75 percent had broken up. The jealousy scores from seven years earlier for those who married averaged 168, whereas the scores for those who broke up registered significantly lower, at 142. These results must be interpreted cautiously; it is one study with a small sample. Nonetheless, it points to the possibility that jealousy might be inexorably linked with long-term love. Contrast this with another finding: in a sample of 651 university students who were actively dating, more than 33 percent reported that jealousy posed a significant problem in their current relationship (Riggs, 1993). The problems ranged from the loss of self-esteem to verbal abuse, from rage-ridden arguments to the terror of being stalked. Jealousy, paradoxically, flows from deep and abiding love, but can shatter the most harmonious relationships. The paradox was reflected in O. J. Simpson’s statement: “Let’s say I committed this crime [the slaying of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson]. Even if I did do this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?” (Newsweek, December 28, 1998, p. 116). The emotion of jealousy, designed to shelter a relationship from intruders, “turns homes that might be sanctuaries of love into hells of discord and hate” (E. Gillard, quoted in Ellis, 1928).

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Jealousy is one of the most commonly found correlates of being in love (Mathes, 1991). It evolved to protect love not merely from the threat of loss, but also and more profoundly, from the threat of loss to a rival. Consider the following scenarios that would make you most jealous: Loss due to fate: Your [partner], with whom you are deeply in love, is killed in an automobile accident. Loss due to partner’s destiny: Your [partner], with whom you are deeply in love, obtains a promotion and moves to a faraway city. You know that you will never see him (her) again. Loss due to rejection: Your [partner], with whom you are deeply in love, explains that he (she) does not love you anymore and ends the relationship. You know that you will never see him (her) again. Loss due to a rival: Your [partner], with whom you are deeply in love, falls in love with another and ends his (her) relationship with you. You know that you will never see him (her) again. (Mathes, 1991, pp. 93– 94) In an experiment, Mathes asked men and women, “If this happened to you, would you feel jealous?” Out of a possible range of 4 to 28, loss of a love due to fate scored only 7 on the jealousy scale. Loss due to destiny scored nearly double, at 13. Loss due to rejection came out at 16. But loss to a rival provoked the greatest jealousy score, at 22. Evolution designed jealousy not just to protect against the loss of love. Because evolution is an inherently competitive process, jealousy evolved to prevent the “double whammy” of the loss of love to a same-sex rival. In my studies, I discovered that signs of jealousy are accurately interpreted as acts of love (Buss, 1988a). When a man unexpectedly drops by to see what his partner is doing, this mode of jealous vigilance functions to preserve the safe haven of exclusivity while simultaneously communicating love. When a woman loses sleep thinking about her partner and wondering whether he’s with someone else, it simultaneously indicates the depth of her love and the intensity of her jealousy. When a man tells his friends that he is madly in love with a woman, it serves the two purposes of conveying love and communicating to potential rivals that they must keep their hands off. The failure of “open marriages” that became popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s is stark testament to the failure of experiments to expunge jealousy from the lives of lovers. Few marriages can endure third-party intruders. One of the positive benefits of jealousy is to preserve that inner sanctum, protecting it from interlopers who have hidden agendas. According to Pines, protecting love is the primary function of jealousy: “jealousy aims

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to protect romantic relationships. It is not a useless flight of irrationality, but a useful signal people can learn to interpret correctly. . . . Jealousy makes people examine their relationship. . . . It teaches couples not to take each other for granted . . . ensures that they continue to value each other and . . . indicates that people value the love relationship it protects” (Pines, 1998, pp. 205–206). Safe havens, however, are rarely possible in the modern world. As the journalist Judith Viorst noted, “Unfortunately there is an endless supply of women out there in the big world—secretaries and dental assistants and waitresses and women executives. . . . And wives with traveling husbands have an even wider selection of potential temptations to get aggravated over—TWA stewardesses, San Francisco topless dancers, old flames in Minneapolis, new models in Detroit” (Viorst, 1998, p. 24). The maintenance of love, ironically, may hinge on the ever-present threat of rivals and the jealousy they evoke. “On those days when I happen to be feeling mature and secure,” Viorst observes, “I’m also going to admit that a man who wasn’t attractive to other women, a man who wasn’t alive enough to enjoy other women, a man who was incapable of making me jealous, would never be the kind of man I’d love” (Viorst, 1998, p. 24).

When Love Kills Another problem is that what comes up, often comes down. People fall out of love as crashingly as they fall in love. We cannot predict with certainty who will fall out of love, but recent studies provide some critical clues. Just as the fulfillment of desire looms large when falling in love, violations of desire portend conflict and dissolution. A man who was chosen in part for his kindness and drive may be rejected when he turns cruel or lazy. A woman chosen in part for her youth and beauty may lose out when a newer model beckons her partner. An initially considerate partner may turn condescending. And a couple’s infertility after repeated episodes of sex prompts each to seek a more fruitful union elsewhere (Betzig, 1989). The most crushing blow to long-term love comes from the harsh metric of the mating market. A mated couple initially equivalent on overall desirability may experience a widening gap over time. Consider an entry-level professional couple. If the woman’s career skyrockets and the man gets fired, it puts a strain on both because their market values now differ. Sudden increases in status open up new mating opportunities. A “9” who was previously out of reach now becomes available. In the evolutionary jungle of mating, we may admire a woman who stands by her loser husband. But few

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of those who did are our ancestors. Modern humans descended from those who traded up when the increment was sufficient to outweigh the manifold costs people experience as a consequence of breaking up (Buss, 2000). Falling out of love has many dark sides. “Love’s pleasure lasts but a moment; love’s sorrow lasts all through life” (Celestine, a French writer of fables). The crash can be physically dangerous for women and psychologically traumatic for both sexes. Hearts broken from love lost rate among the most stressful life events a person can experience, exceeded in psychological pain only by horrific events such as a child dying. Men who are rejected by the women with whom they are in love abuse them, often emotionally and sometimes physically. Some men start stalking their exes with repeated phone calls, unexpected visits, and threats of violence. Victims of stalking experience psychological terror, disruption of work, and interference with new mateships. In our recent studies, we found that an alarming number of men who are unceremoniously dumped begin to have homicidal fantasies (Buss, 2005). Unfortunately, these fantasies sometimes turn into reality. The loss of love is enough to make a man homicidal. The following case, from a systematic compilation of all homicides that occurred within one year in the city of Houston, Texas, illustrates the centrality of the power of love and its loss. Case No. 191 begins as a domestic quarrel. A 37-year-old . . . woman and her 42-year-old husband were drinking and quarreling. The woman first ran next door to her sister’s apartment but only found her 11-year-old nephew awake. She left her sister’s house to seek assistance from a neighbor. Her husband intercepted her as she crossed their driveway, a further argument ensued, and the woman shouted for help as she walked away from her husband. The neighbors found the woman lying bleeding on the sidewalk and called an ambulance. The husband told police that the whole thing started because his wife did not love him anymore . . . [this] led him to pull out a pocketknife and stab his wife in the chest. (Lundsgaarde, 1977)

Losing love, in short, remains traumatic, both for the rejecter and for the rejectee. Just as evolution has installed serotonin reward mechanisms that flood our brains with pleasure when we mate successfully, so it has also equipped us with brain circuits that deliver searing psychological pain when we experience mating failure. The many failures of love can bring catastrophic costs, creating adaptive problems of great moment. On the evening of July 24, 2002, in Houston, Texas, Clara Harris, age forty-four, got into her Mercedes Benz and killed her husband, David Harris, a forty-four-year-old orthodontist, in the parking lot of a hotel (Austin American Statesman, January 24, 2003, p. 1). Using her car as her weapon,

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she ran into him once. Her anger still not calmed, she circled the lot and ran over him again. Videotape from the hotel security cameras revealed that she hit him three times. When she finally stopped, the Mercedes was on top of him. Some think that Clara Harris is evil and deserves to rot in jail for the remainder of her life. But some view the homicide as justifiable, or at least understandable. David Harris had been having a torrid sexual affair with Gail Bridges, his former office coworker. Clara Harris discovered the infidelity through a private detective agency she hired when she initially became suspicious. She confronted David, who on the morning of his death, swore to Clara that he would end the affair. Later that night, Clara, with her stepdaughter Lindsey, began to search for David Harris. When they finally tracked him down at a hotel, according to Lindsey, “She said she could kill him and get away with it for what she’s been through.” Indeed, Clara had gone to great efforts to win her husband back after she discovered his affair. Clara had been a beauty queen, and after the affair was discovered, David made point-bypoint comparisons between Clara and his lover. He described his wife as overweight; his mistress, as petite and having “the perfect fit to sleep with, holding her all night” (Austin American Stateman, February 8, 2003, p. A4). David seemed obsessed with the ample size of his mistress’s breasts, and described her has having a “perfect body,” although he conceded that Clara’s hands, feet, and eyes were prettier. Clara vowed to make herself “real pretty so Dad would want her and not Gail [the mistress],” Lindsey said. During the week before the murder, Clara Harris joined a fitness club, spent time at a tanning salon, and went daily to a hairdresser. She also consulted a plastic surgeon and agreed to pay a $5,000 deposit for liposuction and breast implants. By the day of the murder, Clara had lost fifteen pounds, had had her hair lightened, and had begun wearing more sexually provocative clothing. What might have aggravated Clara’s jealous rage was that the hotel was the one where she and David had been married a decade earlier. When she saw her husband emerge from the hotel elevator hand in hand with his mistress, Clara went “ballistic.” She screamed at her rival: “You . . . ! He’s my husband!” She ripped the blouse off her rival’s body, and wrestled her to the ground. Her husband pulled Clara off his mistress. Hotel clerks escorted Clara out of the hotel. As she left the lobby, David shouted to her, “It’s over! It’s over! It’s over!” It was then that Clara Harris became strangely calm, according to her stepdaughter. She silently stepped into her Mercedes. Her tears had stopped flowing. David Harris walked toward his Chevrolet Suburban, and everyone

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thought the conflict was over. Clara suddenly stomped on the accelerator and, with tires squealing, rammed her car into her husband. She then circled the parking lot and ran over him again. And then circled and ran over him yet again. “You killed my Dad,” Lindsey said, when the car finally stopped. As David Harris lay pinned under the front tire, Clara got out of the car and apologized, and told him that she loved him. During her trial, Clara continued to maintain that she still loved her husband. In light of the circumstances, many in Texas do not judge Clara’s horrific deed as evil. Some think that David Harris got exactly what he deserved. The judge and jury did not agree. They went with the prosecutor, who argued that “If the man is cheating on you, you do what every other woman in this country does— you take him to the cleaners. You don’t get to kill him” (Madigan, 2003). They sentenced her to twenty years in prison and fined her $10,000. The jealous emotions that drove Clara Harris to attack her sexual rival in the hotel lobby are not unusual. Nor was her experience of a murderous rage toward her husband upon the discovery of his betrayal. Nor was the fact that the couple lived an upper-middle-class life in a house valued at more than $600,000. Women of all classes react with jealous rage when they discover a cheating husband. What is unusual in this case is that most women do not act on their homicidal passions upon discovering a partner’s infidelity. Far more men do. In the United States between 1976 and 1984, 4,507 women were murdered annually, on average (Campbell, 1992). Race was no barrier to being murdered. Just over a third of the victims were African-American women; two-thirds were women of European descent. The majority were killed by men who loved them deeply. One study of women murder victims in Dayton, Ohio, reveals proportions similar to those of most studies: 19 percent were murdered by their husbands, 8 percent by a current boyfriend, 17 percent by an estranged husband, and 8 percent by a prior sex partner. These figures total to an astonishing 52 percent of the women killed in Dayton. In sharp contrast, in a typical year, only 3 percent of men murder victims die at the hands of a female lover. Dayton is not unique. A massive study of homicides committed within the United States between 1976 and 1998 revealed that more than a third of the women were killed by an intimate partner, whereas only 4 percent of the men were killed by a wife or lover (Greenfield, Rand, Craven, Klaus, Perkins, Ringel, Warchol, Maston, and Fox, 1998). Similar statistics show up worldwide, from the Australian aborigines to murder among the Munda of India (Easteal, 1993; Saran, 1974). It may seem strange to have the warm fuzzy emotion of love lead to

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vicious and bloody death. After all, love is what leads to romance. Love leads to passion. Love leads to the birth of new life. Killing seems the opposite—destruction, demolition, and final demise. How can these apparent opposites be fused in the human mind, in a jarring tangle of paradoxical emotions? Consider the following case. Then she said that since she came back in April she had fucked this other man about ten times. I told her how can you talk about love and marriage and you been fucking this other man. I was really mad. I went to the kitchen and got the knife. I went back to our room and asked: Were you serious when you told me that? She said yes. We fought on the bed, I was stabbing her. Her grandfather came up and tried to take the knife out of my hand. I told him to go and call the cops for me. I don’t know why I killed the woman, I loved her. (Confession of a thirty-one-year-old man to police after he stabbed his twenty-year-old wife to death, following their reunion after a six-month separation)

The killing of a mate, however, poses a more serious puzzle. How could this bizarre form of behavior possibly have evolved? Killing a mate destroys a key reproductive resource. Evolution by selection should favor preserving, not destroying, vital reproductive resources. Mate-killing seems outrageously counter to self-interested reproductive survival. The solution to this mystery requires delving into the underlying particulars of mating market logic (Buss, 2005). First, in most cases, killing a mate who has been unfaithful usually would have been detrimental to the killer. An unfaithful woman might still be a valuable reproductive resource to her husband. If she continued to be his sexual resource, then killing her would be damaging his own fitness, an instance of futile, vengeful spite. As Wilson and Daly correctly observe, “murdered women are costly to replace” (1998). If the woman has borne a man children, then killing her dramatically hurts his children’s chances to survive and thrive. Finally, by killing her, the cuckolded man risks retribution. The woman’s brother or father might be motivated to exact vengeance. For all these reasons, killing a mate is usually a remarkably ineffective solution to the problem of cuckoldry. But sometimes the elements in the cost-benefit equation become rearranged. An act of infidelity might signal the man’s permanent loss of sexual access to his mate, not just a temporary or fractional loss. She might not have children by him, and hence killing her would not impair his existing children’s survival. She might lack a father or brothers in the vicinity, something quite common in traditional societies where marriage is usually exogamous (women migrate away from their own kin group and move in with

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the husband’s kin group when they marry). Furthermore, a man’s social reputation might be severely damaged by his wife’s infidelity unless he took dramatic action to halt the slide. Status loss cascades into a decline in mate value, undermining the man’s ability to attract another mate. Finally, the man’s sexual loss might become a rival’s sexual gain, a valuable reproductive resource flowing to an archenemy. Consider for a moment the logic of the argument outside the context of mating. If you have just killed a game animal to feed yourself and your hungry family, and a scavenger comes along and steals it before you can eat it, you suffer a loss. But if your rival steals the meat, the loss becomes compounded in the currency of evolutionary fitness, since selection operates on the principle of relative reproductive success. Your loss becomes a gain for your immediate rival, whose children survive and thrive while yours go hungry or perish. The same logic applies to mating. If your mating loss bestows a sexual gain on your immediate rival, then the fitness costs of being cuckolded become compounded. This theory leads to a counterintuitive prediction: the younger, healthier, and more attractive the woman, the greater the loss to the cuckolded man and the greater the gain for the rival who now sleeps in her bed. This leads to a disturbing prediction of the theory: that the more appealing, healthy, and fertile the woman, the more motivated the man will be to kill her upon discovering a sexual infidelity. What is extraordinary is that roughly half of the 3,400 women who are murdered in America every year are killed by the ones who presumably love them—their husbands, boyfriends, ex-husbands, or ex-boyfriends—in circumstances that are remarkably similar. The permanent loss of love sometimes activates evolved homicidal circuits in men. In our own studies, we found that aside from outright estrangement and leaving the relationship, a woman’s infidelity is one of the two most powerful predictors of when men have recurrent, persistent thoughts about killing their romantic partner. Here is one example: She accused me of cheating on her, I got mad and broke off the relationship, even though I still loved her. She then decided to start fucking my best friend. I was pissed off because she said I was the only one for her. She is a bitch, and unfortunately has to be pretty. I want her to be gone and I want my best friend to die, too. . . . We are on her boat and I start talking to her. She asks me to leave and starts getting nervous, so I tie her hands and feet together and strap her to the steering wheel, where I proceed to fuck her brains out. Then I make her drink a lot of alcohol so she can’t

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think straight. I jam the steering wheel so that she is on a one-way push to the cliffs that are in front of her house. That’s where I jump off and watch the boat explode. [What prevented you from killing her?] I’m a sane human being and I realize that she is just a stupid bitch, and hopefully will become fat and ugly when she gets older. [What would have pushed you over the edge to kill her?] If I would have caught her fucking around with my best friend while we were still going out.

Two elements in this fantasy warrant note. First, the victim is both young and pretty, signifying that she is highly reproductively valuable. Second, she has sex with the man’s best friend, who has now become a rival. In research conducted by evolutionary psychologists Bleske and Shackelford, the most bitter sexual rivals can lurk among one’s closest friends (2001). Friends can be more effective mate poachers than strangers because they have special knowledge of our mates, know when we are present and absent, and have an intimate understanding about when rifts in our relationships might widen. Fully 29 percent of women and 18 percent of men reported that a same-sex friend had sometimes flirted with their romantic partner, figures that undoubtedly underestimate incidence, since most mate poachers initiate overtures surreptitiously. Bleske and Shackelford discovered that same-sex friends deceived their “friends” about these issues. Deception about encroaching on a friend’s mate was the most frequently mentioned form of deception in same-sex friendships. Women are especially apt to misinform their same-sex friends about the extent of their prior promiscuity and the number of sex partners they have had, presumably in an attempt to minimize the perceived threat of mate-poaching. The intensity of love a man feels for a woman is often mirrored in the intensity of his homicidal thoughts, as shown in the next case. Case #145: I knew her for five years and shared the best times of my life with her. . . . I screamed and yelled and broke all the pictures of her and beat the shit out of the guy she cheated on me with. . . . My girlfriend of 1 1/2 years, who I had been friends with for over 5 years, started hanging out with some cocaine addicts and started calling me less and less. Now she is a “coke head” and having sex with these fucks that she met. I tried everything I could to help her out but I eventually gave up. . . . I wanted to grab her by the throat and lift her in the air and just scream into her face all the horrible acts she had committed and how I felt about it. I then wanted to shoot her and the assholes that got her hooked. . . . Sometimes my bare fists, sometimes a gun. . . . [what prevented you?]: My conscience and my being connected to reality. I know that there is really no reason to

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The volatile mix of love and infidelity was revealed in a study of seventeen cases of mate murder from a Canadian study conducted by Wilson and Daly. Six of these cases were attributed to “psychiatric disorders.” Of the remaining eleven cases, however, “all professed that they were deeply in love with their victims” (Wilson and Daly, 1992). Furthermore, “in all 11 cases, the victim was engaged in an affair with another man or had led the offender to believe that she was unfaithful to him. In 10 of the cases, the victim made no attempt to conceal her other relationships.” Our studies discovered a close correspondence between thought and deed. Just as a woman’s sexual infidelity powerfully evokes homicidal fantasies in her mate, so it drives some men to carry out the deadly deed. The cross-cultural record supports the contention that sexual infidelity by the woman is one of the two leading motives for men murdering their mates. Among the Yapese, the man cuckolded “had the right to kill her and the adulterer or to burn them in the house” (Muller, 1917, p. 229). In Melanesia, the law specifies that the rage a man experiences when his wife is found having sex with another man is both predictable and excusable. The islanders say “he is like a man whose pig has been stolen,” but with anger justifiably amplified (Hogbin, 1938, 236–237).

Conclusions The evolutionary theory of love proposed here contains key features lacking in nonevolutionary theories of love: hypotheses about the functionality of love in solving specific adaptive problems that have recurrently faced humans over deep time in the quest for mating success. It also contains testable (hence falsifiable) predictions about the psychological design of love, including critical sex differences in design features. Although this evolutionary theory requires more extensive empirical tests, the available evidence supports several of its key predictions. First, the evidence suggests that the experience of love is a human universal, not something limited to Western cultures. Second, the evidence supports the hypothesis that love emerges primarily in the context of long-term mating, and rarely in the context of short-term mating. Third, men experience “love at first sight” more than women, a design feature that

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supports the notion that physical appearance and physical attractiveness are more central to the activation of men’s than to women’s love circuits. Fourth, women, more than men, disagree with the attitude statement “sex without love is OK,” supporting the hypothesis that love and sex are more closely linked in the minds of women than of men. Fifth, jealousy shows links to love in ways precisely predicted by the evolutionary theory, including the proposition that women experience more intense jealousy than men when a partner falls in love with someone else, whereas men experience more intense jealousy than women at signals of sexual infidelity (despite recent claims to the contrary, the sex difference in the design of jealousy is extremely robust across methods—see Buss and Haselton, 2005; Pietzrak, Laird, Stevens, and Thompson, 2003; Sagarin, 2005; Schutzwohl and Koch, 2004). Sixth, several lines of evidence support the hypothesis that the psychology of love is in part a commitment device signaling the devotion of reproductively valuable resources to a partner over time. Tragically, loss of love, particularly when a woman permanently leaves a man who loves her, places a woman in peril of violence, stalking, and murder—findings that support the hypothesis that men’s psychology of love contains design features that motivate them to keep a woman they love and go to desperate measures to prevent male rivals from possessing her. Love permeates all aspects of human mating. People place a premium on love in their selection of a mate. They use acts of love to attract a mate. They use love acts to retain a mate. Loss of love, or its redirection to another person, triggers jealousy, conflict, violence, and relationship dissolution. Love leads to the greatest peaks of personal ecstasy. Its loss leads to the darkest horrors of human nature.

Acknowledgment The author thanks Robert Sternberg and Karin Weis for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

References Aronson, E. (ed.). (2004). Readings About the Social Animal, 9th ed. New York: Worth. Betzig, L. (1989). Causes of conjugal dissolution. Current Anthropology, 30, 654–676. Bleske, A. L., and Shackelford, T. K. (2001). Poaching, promiscuity, and deceit: Combating mating rivalry in same-sex friendships. Personal Relationships, 8, 407–424.

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Brantley, A., Knox, D., and Zusman, M. E. (2002). The when and why of gender differences in saying “I Love You” among college students. College Student Journal, 36, 614–615. Buss, D. M. (1988a). From vigilance to violence: Tactics of mate retention. Ethology and Sociobiology, 9, 291–317. ———. (1988b). Love acts: The evolutionary biology of love. In R. Sternberg and M. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ———. (1989). Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses testing in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 1–49. ———. (2000). The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. New York: Free Press. ———. (2003). The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, rev. ed. New York: Basic Books. ———. (2005). The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill. New York: Penguin. Buss, D. M., Abbott, M., Angleitner, A., Asherian, A., Biaggio, A., et al. (1990). International preferences in selecting mates: A study of 37 cultures. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, 21, 5–47. Buss, D. M., and Haselton, M. G. (2005). The evolution of jealousy. Trends in Cognitive Science, 9, 506–507. Buss, D. M., and Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204–232. Campbell, J. C. (1992). “If I can’t have you, no one can”: Power and control in homicide of female partners. In J. Radford and D. E. H. Russell (eds.), Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, pp. 99–113. New York: Twayne. Claypool, H., and Sheets, V. (1996, June). Jealousy: Adaptive or destructive? Paper presented to the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, Evanston, Ill. Easteal, P. W. (1993). Killing the Beloved: Homicide Between Adult Sexual Intimates. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Ellis, H. (1928). Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. 2, chap. 11. London: Heinemann. Fisher, H. (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. New York: Henry Holt. Frank, R. (1988). Passions Within Reason. New York: Norton. Gangestad, S. W., and Thornhill, R. (1997). The evolutionary psychology of extrapair sex: The role of fluctuating asymmetry. Evolution and Human Behavior, 18, 69–88. Greenfeld, L. A., Rand, M. R., Craven, D., Klaus, P. A., Perkins, C. A., Ringel, C., Warchol, G., Maston, C., and Fox, J. A. (1998). Violence by Intimates, NCJ-167237. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Greer, A., and Buss, D. M. (1994). Tactics for promoting sexual encounters. Journal of Sex Research, 5, 185–201. Greiling, H., and Buss, D. M. (2000). Women’s sexual strategies: The hidden dimension of extra-pair mating. Personality and Individual Differences, 28, 929–963. Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior. I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1–52.

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Haselton, M., Buss, D. M., Oubaid, V., and Angleitner, A. (2005). Sex, lies, and strategic interference: The psychology of deception between the sexes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 3–23. Hogbin, H. I. (1938). Social reaction to crime: Law and morals in the Schouten Islands, New Guinea. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 68, 223–262. Jankowiak, W. (ed.). (1995). Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? New York: Columbia University Press. Jankowiak, W., and Fischer, E. (1992). A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love. Ethnology, 31, 149–155. Kanin, E. J., Davidson, K. D., and Scheck, S. R. (1970). A research note on malefemale differentials in the experience of heterosexual love. Journal of Sex Research, 6, 64–72. Lundsgaarde, H. P. (1977). Murder in Space City: A Cultural Analysis of Houston Homicide Patterns, pp. 60–61. New York: Oxford University Press. Madigan, N. (2003, February 13). Trial in killing of orthodontist goes to jury. New York Times, p. A25. Mathes, E. W. (1986). Jealousy and romantic love: A longitudinal study. Psychological Reports, 58, 885–886. ———. (1991). Jealousy: The Psychological Data. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Mullen, P. E., and Martin, J. (1994). Jealousy: A community study. British Journal of Psychiatry, 164, 35–43. Muller, W. (1917). Yap, vol. 2, part 1. Hamburg: Friederischesen. Oliver, M. B., and Hyde, J. S. (1993). Gender differences in sexuality: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 29–51. Pines, A. M. (1998). Romantic Jealousy: Causes, Symptoms, Cures. New York: Routledge. Pietrzak, R., Laird, J. D., Stevens, D. A., and Thompson, N. S. (2003). Sex differences in human jealousy: A coordinated study of forced-choice, continuous ratings-scale, and physiological responses on the same subjects. Evolution and Human Behavior, 23, 83–94. Riggs, D. S. (1993). Relationship problems and dating aggression: A potential treatment target. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 8, 18–35. Sagarin, B. (2005). Reconsidering evolved sex differences in jealousy: A comment on Harris (2003). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 62–75. Saran, A. B. (1974). Murder and Suicide Among the Munda and the Oraon. Delhi: National Publishing House. Schmitt, D. P. (2005). Sociosexuality from Argentina to Zimbabwe: A 48-nation study of sex, culture, and strategies of human mating. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 247–311. Schutzwohl, A., and Koch, S. (2004). Sex differences in jealousy: The recall of cues to sexual and emotional infidelity in personally more and less threatening context conditions. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 249–257. Sprecher, S., Aron, A., Hatfield, E., Cortese, A., Potapova, E., and Levitskaya, A.

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(1994). Love: American style, Russian style, and Japanese style. Personal Relationships, 1, 349–369. Sugiyama, L. (2005). Physical attractiveness in adaptationist perspective. In D. M. Buss (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Symons, D. (1979). The Evolution of Human Sexuality. New York: Oxford University Press. Viorst, J. (1998). Confessions of a jealous wife. In G. Clanton and L. G. Smith (eds.), Jealousy, 3rd ed., pp. 17–24. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America. Wilson, M., and Daly, M. (1992). Till death do us part. In J. Radford and D. E. H. Russell (eds.), Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, pp. 83–98. New York: Twayne. ———. (1998). Lethal and nonlethal violence against wives and the evolutionary psychology of male sexual proprietariness. In R. E. Dobash and R. P. Dobash (eds.), Violence Against Women: International and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, pp. 199–230. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

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The Drive to Love: The Neural Mechanism for Mate Selection helen fisher

“Since the heaven and earth were created, you were made for me and I was made for you and I will not let you go,” declared Chang Po to his beloved Meilan (Yutang, 1954, p. 73). The Chinese still cry over this twelfthcentury Chinese fable, “The Jade Goddess,” their version of Romeo and Juliet. “My beloved, the delight of my eyes,” exclaimed Inanna of her beloved Dumuzi in a Sumerian poem recorded some four thousand years ago (Wolkstein, 1991, p. 51). An anonymous Kwakiutl Indian of southern Alaska recited these words in 1896: “Fires run through my body—the pain of loving you” (Hamill, 1996). Paris and Helen, Orpheus and Eurydice, Abelard and Eloise, Troilus and Cressida, Tristan and Iseult, Shiva and Sati, Layla and Majnun: thousands of romantic poems, songs, and stories come across the centuries from Europe, the Middle East, Japan, China, India, and every other society that has left written or oral records. In a survey of 166 varied cultures, anthropologists found evidence of romantic love in 147 (Jankowiak and Fischer, 1992). There were no negative data; in the remaining nineteen societies, scholars had simply failed to examine this aspect of people’s lives. “What ’tis to Love?” Shakespeare asked in As You Like It. From the ancient Greeks to contemporary scholars, hundreds have offered theories about the components of love and styles of loving (Lee, 1988; Fehr, 1988;

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Aron and Westbay, 1996; Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986; Critelli, Myers, and Loos, 1986; Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986; Zick, 1970; Hazan and Shaver, 1987; Sternberg, 1986). And for good reason: love has myriad variations. Nevertheless, neuroscientists believe that the basic human emotions and motivations arise from distinct systems of neural activity, networks that derive from mammalian precursors (Davidson, 1994; Panksepp, 1998). This article takes the neurological approach. It does not attempt to define one’s idiosyncratic ways of loving that develop in childhood, nor why an individual chooses one person rather than another. Instead, it explores the underlying neural mechanisms associated with love, specifically romantic love. Psychological studies indicate that romantic love is associated with a discrete constellation of emotions, motivations, and behaviors (Liebowitz, 1983; Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986; Tennov, 1979; Harris, 1995). Romantic love begins as an individual comes to regard another as special, even unique. The lover then intensely focuses his or her attention on this preferred individual, aggrandizing the beloved’s better traits and overlooking or minimizing his or her flaws. Lovers experience extreme energy, hyperactivity, sleeplessness, impulsivity, euphoria, and mood swings. They are goal-oriented and strongly motivated to win the beloved. Adversity heightens their passion, in what is known as the Romeo and Juliet effect or “frustration attraction” (Fisher, 2004). Lovers become emotionally dependent on the relationship. They reorder their daily priorities to remain in contact with their sweetheart, and experience separation anxiety when apart. And most feel powerful empathy for their amour; many report they would die for their beloved. A striking property of romantic love is “intrusive thinking.” The lover thinks obsessively about the beloved. And, perhaps most central to this experience, the lover craves emotional union with his or her sweetheart. Plato wrote of this in The Symposium some twenty-five hundred years ago, saying the God of Love “lives in a state of need.” Love-smitten individuals feel intense sexual desire, as well as extreme possessiveness of the beloved. Yet their craving for emotional union supersedes their longing for sexual contact. As a result, rejected lovers often go to extraordinary, inappropriate, even dangerous efforts to win back their sweetheart. Many spurned lovers suffer “abandonment rage” and depression as well, culminating in feelings of hopelessness, lethargy, resignation, and despair (Fisher, 2004). Last, romantic love is involuntary, difficult to control, and impermanent (Tennov, 1979; Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986; Harris, 1995). As Violetta sings in La Traviata, Verdi’s tragic opera, “Let’s live for pleasure alone, since love, like flowers, swiftly fades.”

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To further establish that the above assemblage of characteristics is accurate, I used these traits as domains in a questionnaire on romantic passion; 437 Americans and 402 Japanese filled out my questionnaire. The results indicate that romantic love does not vary considerably with age, gender, sexual orientiation, or ethnic group. For example, people over age forty-five and those under age twenty-five showed no significant statistical differences on 82 percent of the statements. On 87 percent of the queries, American men and women responded virtually alike. Heterosexuals and homosexuals gave statistically similar responses on 86 percent of the questions. American “whites” and “others” responded similarily on 82 percent of the questions. And where the above groups showed statistically significant differences in their responses, one group was usually just a little more passionate than the other. The greatest differences were between the Americans and the Japanese. On most of the forty-three questions where they showed statistically significant variations, these differences were small, however. And the twelve queries showing dramatic variance appeared to have cultural explanations (Fisher, 2004). World poetry, myths and legends, many anthropological and psychological reports, and this questionnaire suggest that romantic love is a human universal (Jankowiak and Fischer, 1992; Fisher, 1998; Hatfield and Rapson, 1996). In fact, I have come to believe that romantic love is one of three discrete, interrelated emotion/motivation systems that all birds and mammals have evolved to direct courtship, mating, reproduction, and parenting. The other two are the sex drive and attachment. Each brain system is associated with different feelings and behaviors; each is associated with a different (and dynamic) constellation of neural correlates; each evolved to direct a different aspect of reproduction; and each interacts with the other two in myriad combinations to produce the range of emotions, motivations, and behaviors associated with all types of love (Fisher, 2004).

Lust, Attraction, Attachment: Three Brain Systems for Love The sex drive (libido or lust) is characterized by the craving for sexual gratification; it is often directed toward many partners. In mammals, the sex drive is associated primarily with the estrogens and androgens; in humans, the androgens, particularly testosterone, are central to sexual desire in both men and women (Sherwin, 1994; Van Goozen, Wiegant, Endert, Helmond, and Van de Poll, 1997). Studies (fMRI) of human sexual arousal show that specific networks of brain activation are associated with the sex drive (Arnow, Desmond, Banner, Glover, Solomon, Polan, Lue, and Atlas, 2002;

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Beauregard, Levesque, and Bourgouin, 2001; Karama, Lecours, Leroux, Bourgouin, Joubert, and Beauregard, 2002; Tiihonen et al., 1994). These vary; but among them are the hypothalamus (Arnow et al., 2002; Beauregard et al., 2001; Karama et al., 2002) and the amygdala (Beauregard et al., 2001; Karama et al., 2002). Attraction (the mammalian/avian counterpart to human romantic love) is characterized by increased energy, focused attention on a specific mate, obsessive following, affiliative gestures, possessive mate-guarding, and motivation to win a preferred mating partner (Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Strong, Li, and Brown, 2002, 2002a; Fisher, 2004). In humans, the developed form of animal attraction is known as romantic love, obsessive love, passionate love, or being in love. Recent data suggest this brain system is primarily associated with elevated activity of dopamine in the reward pathways of the brain. Most likely it is also associated with elevated activity of central norepinephrine and suppressed activity of central serotonin, as well as other brain systems acting together to produce the range of emotions, motivations, cognitions, and behaviors common to romantic love (Fisher, 1998, 2004; Fisher et al., 2002, 2002a). Attachment is characterized in birds and mammals by mutual territory defense and/or nest-building, mutual feeding and grooming, maintenance of close proximity, separation anxiety, shared parental chores, and affiliative behaviors (Carter, DeVries, Taymans, Roberts, Williams, and Getz, 1997; Lim, Murphy, and Young, 2004; Lim and Young, 2004). In humans, partner attachment is known as companionate love (Hatfield, 1988, p. 191). Human attachment is associated with the above mammalian traits, as well as feelings of calm, security, social comfort, and emotional union with a long-term mate. Animal studies suggest this brain system is associated primarily with oxytocin and vasopressin in the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidum, respectively (Lim et al., 2004; Lim and Young, 2004). Each of these primary brain systems evolved to play a different role in courtship, mating, reproduction, and parenting (Fisher, 1998, 2004; Fisher et al., 2002, 2002a). The sex drive evolved to motivate our ancestors to seek coitus with a range of appropriate partners. Attraction (and its developed human form, romantic love) evolved to motivate individuals to select among potential mates, prefer a particular individual, and focus courtship attention on this favored mating partner, thereby conserving courtship time and energy. Attachment evolved primarily to motivate individuals to sustain an affiliative connection with this reproductive partner at least long enough to complete species-specific parental duties. Moreover, these three brain sys-

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tems interact in myriad ways to direct many behaviors, emotions, and motivations associated with human reproduction.

fMRI Studies of Romantic Love To investigate the biology of romantic love in humans, I and my colleagues Lucy L. Brown of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Arthur Aron of SUNY Stony Brook, and Stony Brook graduate students Greg Strong and Debra Mashek embarked on a neuroimaging study of men and women who had “just fallen madly in love” (Fisher et al., 2003; Aron, Fisher, Mashek, Strong, Li, and Brown, 2005). My hypothesis was that this phenomenon was associated with elevated activity of central dopamine and/ or norepinephrine and low activity of central serotonin (Fisher, 1998). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we collected data on ten women and seven men who reported being in love an average of 7.4 months (median 7; range 1–17 months); they ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-six. Each subject looked at a photograph of his or her beloved as well as a photograph of an emotionally neutral acquaintance, each viewing followed by a distraction task to cleanse the mind of strong emotion. This distraction task consisted of mentally counting backward from a large number, such as 9,471, in increments of seven. The protocol consisted of (1) positive stimulus (thirty seconds); (2) counting task (forty seconds); (3) neutral stimulus (thirty seconds); (4) counting task (twenty seconds). This process (or its reverse) was repeated six times; the experiment lasted about twelve minutes. Group activation specific to the beloved occurred in several regions. Most significant was activity in the right ventral tegmental area (VTA) and right postero-dorsal body and dorsal tail of the caudate nucleus (Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Strong, Li, and Brown, 2003; Aron et al., 2005). The region activated in the VTA is rich in cells that produce and distribute dopamine to many brain regions, including the caudate nucleus. Moreover, the VTA is central to the brain’s “reward system” (Schultz, 2000; Martin-Soelch, Leenders, Chevalley, Missimer, Kunig, Magyar, Mino, and Schultz, 2001; Breiter, Gollub, Weisskoff, Kennedy, Makris, Berke, Goodman, Kantor, Gastfriend, Riorden, Mathew, Rosen, and Hyman, 1997), the neural network associated with sensations of pleasure, general arousal, focused attention, and motivation to pursue and acquire rewards (Schultz, 2000; Delgado, Nystrom, Fissel, Noll, and Fiez, 2000; Elliott, Newman, Longe, and Deakin, 2003). The caudate nucleus is also associated with motivation and goal-oriented

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behaviors; it, too, is central to the dopaminergic reward system (MartinSoelch et al., 2001; Schultz, 2000). Using fMRI, Bartels and Zeki also investigated brain activity in seventeen men and women who reported being “truly, deeply, and madly in love” (2000, p. 3829). However, in this study, individuals reported being in love an average of 28.8 months, considerably longer. These subjects were less intensely in love. This was established (serendipitously) because both our participants and Bartels and Zeki’s participants were administered the same questionnaire, the Passionate Love Scale (Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986), prior to scanning. Bartels and Zeki (2000, 2004) also found activation in a region of the dorsal caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area. The above data suggest that the focused attention, motivation, and goaloriented behaviors characteristic of romantic love are associated with elevated activity of central dopamine. Because specific activities of dopamine are also associated with ecstasy, intense energy, sleeplessness, mood swings, emotional dependence, and craving (see Fisher, 1998), dopamine most likely also contributes to these aspects of romantic love. Elevated activity of norepinephrine and low activity of central serotonin may also be involved, although I have only corollary evidence at present. Norepinephrine is associated with a pounding heart, elevated blood pressure, and other physiological responses of the sympathetic nervous system, phenomena common to romantic love (Fisher, 1998, 2004). And scientists have recently studied concentrations of serotonin transporter in blood platelets of sixty individuals: twenty had fallen in love in the previous six months; twenty suffered from unmedicated obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); twenty normal (control) individuals were not in love (Marazziti, Akiskal, Rossi, and Cassano, 1999). Both the in-love participants and those suffering from OCD showed significantly lower concentations of the platelet serotonin transporter. Thus decreased activity of bodily (and perhaps also brain) serotonin most likely contributes to the lover’s obsessive thinking and impulsivity.

The Drive to Love Psychologists distinguish between emotions and motivations, which are brain systems oriented around planning and pursuit of a specific want or need. Arthur Aron had proposed that romantic love is not an emotion but a motivation system designed to enable suitors to build and maintain an intimate relationship with a preferred mating partner (Aron and Aron, 1991; Aron et al., 1995). Because the above-mentioned experiments indicate

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that this passion is associated with activity in the VTA and caudate nucleus, Aron’s hypothesis is most likely correct: motivation and goal-oriented behaviors form the core of romantic love. These findings then suggested to me that romantic love is a primary motivation system—a fundamental mating drive (Fisher, 2004). Donald Pfaff defines a drive as a neural state that energizes and directs behavior to acquire a particular biological need to survive or reproduce (Pfaff, 1999, pp. 7, 40). Romantic love shares many traits with basic drives: (1) Like all drives, romantic attraction is tenacious; emotions dissipate or change far more rapidly. (2) Romantic love is focused on a specific reward (the beloved); emotions, such as joy and disgust, are focused on a range of phenomena instead. (3) This passion is not associated with any particular facial expression, while all of the primary emotions have characteristic facial poses. (4) Like all drives, romantic love is exceedingly difficult to control; it is harder to curb thirst, for example, than anger. (5) And, like all of the basic drives (Pfaff, 1999), romantic love is associated with elevated activity of central dopamine. Drives lie along a continuum (Fisher, 2004). Some, such as thirst and the need for warmth, can rarely be extinguished until satisfied, while the sex drive and the maternal instinct can often be redirected. Falling in love appears to be near the base of this continuum. For example, romantic love is considerably stronger than the sex drive. Few people whose sexual advances are rejected proceed to kill themselves or someone else, whereas rejected lovers in cultures around the world commit suicide or homicide; many more become depressed. In a study of 114 Americans who had been romantically rejected in the past eight weeks, 40 percent were clinically depressed; 12 percent suffered moderate to severe depression (Mearns, 1991). Since romantic love is a universal and powerful human mating drive, it must have evolved.

Evolution of Romantic Love: The Brain Network for “Mate Choice” Ever since Darwin (1859, 1871) proposed the concept of sexual selection to explain patterns of sexual dimorphism in birds and mammals, scientists have been describing physical and behavioral traits that birds and mammals have evolved to attract potential mates (Andersson, 1994; Miller, 2000). The peacock’s tail feathers are the standard example. But the corresponding brain mechanism by which the display chooser responds to these traits, comes to prefer a specific individual, and focuses his or her courtship

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time and energy on this particular conspecific has not been defined (Fisher et al., 2002, 2002a; Fisher, 2004). Yet all birds and mammals express mate preferences; none copulate indiscriminately. The phenomenon of mate choice is so common in nature that the ethological literature regularly uses several terms to describe it, including “individual preference,” “favoritism,” “female choice,” “sexual choice,” “selective proceptivity,” and “attraction.” In most mammalian and avian species this mate preference is brief. In rats, for example, courtship attraction often lasts seconds; among elephants, it lasts three to five days; among foxes, it lasts about two weeks (Fisher, 2004). But all species display similar characteristics of attraction. Among these traits, attracted individuals focus their attention on a preferred mating partner and express heightened energy, obsessive following, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, possessive mateguarding, affiliative courtship gestures such as patting, stroking, and nuzzling, goal-oriented courtship behaviors, and intense motivation to win this particular individual (see Fisher, 2004). All these traits are also characteristic of human romantic love. Moreover, many creatures express this attraction instantly, what may be the forerunner of human “love at first sight.” Animal studies indicate that this mate preference (or attraction) is associated with elevated activities of central dopamine, another similarity with human romantic love. When a female lab-raised prairie vole is mated with a male, she forms a distinct preference for him associated with a 50 percent increase of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain’s reward system (Gingrich, Liu, Cascio, Wang, and Insel, 2000). When a dopamine antagonist is injected into the accumbens, the female no longer prefers this partner. And when a female is injected with a dopamine agonist, she begins to prefer the conspecific who is present at the time of infusion, even if she has not mated with this male (Gingrich et al., 2000; Wang, Yu, Cascio, Liu, Gingrich, and Insel, 1999). An increase in central dopamine is also associated with mate attraction in female sheep (Fabre-Nys, 1998). This mammalian (and avian) attraction system most likely evolved for the same adaptive reason it evolved in humans: to enable individuals to prefer specific mating partners, thereby conserving valuable courtship time and energy (Fisher, 1998, 2004; Fisher et al., 2002, 2002a). Then, at some point in hominid evolution, this mammalian neural mechanism for mate preference developed into human romantic love. Perhaps this process initially began as early as 3.5 million years ago, along with the evolution of hominid pair-bonding (Fisher, 1992; Reno, Meindl, McCollum, and Lovejoy, 2003), then started to take its developed human form some two million years ago

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as the brain began to exhibit some characteristically human traits (Fisher, 2004).

Biology of Romantic Rejection To understand the range of emotions, motivations, and behaviors associated with human romantic love, my colleagues and I conducted a second fMRI study, this one of romantic rejection. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study ten women and five men who were still very much in love but had recently been rejected by their romantic partner (Fisher et al., 2005). We employed the same protocol as with our happily in love subjects. Rejected participants alternately viewed a photograph of their abandoning beloved and a photograph of a familiar, emotionally neutral individual, interspersed with a distraction attention task. Preliminary analysis of the positive-neutral contrast showed significant group effects in the right nucleus accumbens/ventral putamen/pallidum, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and anterior insular/operculum cortex (Fisher et al., 2005). Other studies have shown that the nucleus accumbens/ventral pallidum/ putamen region where we found activity becomes more active as an individual chooses a high-risk investment associated with big gains or big losses (Kuhnen and Knutson, 2005) or anticipates a monetary reward (Zald, Boileau, El-Dearedy, Gunn, McGlone, Dichter, and Dagher, 2004). This region is also part of the dopaminergic reward system (Gingrich, Liu, Cascio, Wang, and Insel, 2000). The region of the anterior insula/operculum cortex where we found activity has been associated with skin and muscle pain and anxiety (Schreckenberger, Siessmeier, Viertmann, Landvogt, Buchholz, Rolke, Treede, and Bartenstein, 2005). The region of the orbitofrontal cortex where we found activity hasbeen associated with “theory of mind” (Vollm, Taylor, Richardson, Corcoran, Stirling, McKie, Deakin, and Elliott, 2006), the human ability to muse on the thoughts and intentions of others; this brain region is also associated with evaluating punishers (Kringelbach and Rolls, 2004), implementing appropriate adjustments in behavior (Ridderinkhof, Van den Wildenberg, Segalowitz, and Carter, 2004), obsessive/ compulsive behaviors (Evans, Lewis, and Iobst, 2004), and controlling anger (Goldstein, Alai-Klein, Leskovjan, Fowler, Wang, Gur, Hitzemann, and Volkow, 2005). These results suggest that the dopaminergic reward system remains active in recently romantically rejected men and women, but the precise location

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of activity differs. These preliminary results also suggest that neural regions associated with taking risks for big gains or losses, physical pain, obsessive/ compulsive behaviors, ruminating on the intentions and actions of the rejecter, evaluating options, and emotion regulation increase their activity when someone is rejected by a beloved. Ours is the second investigation of romantic rejection. Najib and colleagues (2004) studied nine women who were “actively grieving” a recent romantic breakup. Preliminary comparisons uncovered no commonalities; in fact, in several regions where we found activations, they found deactivations. Because our subjects regularly reported anger and hope for reconciliation, while the subjects in the Najib et al. study more regularly reported acceptance of the situation, I suspect that our participants were in the initial stage of romantic rejection, the protest phase, while their participants were in the subsequent resignation/despair phase.

Protest: The Initial Stage of Romantic Rejection Lewis, Amini, and Lannon divide romantic rejection into two general phases: protest and resignation/despair (2000). During the protest phase, abandoned lovers express intense energy, heightened alertness, and extreme motivation to win back their beloved. These psychiatrists theorize that this “protest response” evolved from a basic mammalian reaction to the rupture of any social tie. Moreover, they suggest that this protest response is associated with elevated activity of dopamine and norepinephrine, reasoning that these neurotransmitters most likely produce the heightened alertness, energy, and motivation that abandoned creatures exhibit as they call for help and search for their abandoner, generally their mother. Our data on rejected lovers is preliminary evidence that the hypothesis of Lewis, Amini, and Lannon is correct: elevated activity in dopaminergic reward pathways are likely to be involved in the initial protest phase of romantic rejection. Our results may also help explain “frustration attraction”—why disappointed lovers begin to love their rejecting partner even more passionately (Fisher 2004). When a reward is delayed in coming, reward-expecting neurons prolong their activity (Schultz, 2000) and activity of the dopaminergic reward system is associated with feelings of intense romantic love. This phenomenon of frustration attraction appears to be maladaptive, but the intense energy, focused attention, extreme motivation, and goal-oriented behaviors that dopamine produce are useful biological tools for regaining a beloved (Fisher, 2004). During the protest stage, rejected lovers often also experience “abandon-

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ment rage” (Meloy, 1998, 1999), another trait that may be linked to the dopaminergic reward system. The primary rage system has pathways to regions in the prefrontal cortex that anticipate rewards (Panksepp, 1998), and animal studies indicate that these reward and rage circuits are closely connected. For example, when you pet a cat, it expresses pleasure; when you withdraw the stimulation, it often bites (Panksepp, 1998), a response to unfulfilled expectations known as “frustration aggression.” The data on our rejected lovers suggests one of the neural regions linked to this rage response, a region of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex associated with controlling anger. These fMRI data on romantic rejection also suggest that the brain mechanisms for abandonment rage and romantic love can operate in tandem, biological data that corroborates current behavioral research. Ellis and Malamuth (2000) report that rejected men and women can be furious at a rejecting partner, while still being very much in love with him or her. Moreover, love and hate/rage have several behavioral similarities, including focused attention, obsessive thinking, heightened energy, and intense emotion, motivation, and craving (Fisher, 2004). So these data indicate that the opposite of love is not hate; more likely it is indifference. Like frustration attraction, abandonment rage appears to be maladaptive. It stresses the heart, raises blood pressure, and suppresses the immune system (Dozier, 2002). But it probably evolved to enable jilted lovers to depart a dead-end relationship faster; this way they could renew courtship sooner, a reproductive advantage (Fisher, 2004). Abandonment rage also motivates people to fight for the welfare of their offspring, as seen so often during divorce proceedings (Fisher, 2004).

Resignation/Despair: The Second Stage of Romantic Rejection The second general phase of romantic rejection, resignation/despair, may be associated with reduced activity in subcortical dopaminergic pathways. I hypothesize this for three reasons. First, a primate study indicates that when a monkey realizes an expected reward will never come, dopamine-making cells in the midbrain decrease their activity (Schultz, 2000). Second, the other recent fMRI investigation, of women suffering from a recent romantic breakup (Najib et al., 2004, p. 2253), reports decreased activity in parts of the dorsal caudate, a brain region rich in receptor sites for dopamine. Last, long-term stress suppresses the activity of dopamine and other monoamines, producing lethargy, despondency, and

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depression (Panksepp, 1998), which are traits of resigned and despondent lovers. This despair response also seems counterproductive. But scientists argue that the high metabolic costs of depression are actually its benefits. They reason that depression is an honest, believable signal that something is desperately wrong, so it galvanizes friends and relatives to support the rejected person during his or her time of intense need (Hagen, Watson, and Thomson, in press). Depression also stimulates insight (Watson and Andrews, 2002), mental clarity that may spur the rejected lover to make difficult decisions that promote reproductive success (Nesse, 1991). Love hurts. A recent neuroimaging study indicates that emotional pain induced by social exclusion affects some of the same brain regions that become active during physical pain (Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams, 2003). Some broken-hearted lovers even die from a heart attack or stroke caused by their depression (Rosenthal, 2002). Not everyone suffers from romantic rejection to the same degree, of course. Across the life course, individuals develop different feelings of competence or incompetence, different expectations of love, different sensitivities to rejection, and different coping strategies that predispose them to romantic rejection in different ways (Downey and Feldman 1996; Downey, Freitas, Michaelis, and Khouri, 1998; Leary, 2001). Moreover, some have more mating opportunities, options that mitigate feelings of protest, rage, and despair. Men and women tend to express some differences in how they handle rejection, too (Baumeister, Wotman, and Stillwell, 1993; Buss, 1994; Hatfield and Rapson, 1996). Men are three to four times more likely to commit suicide after being rejected (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996) and are more likely to stalk a rejecting partner, as well as batter or kill her (Meloy, 2001; Meloy and Fisher, 2005). Rejected women report more severe feelings of depression (Mearns, 1991; Hatfield and Rapson, 1996), and more chronic strain and rumination after being rejected (Nolen-Hoeksema, Larson, and Grayson, 1999). Women are more likely to talk about their trauma as well, sometimes inadvertently retraumatizing themselves in the process (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996). But few people avoid the pain of romantic rejection. In one college community, 93 percent of both sexes queried reported that they had been spurned by someone they passionately loved; and 95 percent reported they had rejected someone who was deeply in love with them (Baumeister et al., 1993). These rejected lovers suffer for important evolutionary reasons. Discarded sweethearts have wasted precious courtship time and metabolic energy; and their reproductive future has been jeopardized, along with their social alliances, self-esteem, and happiness.

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Romantic Love: A Combination of Brain Systems The above data suggest that central dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, in various changing ratios and in conjunction with other neural systems, contribute to multiple aspects of romantic love. But these neurotransmitters also contribute to many other emotions and motivations; they are not specific to romantic love. This is to be expected. Pfaff (1999) proposes that all drives have two components: a generalized arousal system in the brain produces the energy and motivation to acquire any biological need; and a specific constellation of brain systems produces the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors associated with each particular biological need. The general arousal component of all drives, Pfaff reports, is associated with the actions of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, as well as several other brain chemicals. The specific constellation of brain systems associated with each particular drive varies. Our fMRI study may have uncovered only the “general arousal” component of romantic love. We found activations and deactivations in many other brain regions and pathways, however, and some particular combination of these is probably specific to romantic love. Among them may be a region of the right anteromedial caudate body (Aron et al., 2005), because our happily in love subjects who scored higher on one of the questionnaires we administered prior to scanning, the Passionate Love Scale (Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986), also showed more activity in this brain region. Deactivation of the amygdala may also be central to the experience of being in love (Aron et al., 2005; Bartels and Zeki, 2000), as well as activations and deactivations in other limbic and cortical regions. But the thoughts, emotions, and motivations associated with romantic love may be so varied across individuals, as well as across time within each individual, that the full set of dynamic, parallel neural systems involved may be impossible to record by group analysis.

Can Love Last? Nevertheless, these fMRI experiments indicate some of the primary neurotransmitter systems involved in romantic love. They also suggest some things about the duration of intense, early stage romantic love. Nisa, a !Kung woman of the Kalahari Desert of Botswana, summed up love’s trajectory succinctly: “When two people are first together, their hearts are on fire and their passion is very great. After a while, the fire cools and that’s how it stays. They continue to love each other, but it’s in a different way—warm and dependable” (Shostak, 1981, p. 268). Romantic love can

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be sustained in a long-term relationship, but it generally becomes less intense (Traupmann and Hatfield, 1981; Wallerstein and Blakeslee, 1995). And the characteristic impermanence of early-stage, intense romantic love is most likely an adaptive mechanism. Romantic love is metabolically expensive. So this brain system probably evolved primarily to enable our forebears to focus their courtship and mating energy on a preferred individual only long enough to conceive a child. Then this intense passion gradually subsided as most couples shifted into feelings of attachment so they could more calmly rear their child through infancy together (Fisher, 2004). Two studies have explored the trajectory of intense, early stage romantic love. One investigation of blood platelet density of serotonin transporter indicates that intense romantic love lasts between twelve and eighteen months (Marazziti et al., 1999). And our between-subject analysis of happily in love individuals in longer relationships (eight to seventeen months) suggests how this passion changes across time. We initiated this secondary investigation because our group of happily in love subjects showed some different patterns of brain activation than did those of the Bartels and Zeki study. But, as mentioned earlier, our subjects were in love an average duration of 7.4 months, while those in the Bartels and Zeki study were in love an average duration of 28.8 months. So we separately analyzed only our happily in love participants who were in longer relationships. The results showed that these men and women exhibited brain activation patterns more closely resembling those of the subjects in the Bartels and Zeki study (Aron et al., 2005), specifically, activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insular cortex. These data indicate that changes in cognition and emotion occur as love proceeds.

Romantic Love: An Addiction? These fMRI studies of human romantic love have several implications for the medical and legal communities, as well as for individuals. Among them, romantic love is most likely highly addictive. Indeed, because romantic love is associated with focused attention, euphoria, craving, obsession, compulsion, distortion of reality, personality changes, emotional and physical dependence, inappropriate (even dangerous) behaviors, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, relapse, and loss of self-control, psychologists have long regarded it as an addiction (Peele, 1975; Carnes, 1983; Halpern, 1982; Tennov, 1979; Hunter, Nitschke, and Hogan, 1981; Mellody, Miller, and Miller, 1992; Griffin-Shelley, 1991; Schaef, 1989; Findling, 1999). The above fMRI data on romantic love support this hypothesis. Those who are happily

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in love express neural activity in a region associated with the “rush” of cocaine, and those who are rejected in love appear to have neural activity in common with those who gamble for money, risking big gains and big losses. Other studies also support the possible parallel between romantic love and addiction. When Bartels and Zeki compared the brain scans of their happily in love subjects with those of men and women who had injected cocaine or opioids, they found that some of the same brain regions became active (Bartels and Zeki, 2000). In addition, studies of cocaine addiction in animals (David, Segu, Buhot, Ichaye, and Cazala, 2004; Kalivas and Duffy, 1998; Wise and Hoffman, 1992) and humans (fMRI) (Breiter et al., 1997) indicate that the VTA is involved in addiction, as it is in romantic love. Last, the decreasing desire for more chocolate (aversion) is associated with decreasing activity in the VTA (Small, Zatorre, Dagher, Evans, and JonesGotman, 2001). Laymen generally consider that there are five major physiological addictions: food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, and nicotine. Romantic love may be another.

Individual Variations in Romantic Love These fMRI data also suggest why some people fall in love more regularly and/or more passionately than others. Childhood, adolescent, and adult experiences unquestionably play a role. But baseline levels of dopamine and serotonin are directed by specific genes, and these genes are polymorphic; they produce individual variations in these neurotransmitter systems (Gibbons, 2004; Lesch, Bengel, Heils, Sabol, Greenberg, Petri, Benjamin, Muller, Hamer, and Murphy, 1996). Hence some men and women can potentially inherit the biological proclivity to fall in love more often and/or more intensely than others. One’s habits and diseases can also affect one’s biological susceptibility to romantic love. For example, daily drug use can alter the structure and function of the brain’s reward system for weeks, months, or years (Nestler, 2001). Moreover, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, and other ailments alter dopaminergic pathways. Even environmental and social circumstances potentially contribute to one’s romantic receptiveness. Novel situations, for example, can stimulate romantic feelings (Norman and Aron, 1995; Aron and Aron, 1996; Dutton and Aron, 1974), most likely because novelty (and danger) raise the activity of central dopamine (Fisher, 2004). But the above fMRI studies can contribute nothing to the question of why we fall in love with one person rather than another. Who triggers this brain system is a different issue, directed largely by environmental and social

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forces. Timing plays a role; people tend to fall in love when they are ready (Hatfield, 1988). Proximity can spark this rapture (Pines, 1999). As the poet Ezra Pound wrote of this, “Ah, I have picked up magic in her nearness.” Most men and women fall in love with individuals of the same ethnic, social, religious, educational, and economic background, those of similar physical attractiveness, a comparable intelligence, similar attitudes, expectations, values, interests, and those with similar social and communication skills (Rushton, 1989; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels, 1994; Pines, 1999; Buston and Emlen, 2003). People also gravitate toward those who fit within what I refer to as their love template or love map (Fisher, 2004) and Zentner (2005) refers to as an individual’s ideal mate personality concept. This love template is an unconscious list of traits that an individual is looking for in an ideal partner; it develops as he or she grows up and then becomes refined as the person moves through life. Biology also plays a role in whom we find attractive. People fall in love with individuals who are somewhat mysterious, perhaps in part because novelty elevates the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine. Women are more attracted to men with a different immune system (Wedekind et al., 1995), an evolutionary mechanism that may have evolved to rear more varied young. Like many creatures, humans also tend to be attracted to those who are symmetrical (Gangestad and Thornhill, 1997). When scientists recorded the brain activity of heterosexual men ages twenty-one to thirty-five as they looked at women with symmetrical faces, the ventral tegmental area became active (Aharon et al., 2001). I suspect that scientists will find many more biological mechanisms that contribute to attraction to a specific individual. But whether all these environmental and biological stimuli trigger the brain circuitry associated with romance, or the brain circuitry of romance somehow sparks one’s interest in a particular individual, is undetermined. The above fMRI data cannot solve the metaphysical issue of cause and effect between brain and mind.

Lust, Romance, and Attachment: Interactions However, data collected from these fMRI studies can help to explain some of the psychobiological interactions among the three basic mating drives: lust, romantic love, and attachment. And they suggest at least one of the dangers of tampering with these three delicately balanced systems. People who have fallen madly in love generally begin to find their beloved enormously sexually attractive, and biological interactions between romantic

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love and the sex drive may contribute. Increasing dopamine associated with romantic love can stimulate a cascade of reactions, including the release of testosterone, the hormone of sexual desire (Wenkstern, Pfaus, and Fibiger, 1993; Wersinger and Rissman, 2000; Szezypka, Zhou, and Palmiter, 1998; Hull, Du, Lorrain, and Matuszewick, 1997). In fact, elevated activity of dopamine generally increases sex drive, sexual arousal, and sexual performance in humans (Clayton, McGarvey, Warnock, et al., 2000; Heaton, 2000; Walker, Cole, Gardner, Hughes, et al., 1993; Coleman, Cunningham, Foster, Batey, Donahue, Houser, and Ascher, 1999; Ascher, Cole, Colin, Feighner, Ferris, Fibiger, Golden, Martin, Potter, Richelson, and Sulser, 1995). This chemical connection between romantic love and lust makes evolutionary sense: if romantic love evolved to stimulate courtship with a preferred individual, it should also trigger the drive for sex, in order to start the mating process. But can casual sex trigger feelings of romantic love? Most liberated adults have had sex with a friend or acquaintance and never fallen in love with him or her. But it can happen. The natives of rural Nepal say of this, “Naso pasyo, maya basyo,” or “the penis entered and love arrived” (Ahearn, 2001). Perhaps this occurs because sexual activity increases the activities of dopamine in the brain (Damsma, Pfaus, Wenkstern, Phillips, and Fibiger, 1992; Pleim, Matochik, Barfield, and Auerbach, 1990; Yang, Pau, Hess, and Spies, 1996). In fact, women may be particularly vulnerable to falling in love with a casual sex partner because seminal fluid contains dopamine and tyrosine, a building block of dopamine (Burch and Gallup, in press). Sexual activity can also stimulate feelings of attachment via orgasm. Orgasm produces a flood of oxytocin and vasopressin, the neuropeptides associated with attachment in women and men (Carmichael, Humbert, Dixen, Palmisano, Greenleaf, and Davidson, 1987). Because of the complex interactions among these three primary mating drives, the psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson and I have proposed that serotonin-enhancing antidepressants (SSRIs) can jeopardize one’s ability to feel romantic passion for a new partner or a deep attachment for a longterm mate (Fisher, 2004; Fisher and Thomson, in press). These medications suppress dopaminergic pathways; they also dull the emotions and curb obsessive thinking: All are associated with early-stage, intense romantic love. As many as 70 percent of patients taking these medications experience a decline in sexual desire, sexual arousal, and orgasm (anorgasmia). This anorgasmia may jeopardize the lover’s feelings of attachment to a long-term partner too. The negative biological effects of serotonin-enhancing antidepressants on

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feelings of romantic love and attachment were reported by a patient, who wrote: “After two bouts of depression in ten years, my therapist recommended I stay on serotonin-enhancing antidepressants indefinitely. As appreciative as I was to have regained my health, I found that my usual enthusiasm for life was replaced with blandness. My romantic feelings for my wife declined drastically. With the approval of my therapist, I gradually discontinued my medication. My enthusiasm returned and our romance is now as strong as ever. I am prepared to deal with another bout of depression if need be, but in my case the long-term side effects of antidepressants render them off limits” (Frankel, 2004). The complex and dynamic interactions among these three brain systems suggest that any medication that changes their chemical checks and balances is likely to alter an individual’s courting, mating, and parenting tactics, ultimately affecting fertility and one’s genetic future.

Biological Underpinnings of Serial Monogamy and Adultery The above fMRI data also bring understanding to the human tendency for serial monogamy and clandestine adultery. But to discuss the significance of these data, it is necessary to review the central elements of the human reproductive strategy. Only 3 percent of mammals pair up to rear their young. Homo sapiens is among them. Today some 90 percent of women and men marry by age fifty in all but a few countries (Bruce et al., 1995), and cross-cultural data confirm that humans primarily practice social monogamy, forming a socially recognized pair-bond with a single mate at a time (Fisher, 1992). Although polygyny is permitted in 84 percent of human societies, in the vast majority of these cultures only about 10 percent of men actually maintain two or more wives simultaneously (Fisher, 1992). Moreover, because polygyny in humans is regularly associated with rank and wealth, Daly and Wilson propose that monogamy was even more prevalent in prehorticultural, unstratified societies (1983). In fact, anthropologists recently remeasured Australopithecus afarensis fossils for skeletal size, and reported that by 3.5 million years ago men and women exhibited roughly the same degree of sexual dimporphism as the sexes do today. Thus they propose that hominids lived in the same sorts of social units as modern Homo sapiens; these ancestral men and women were “principally monogamous” (Reno et al., 2003, p. 1073). Humans are also adulterous. The National Opinion Research Center in Chicago reports that approximately 25 percent of men and 15 percent of

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women cheat at some point during marriage (Laumann et al., 1994). Other studies indicate that from 30 percent to 50 percent of married men and women philander (Gangestad and Thornhill, 1997). Scholars may never establish the true frequency of adultery in either sex, due to reporting bias. Nevertheless, studies of American adultery from the 1920s through the 1990s report its occurrence (Fisher, 1992). Extra-pair copulations occur frequently in every other society for which data are available (Frayser, 1985), as well as in many other socially monogamous species (Fisher, 1992, 1999). And human testes size, which varies according to a species’ predominant reproductive strategy, suggests that adultery by both sexes was common in hominid prehistory (Miller, 2000). Human divorce and remarriage, as well, and biological (as well as cultural) forces may be involved. Data on fifty-eight human societies, taken from the Demographic Yearbook of the United Nations between 1947 and 1989, indicate a worldwide divorce peak during and around the fourth year of marriage (Fisher, 1992). Because four years is the characteristic duration of birth spacing in hunting/gathering societies, and because many other socially monogamous avian and mammalian species form pair-bonds that last only long enough to rear the young through infancy, I have hypothesized that this human cross-cultural divorce peak represents the remains of a specific ancestral hominid reproductive strategy to remain together at least long enough to raise a single child through infancy (Fisher, 1992). Children in hunting/gathering societies join a multiage play group soon after being weaned, becoming the responsibility of older siblings and other relatives in the band. So the ecological pressure on couples to remain pairbonded was reduced after the weaning of a child, unless they had conceived another. Moreover, divorce most likely had an adaptive payoff in ancestral times: those who practiced serial monogamy in association with offspring weaning would have created healthy genetic variety in their lineages (Fisher, 1992). Evolutionary hypotheses such as this are often regarded with skepticism by those unfamiliar with human ethology. I find this attitude shortsighted. Anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, primatologists, zoologists, and many other scholars have painstakingly accumulated a wealth of data on aspects of human behavior and its counterparts in many other species. Integrating these disparate facts with logical, scientific reasoning can add understanding, stimulate discourse, and initiate new inquiry into this difficult puzzle: human nature. But regardless of the reasons for the evolution of human serial monogamy, or the myriad biological and social forces that contribute to human divorce

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(Fisher, 1992), everywhere in the world that men and women have the economic resources to divorce, divorce and remarriage are common. So clandestine adultery and serial monogamy are primary aspects of this “dual” human reproductive strategy. And the above MRI data on romantic love add insight to these human patterns. Foremost, these fMRI data show that the brain circuitry for romantic love is distinct from that of the sex drive and that of attachment. Anecdotal data support this finding: one can feel deep attachment for one individual while feeling romantic passion for someone else while feeling the sex drive for a range of others. The relative biological independence of these three mating drives may have evolved to enable ancestral men and women to opportunistically engage in monogamy and adultery simultaneously and/or sequentially (Fisher, 2004). But the relative neurological independence of these three mating drives helps to explain contemporary cross-cultural patterns of philandering, sexual jealousy, stalking, spousal abuse, love homicide, love suicide, and the clinical depression associated with unstable and disbanded partnerships.

Love’s Fickle but Eternal Nature Wild is love. This passion can trigger the reward system in the brain at almost any time of life; even four-year-old children and senior citizens report this craving (Hatfield, Schmitz, Cornelius, and Rapson, 1988; Hatfield and Rapson, 1987; Purdy, 1995, Fisher 2004). Perhaps romantic love in children evolved to motivate them to practice at life’s most essential task, choosing an appropriate mating partner. And romance in one’s elder years keeps the body toned and the mind alert, and provides lovers with companionship, optimism, and energy. As fMRI and other research techniques become more sophisticated, scientists will establish more about romantic love in children and the aging. Future research may also establish specifically how serotonin-enhancing antidepressants affect the brain activity of romantic passion; how diseases such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, and various addictions affect this circuitry; why certain personality types fall in love more regularly than others; why some people suffer less from romantic rejection; how “talking therapies” or “twelve-step” programs affect brain circuitry in disappointed lovers; how the brain mechanisms for romantic love change across time; how this passion transforms into feelings of attachment for a long-term partner; how some couples sustain romantic love in long-term partnerships; and how novel situations, vacations, adultery, divorce, and childhood experiences and

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other life circumstances interact with brain mechanisms to affect whom we love, when we love, and how we express love. Future investigations may even help to explain the prevalence of some modern diseases that appear to be unrelated to romantic passion. For example, as the brain system for intense romantic love evolved, it may have contributed to the development of several obsessive-compulsive disorders and addictions as well. The ancient Greeks called romantic love the “madness of the gods.” It is important to investigate the biology of this passion in all its variations— because this madness is central to our lives. In a study of thirty-seven societies, men and women ranked love, or mutual attraction, as the first criterion for choosing a spouse (Buss, 1994). Everywhere people sing for love, pray for love, work for love, live for love, kill for love, and die for love. Even where marriages are arranged, spouses often fall in love. Nothing will extinguish the human drive to love.

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6

A Biobehavioral Model of Attachment and Bonding james f. leckman, sarah b. hrdy, eric b. keverne, and c. sue carter

Every variety of love . . . is born, lives, dies, or attains immortality in accordance with the same laws. Henri Marie Beyle (Stendhal), 1822 The human brain is a remarkable product of evolution. While the basic machinery of the vertebrate brain has been in place for more than 450 million years, the appearance of our subspecies (Homo sapiens sapiens) emerged between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years ago. In the struggle for life, certain traits have come to predominate. We might surmise that elements in our mental and behavioral repertoire related to successful reproduction have been the focus of intense selective pressures ever since the first lactating protomammals emerged some three hundred million years ago. The selection of a mate, the bearing of viable offspring, and the formation of parental commitments that will sustain an infant through varying periods of dependency (especially lengthy for humans) are just a few of the crucial complex, interdependent processes needed for individual survival and, hence, species viability. Many of our biological and behavioral potentialities serve these goals, including some that are highly conserved, brain-based systems specifically activated at developmentally appropriate moments. We hypothesize that a thorough understanding of these

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ancient adapted processes will lead to deeper insights into our vulnerability to develop a range of psychopathological outcomes. In this chapter, the term bond typically refers to biological processes that mediate parental behaviors and infant responsiveness, while the term attachment has a stronger psychological (and consequently human) connotation, although some overlap in the use of these terms is inevitable. Initial bond formation in mammals is marked by the selective recognition of an individual or individuals associated with proximity-seeking, separation distress, and altered autonomic and behavioral responsivity conditioned by the absence, presence, or cues of the other(s). Affiliative bond formation alters in a fundamental and profound fashion what is important in the world. Attachments embellish bonds and refer to a complex developmental process between human beings that is dependent on learning and memory, and is based on specific histories of emotionally charged interactions that include caretaking, care-receiving, communication, negotiation of affection, protection, and commitment, and the creation of metacognitive domains. These attachments and bonds often serve to enhance security and a sense of wellbeing, as well as to reduce the impact of potentially stressful future events. Indeed, bonds may be seen as a means by which the individual is prepared for an uncertain future. However, the loss or threatened loss of such bonds and attachments can have catastrophic consequences. The word love appears rarely in this chapter, and when it does, it refers simply to the conscious subjective experience that arises from, and that can influence, all aspects of bonding and attachment within our species.

Mammalian Behavior in the Formation and Maintenance of Bonds PARENTAL CARE

Adaptive parental behavior can be defined as any response toward a reproductively immature, genetically related, member of the same species that increases the probability of the survival and eventual reproductive success of one or more of the recipients. Parental care can be either uniparental (limited to one parent in the caretaking role) or biparental (both parents serve as caregivers). Among mammals, uniparental care systems are the norm, with the mother being the sole provider in about 90 percent of the species (Eisenberg and Kleiman, 1983). In some species, other individuals in addition to the biological parents (alloparents), provide care (Hrdy, 1999). In such species, alloparental care may be critical for the survival of the offspring.

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Maternal behavior is a highly conserved set of behavioral capacities that are crucial for reproductive success. Most mammals have distinctive and stereotyped behavioral repertoires as they prepare to give birth. Mice build nests; dogs furiously scratch the dirt or any other substrate to hollow out a birthing place. Birth is followed by a series of fixed action patterns, including biting and licking off the amniotic sac, eating the placenta, biting the umbilical cord, sniffing and licking the newborn clean, often (as in sheep) olfactorily imprinting on the baby’s smell, or, as in some rodents and dogs, collecting pups into the nest and huddling over them to permit suckling. Nonhuman primates exhibit some of these same behaviors—licking the baby clean and grooming it with their hands; inspecting the infant, perhaps especially the genitals; and eating the placenta. After birth and during the first months of life, patterns of care of the newborn vary across species. Newborn rodents, such as rats and mice, virtually immobile and incapable of body temperature maintenance, are dependent for their survival on the initiation of a specific set of maternal behaviors (Rosenblatt and Lehrman, 1963). Maternal behavior in these rodents involves a complex set of activities, including nest repair, sniffing and exploration of pups, mouthing, pup retrieval, licking, grooming, and various forms of nursing (arched-back nursing, prone nursing, blanket nursing) (Pryce, Bettschen, and Feldon, 2001). In addition to caring for their own pups, recently parturient females avidly display retrieving, licking, and nursing behavior toward foster pups introduced into the cage. In contrast, adult virgin female rats do not show maternal behavior when first presented with foster pups; however, if virgin female rats cohabit with young pups, they will eventually display maternal behavior after a period of four to seven days (Rosenblatt, 1967). This experimental paradigm is referred to as sensitization, and has served as a useful tool in the assessment of maternal behavior. Among New World common marmosets, mothers may seek a tree cavity or other safe place to give birth. Once born, the baby (or babies, since twins are the common rule in marmosets) crawl up the mother, under her arm, and onto her back. In Old World monkeys and the great apes, exclusive maternal care of singleton young, who cling to the mother and are carried by her, is the rule, and only the mother eats the placenta (Kraemer, Ebert, Schmidt, and McKinney, 1991; Kraemer, 1992). In one of the few births observed among wild gorillas, the female set the infant on the ground while she ate the placenta. Only then did she pick up and adjust her infant to her breast. Among some Old World monkeys, mothers attempt to give birth

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unmolested by others. In many species mothers remain extremely possessive of their infants, while in others, mothers permit other group members to hold and carry the baby from the first day of life. In the wild, day-old newborns spend up to 50 percent of daylight hours being carried by female kin other than the mother. Mothers retrieve their babies at night, and typically babies suckle only from their own mothers. In contrast to mammals generally, human mothers exhibit relatively few universal fixed behaviors apart from the labor experience itself. Universals observed across cultures include inspecting the infant, noting its condition. Like other primates, humans pay special attention to the genitals and other anatomical features. Humans are unique among primates, but not unique among mammals generally, in discriminating on the basis of such attributes—for example, abandoning an infant with real or perceived defects (Hrdy, 1999). Universally, the mother and/or her companions clean off the newborn, but the means by which this practical task is accomplished depend on available methods and customs. Typically, following a close visual and tactile inspection, newborns are washed with water or oil, and perhaps powdered with dust, dye, charcoal, cornmeal, or even dried dung. Treatment of the placenta is quite variable (it may be discarded or ceremonially buried, but cross-culturally it is the exception rather than the rule for placentas to be eaten). Many, but not all, mothers hold the baby close immediately and encourage nursing. Others do so later. Colostrum (the first milk secreted by the mother as she begins to breast-feed) may be offered to the baby or (as in many African and Haitian societies) expressed onto the ground. Usually the baby suckles first from the mother, but in some Central Africa pgymy groups a newborn may first suckle from a lactating allomother (an individual who takes care of an infant who is not her own). The picture emerging for humans is of mothers for whom cognitive processes play a more important role (Keverne, 2005), although physiological changes in the mother during pregnancy and the birth process clearly prime mothers for responding maternally, and after-birth cues from the infant play a role in sustaining maternal commitment (Fleming, 2005) as do physiological processes linked to lactation. DIFFERENCES ACROSS MAMMALIAN SPECIES

The most striking differences across species concern the perceptual means by which the offspring are identified. In virtually all mammalian species studied, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, auditory, and visual systems are engaged, although the relative contribution of each is species-dependent. For

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rodents and sheep, olfactory systems are key, but are less important for humans and other primates, for which visual discrimination is preeminent. Biparental caretaking While biparental care is commonplace among avian species, it is present in only about 10 percent of mammals. Although some form of paternal care (often as rudimentary as generalized protection of young in the group) is found in many primate species, exclusive and costly male care of young (as in the father carrying the baby most of the time) is seen only in pairbonded species with high male certainty of paternity. Across human cultures, fathers may play important roles in defending and provisioning, and even caring for the young, but the composition of families tends to fluctuate through time. The identity of caretakers may change, and an array of kin and other group members may be drawn into these roles. In the absence of baby bottles, mammalian infants need to be suckled, and lactating mothers are uniquely equipped for this task. Women describe breast-feeding as a uniquely close, very physical, at times sensual experience, one that brings a particular unity between the mother and her infant. Cleaning, grooming, and dressing behaviors, providing for close inspection of the baby’s body and appearance, can be undertaken by a broader cast of characters, and such behaviors may carry a special valence inasmuch as they permit closeness to infants, which among all primates tend to be perceived as highly attractive. Whereas behavioral fixed-action patterns in humans are minimal, at a mental level birth is often viewed as a potentially dangerous, often supernaturally charged event. Mortal dangers to mother and infant are widely recognized, and may require ritual intervention. These rituals include acts of purification and supplication as well as special events surrounding the naming of the child and acknowledgment by the social group that a viable new member has been born safely and is in need of their guidance and support. At a cross-cultural level, little is known about the mental preoccupations of postpartum mothers, but Leckman et al. (1999) have begun to catalog various postpartum preoccupations with care and well-being of the infant that are characteristic of Western (mostly middle-class) mothers. In this culture, the peripartum period is associated with intense parental preoccupations (Leckman and Mayes, 1999; Leckman et al., 1999; Winnicott, 1956). As presented in table 6-1, the content of these preoccupations includes intrusive worries concerning the parents’ adequacy as parents and the infant’s safety and well-being. These thoughts, and the harm-avoidant behavior they

Table 6-1 Comparison of prominent features of early parental love, infant responsiveness, and romantic love

Feature

Early Parental Love

Infant Romantic Responsiveness Love

Selective recognition—exclusivity of focus

+++/++++

+++

+++/++++

Altered mental state—altered autonomic and behavioral responsivity conditioned by the absence, presence, or merely cues of the other(s)

+++/++++

+++

+++

+++

++

+++

++* +++* ++++ ++++

+++a +++a +++a ++a

++++* ++++* +++ +++

+*

+++a

++b*

++++

+++

+++

++++

+++

++

++++* ++++

++ ++

++* ++++b

+++

+++

+++

+*

+

+++*

Clear onset—hedonic transformation Intrusive thoughts and images (preoccupations): —Longing for reciprocity —Idealization of the other —Heightened awareness of the other —Heightened sense of responsibility and worries about the well-being of the other —Upsetting, aggressive thoughts focused on the self or the other Altered repetitive behaviors: —Proximity-seeking, physical contact, and separation distress —Emotionally charged caring: talking, singing, feeding and grooming —Need for things to be safe, secure, “just right” —Aggressive behavior in defense of child/partner Dichotomous resolution, either: —Establishment of intimate, mutually satisfying reciprocal patterns of interaction, usually marked by a culturally defined ritual as well as the reorganization and ongoing development of metacognitive representations or —Rejection

a

Initially the mental processes of the infant are ineffable and out of conscious awareness. May be sexually dimorphic with males ⬎ females. *p ⬎ .01 Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. Note: Ratings based on the judgments of twenty-one experts on bond formation and attachment (seven females and fourteen males) following a weeklong Dalhem conference in Berlin (2003). Ratings were on a five-point ordinal scale (0–4). Mean values rounded to the nearest integer except for midrange values that are presented as the two closest integers (for example, 3.5 +++/++++). Male and female raters showed no differences. Using a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test (p ⬎ .01), romantic love was rated as having more longing for reciprocity, a greater tendency to idealize the other, more likely to entertain aggressive thoughts toward the other, and a greater likelihood that the relationship would end with rejection, compared with early parental love. Early parental love, however, was rated as being more focused on things being “just right” for the infant. Differences between infant responsiveness and the other two forms of love were not subjected to statistical tests, because less than half of the raters completed those ratings. Visual inspection, however, suggests that the participating raters considered infants to harbor more aggressive thoughts toward their caretakers.

a

b

Source: Adapted from Leckman and Mayes (1999) and Leckman et al. (2005).

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engender, resemble those encountered in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Even before the child is born, parents preoccupy themselves with creating a safe and secure environment for the infant. Major cleaning and renovation projects are commonplace as the human form of nest-building unfolds. Uppermost among parental concerns are safety and unimpeded access. Safety issues include the cleanliness of the infant’s immediate environment. After birth this same sense of heightened responsibility will compel parents to check on the baby frequently, even at times when they know he or she is fine. In contrast to these anxious, intrusive thoughts and harm-avoidant behaviors, human parents also regularly report their infant as being “perfect.” For example, Leckman et al. (1999) reported that this experience peaked at three months of age, with 73 percent of the mothers and 88 percent of the fathers endorsing this experience. Exquisite and prolonged attention to physical details and similarities to one or both parents occupies considerable amounts of time. While human parents will typically prepare a special location (the nursery, in middle-class Western societies) in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, no monkey or ape mother has been observed making any kind of nest in preparation for birth, nor is this customary among nomadic foragers. What humans colloquially refer to as “nesting instincts” may be more convincingly explained as outgrowths of maternal preoccupations with the infant’s physical environment, safety, and well-being. Infant responsiveness Critical to the formation of social bonds between infant and parent is some form of social engagement. At the time of birth, mammalian young exhibit behaviors that either bring the infant into contact with the mother or serve to bring the mother into contact with her newborn. The exact behaviors exhibited differ dramatically across species, and also vary with the usual conditions at the time of birth. As a rule, infants that are born in a mature state exhibit such behaviors as clinging (e.g., some primate species) or approach (e.g., sheep, guinea pigs). In species in which infants are born less well-developed, characteristics of the young, including their vocalizations, typically serve to attract the mother to the infant. However, even in these species, subtle infant proximity-seeking behaviors can be apparent. For instance, the newborn rat pup attempts to direct the snout in the direction of the familiar odor of amniotic fluid (Teicher and Blass, 1977). Because the mother consumes birth fluids, and then licks her underside, this behavior by the pup brings it into contact with the nipple.

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It is also clear that infants’ awareness of caretakers begins very early in life and is closely related to the maintenance of physiological homeostasis with regard to warmth, feeding, and fluid and water balance. The human infant’s capacity to attend to the caregiver’s face, gestures, voice, and responsiveness appears relatively early (Trevarthen, 2005), and provides the stimuli needed for human language-processing to develop normally. For example, Tzourio-Mazoyer, De Schonen, Crivello, Reutter, Aujard, and Mazoyer (2002) observed that two-month-old human infants, when shown a woman’s face, activate a distributed network of cortical areas that includes the areas, which in adults, are involved in facial recognition (fusiform gyrus) and language-processing (left superior temporal gyrus), suggesting the close linkage between the formation of social relationships and language acquisition. It is likely that our ancestors were cooperative breeders among whom maternal commitment was contingent on social support; consequently, human infants have a greater need to monitor and interpret the moods and intentions of others than other primates do (Hrdy, 1999, 2005). Infants who could engage their mothers right from birth would have an advantage over those who could not. Beyond the discomfort and separation cries characteristic of all infant apes, human infants were under greater selection pressure to appeal to both mothers and allomothers. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, right from birth human infants seek out human faces and initiate contact with others. Remarkably early in development, babies imitate faces, smiling and laughing in ways that no other ape living in the wild (to our present knowledge) does (Meltzoff and Prinz, 2002; Papousek et al. 1992; Tomasello, 1999). Over the course of development, most human children become experts on other people, particularly their caretakers. While the debate continues over just how different chimps and humans are in this respect, it is clear that human infants develop the capacity to read intentions far better than infant apes (Tomasello, 1999). By age two or three years, human children have developed the capacity to begin to intuit what someone else is trying to do, and why. Understanding how someone else is thinking about a task improves our ability to learn through observation, and makes humans especially prone to accumulate and transmit new knowledge (Trevarthen, 2005). Hrdy (2005) argues that our cooperative heritage is partly responsible for the emergence and enhancement of mind-reading abilities in infants, leading to the evolution over time of human communicators par excellence. In considering the mother-infant dyad, it is important to include disruptions and challenges to this tie once it has been established. One prominent example concerns mother-infant separation, especially in primates. Mother-

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infant separation can be catastrophic. Multiparous rhesus mothers are always upset and agitated, and “whoo” call, if their infant is taken away from them. This response is initially intense, and tapers off over about two to three days. The response of infants to separation depends largely on their age at the time of separation, duration of the separation, and whether they encounter an appropriate alternative. All separations involve “protest” (vocalizing and agitation). This can be followed by the “despair” phase. Despair marks the “severe” response that is characterized by dramatic reductions in eating, drinking, and motor activity. This can be lethal. In general, early separations (up to three months of age), and separations beyond five months of age have less chance of producing a severe despair response and its consequences. In rhesus monkeys the period between three and four months of age is the “danger zone” in which the most severe despair responses to separation can occur (Harlow, Harlow, and Suomi, 1971; Kraemer et al., 1991). The long-lasting effects of early separations can include tendencies to become aggressive or withdrawn, in comparison with conciliatory or prosocial behavior exhibited by monkeys who did not experience early separation(s). These adverse effects of very early separations persist even if the animals are returned to their mothers. Adult-adult pair bonds and romantic love The social behaviors and temporal parameters that lead to pair bond formation vary among species. In socially monogamous rodent species, a comparatively short period of time may be required for the formation of a pair bond. In prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster), olfactory, gustatory, and tactile exploration combined with sexual behavior, often occurring within a few hours or less, is sufficient to produce a lifelong bond characterized by selective proximity-seeking and place preference, defense of mate and the nest, and biparental care of the young. If reinforced by association/cohabitation, these bonds may be maintained for the life of the animal (Carter, DeVries, and Getz, 1995). Of particular interest here are human pair bonds, since humans are unique in the capacity to communicate the cognitive and emotional processes associated with the formation of social bonds. Jankowiak and Fischer (1992), in a cross-cultural study, found direct evidence of romantic love in 87 percent of the 168 cultures studied. Prominent features include the perception of an altered mental state; the sudden and frequent intrusion into consciousness of a characteristic set of thoughts, images, and moods; state-specific behaviors; a predictable course; and a particular range of outcomes. In this period, actual and would-be lovers are deeply focused on their partner, to

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the apparent conscious exclusion of all else. This preoccupation leads to a growing ability to anticipate the other’s signals, actions, and desires. If sustained and reciprocated, this process may lead to pair bonding and the formation of a new family unit. Since antiquity and from a diverse set of cultural traditions, authors have described romantic love as a malady or a form of madness. The Song of Solomon (5:8) records the lament, “I am sick of love,” while the Ramayana depicts the romantic love between Rama and Sita as a reflection of a preexisting union in a heavenly realm. Tennov (1979) characterized romantic love or “limerence” as being associated with a general intensity of feelings that leaves other concerns in the background. Based on her interviews with approximately four hundred individuals, she reports that this altered mental state usually has a clear beginning that can be later recalled. She also characterizes this state as “an essentially involuntary process” during the initial phase of which you “feel buoyant, elated, and ironically . . . free.” This state is subjectively experienced as a distinct period during which the usual course of mental life is disrupted by alterations in perception, a broad range of intrusive thoughts, and unstable emotions ranging from elation to anxious insecurity and despair. A core feature of romantic love, at least in the Western cultural tradition, is the emergence of time-consuming intrusive thoughts. The terms most frequently used to describe these thoughts include preoccupations, obsessions, reveries, and brooding. Shea and Adams (1984) reported that the most potent predictor of reported romantic love in a sample of 656 college students was the degree to which they were preoccupied (how often and how much time) with thoughts about their dating partner. These thoughts of the other are frequently described as coming from nowhere—out of the blue—but it is clear that perceptual triggers play a role as well (e.g., if the person’s name is mentioned or if one were to pass by the street on which the beloved lives or see a person or place associated in some way with the beloved person). Although there is abundant evidence for the presence of these intrusive thoughts in private journals, poems, fiction, theater, and popular songs, empirical thematic analysis is scant. Anecdotal accounts suggest that these reveries are focused exclusively on the beloved and predictably contain a range of sentiments, longings, and doubts. A consistent theme from antiquity concerns the importance of feelings of closeness and intimacy, and the desire for reciprocity with a particular other person. Most descriptions include a longing for intimate reciprocity, the tender harmony that is anticipated if and when the beloved loves in return, and feelings of relief and ecstatic bliss if reciprocation seems likely (Stendhal, 1975; Tennov, 1979). In one of the few descriptive empirical studies, Horton (1957) reports an analysis of the

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lyrics of 235 popular songs published in 1955. Among the 196 songs (83 percent) that were conversational songs about love, 23 contained lyrics focused on questioning or offering reassurances concerning mutual commitment. This, however, is likely to be an underestimate, given the mutually exclusive categories used in the study. The preoccupations of the lover focus on minute and “objectively trivial” aspects of the other. According to Stendhal, “a person in love is unremittingly and uninterruptedly occupied with the image of [the] beloved.” He further suggests that this image of the beloved is distorted, and has more to do with the “the wonderful inner vision . . . [that has been] . . . created” within the eye of the beholder. This process of idealization was called “crystallization” by Stendhal; a process by which each aspect of the beloved comes to be admired as beautiful. In this process, “ugliness must not present an obstacle . . . the lover will see beauty, whatever [he or she] looks like, without giving a thought to real beauty.” These idealizing thoughts and euphoric feelings typically are balanced by feelings of “frightful calamity” when doubts are raised that one’s love will be returned, and these doubts can give way to fears of rejection, jealousy, hatred, vilification, revenge, murderous rage, or suicidal despair “when all is not well between you and your beloved.” In addition to the mental states described above, there are a number of patterns of behaviors that are typically associated with this period. Partners and potential partners show a heightened responsiveness to one another. Feelings of attraction and the wish to be joined with the beloved person often result in behavior that diminishes the physical distance between the two (Givens, 1983; Perper, 1985). As pointed out by Tennov (1979), you either want to be with the beloved person or you want to be where the beloved person is likely to be (place preference). Typically, the periods of self-doubt that accompany being “in love” are associated with efforts to alter one’s appearance and potentially increase one’s desirability to the beloved person. Grooming and dressing behaviors are heightened in the hope of attracting the beloved. Perfumes, colognes, lotions, and salves gain wider use. Music and song also seem to play a special role when individuals are overtaken by limerent feelings. Stendhal asserted that “perfect music has the same effect on the heart as the presence of the beloved,” and Shakespeare has the Duke in Twelfth Night reflect that “music be the food of love.” As heightened reciprocity and pair bonding occur, preferences for places, activities, and such things as shared songs may develop. Initial success often results in a series of reciprocal behaviors including mutual gaze; “grooming talk,” in which there is a distinctive change in the

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pitch, prosody, and content of speech; touching; and periods of synchrony when each mirrors the other in tandem movement (Givens, 1983; Morris, 1967; Perper, 1985). Although sexual behaviors are often seen as the culmination of this process, it is also clear that sex increasingly has a place in the early phases of falling in love. Stendhal and Tennov offer complementary views on the early course of being in love. The process often begins at a particular point in time that can later be recalled. Sexual attraction per se need not be experienced, although the person is typically viewed as a possible sexual partner and the initial “admiration” may be, or seem to be, primarily based on an attraction to certain aspects of the other’s appearance or behavior (e.g., how he or she looks, walks, or talks). An initial pleasurable phase is characterized by feelings of buoyancy, elation, hope, and freedom, “free not only from the usual restraints of gravity, but emotionally unburdened” (Stendahl, 1822/1975). The individual’s mental life is increasingly occupied with considering and reconsidering what is attractive about the person and replaying precious memories of being together. At any point in the process, if reciprocation occurs, ranging from mutual gaze to sexual coupling, the anxiety and distress of being “in love” diminishes. Over time, according to Stendhal, “what love loses in intensity—its fears, that is—it makes up for by the charm of complete abandon and infinite trust, becoming a gentle habit which softens the hardships of life and gives new interest to its enjoyment.” As with early parental attachments, the elation, distress, and confusion of romantic love give way to predictable habits of intimate reciprocity. In adjusting to the rhythms and expectations of the other, outcomes include “affectional bonding,” in which the preoccupation subsides and is replaced by a more secure attachment and genuine love. These developments often have a significant impact on the immediate social environment, including cohabitation and the eventual formation of a new family unit, that are marked in most cultures with a marriage ritual. An element of marriage ceremonies in most cultures is an explicit statement of commitment and shared responsibility for one another. Several investigators have emphasized the role of commitment in love relationships. For example, Kelley (1983) emphasizes that commitment concerns the stability of forces that affect an ongoing relationship, while Sternberg (1986) focuses on the cognitive appraisal and determination to maintain one’s connection with the partner. The other common outcome is a rejection of the suitor and the attendant fantasies of reciprocity. This can occur at many points along the path—from an outright rejection at the first indication of interest to rejections that occur

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after some mutuality has been established. Rejection is often painfully onesided, with one party still hoping while the other is adamant in his or her rejection: “he [or she] was not the person I thought he [or she] was.” The emotional and behavioral trajectory for the rejected suitor or mate covers an enormous range, from despair and recovery to persistent, minddominating obsessions that in a small minority of cases lead to stalking or other extreme behaviors, such as suicide and/or homicide (Buteau, Lesage, and Kiely, 1993; Easteal, 1994). At the level of subjective experience, the early phases of romantic love and early parental love share much in common: an altered mental state, intrusive thoughts and images associated with a heightened awareness of the other, and a complex behavioral repertoire aimed at eliciting a reciprocal response. In many instances these altered mental states lead to the same outcome: the formation of intimate interpersonal ties. Similarities between early parental love and romantic love One of the landmarks of contemporary developmental psychology has been its focus on attachment between infant and parent (Ainsworth, 1973; Bowlby, 1969, 1973). It may be reasonable to apply the same conceptual framework in judging the nature and quality of the romantic attachments formed in adulthood, as proposed by Hazen and Shaver (1987, 1994). Both romantic love and the early phases of parental love are characterized, at least in most Western cultures, by an altered mental and emotional state. Although it is difficult, some would say impossible, to compare intrapsychic states across individuals or within the same individual at different points in time, there is some evidence to suggest that these altered states have much in common. For example, in both instances there is an anxious tension between the joyous reveries of being “at one” with one another and intrusive worries that something terrible will happen, which places the desired outcome in jeopardy. Although there have not been studies that carefully quantify the frequency and intensity of these preoccupations, many parents anecdotally report the feeling is the same: “No one told me it was like falling in love.” Other clear thematic parallels include the tendency to be preoccupied with small details of the other’s appearance and the tendency to see the lover or the new infant as “perfect.” Or, as one mother said after her baby was born, “I just can’t believe it, here she is and she’s so perfect. I can’t believe she’s really mine.” The similarities with regard to the behavioral repertoires of romantic love and early parental love are striking. In both instances there is a compelling urge to shape one’s behavior to the perceived needs of the other. Frequently,

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these behavioral responses have a “just right” character, so that they exactly fit the needs of the other. The heightened sense of responsibility that usually accompanies both states leads to an increased level of vigilance and behaviors aimed at ensuring the safety of infant or lover. Beyond the intimacies of the home environment, it is also worth noting that both states are marked by culturally defined rituals (Leckman and Mayes, 1999, table 1). Many of the behaviors seen in courtship are borrowed from the repertoire of the early parent-child relationship or vice versa (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1972, 1989). Specific examples include parental care actions such as comforting embraces, caressing, grooming, kissing, feeding, mutual gaze, and the use of such terms of endearment as “baby” in referring to a lover. Similarly, needy infantlike appeals by gesture or whimper are not uncommon elements of the lover’s behavioral repertoire. Neotenous features (prominent eyes and a larger head relative to body size) are often considered sources of feminine allure. The literature on human ethology documents such preferences across cultures. Examples of infantile traits used as appealing signals (e.g., in begging for food) can be found in other species, including birds and mammals. Vicissitudes of bond formation and loss The changes in the interpersonal landscape that occur as we make room in our lives for someone new (lover, spouse, or child) or cope with the loss of a close attachment figure demand a remarkable degree of psychological and biological flexibility as new cognitive, emotional, and homeostatic equilibria are achieved. Although a full exploration of the scientific literature on this topic is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is notable that most empirical studies have focused on the formation or loss of one bond to the exclusion of others, without examining the complex dynamics of how the formation or loss of one relationship affects the course and quality of other close relationships. For example, in both romantic love and early parental love, there is an exclusivity that develops, other concerns diminish in importance, and there is a focusing of mental and emotional energy. While this exclusivity is highly adaptive during courtship and early parenting, it may pose certain difficulties for the spouse or older siblings. For example, such a deepening sense of an exclusive relationship between mother and child may contribute to increased tension between mother and father as both alter the amount of time they spend with one another and focus more on the baby (Entwisle and Doering, 1981). In several studies, mothers have reported diminished marital satisfaction following the birth of an infant (Belsky, Spanier, and Rovine, 1983).

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Biology of Mammalian Bonding BRAIN CIRCUITS AND HORMONAL INFLUENCES

Although the central nervous system events that accompany parental care and pair-bonding in humans are largely unknown, it is likely that there is a substantial degree of overlap and conservation across mammalian species. Classical lesion studies done in rodent model systems (rats, mice, and voles) have implicated a number of brain regions in the regulation of maternal behavior and adult pair-bonding (Carter, Ahnert, Grossmann, Hrdy, Lamb, Porges, and Sachser, 2005; Keverne, 2005; Leckman, Carter, Hennessey, Hrdy, Kervene, Klann-Delius, Schradin, Todt, and Von Holst, 2005; Numan and Insel, 2003). In vivo brain imaging studies provide a window on the human brain. Lorberbaum, Newman, Horwitz, Dubno, Lydiard, Hamner, Bohning, and George (2002) found increased levels of activity in a number of brain areas in response to hearing standard baby cries. Several other groups are working in this area, using different experimental paradigms and populations (Bartels and Zeki, 2000, 2004; Nitschke, Nelson, Rusch, Fox, Oakes, and Davidson, 2004; Ranote, Elliott, Abel, Mitchell, Deakin, and Appleby, 2004; Seifritz, Esposito, Neuhoff, Luthi, Mustovic, Von Bardeleben, Radue, Cirillo, Tedeschi, and Di Salle, 2003; Swain, Leckman, Mayes, Feldman, and Schultz, 2004). These imaging studies hold the promise of identifying brain regions associated with parent-infant attachment and romantic love. For example Bartels and Zeki (2000) studied activity in the brains of seventeen subjects who were deeply in love as they viewed pictures of their partners, and compared it with the activity produced by viewing pictures of three friends of similar age, sex, and duration of friendship as their partners. The activity was restricted to specific brain regions, many of which were identical with those seen in parents when they viewed pictures of their children, again reinforcing the idea that overlapping brain circuits are involved. In summary, the initiation and maintenance of maternal behavior and pair-bonding between adults involve specific neural circuits. Remarkably, many of the same cell groups implicated in the control of maternal behavior have been implicated in the control of ingestive (eating and drinking) behavior, thermoregulatory (energy homeostasis), and social (defensive and sexual) behaviors, as well as in general exploratory or foraging behaviors (with movement and orienting components). Many of these same structures are also intimately involved in stress response. Indeed, affiliative behaviors are likely to have been highly adaptive during periods of stress, and the converse is also true: that the loss or disruption of affiliative ties can be extremely stressful.

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A number of peptides, including oxytocin, can act on these brain regions to promote maternal behavior and promote pair-bonding. Oxytocin is a nine-amino acid neuropeptide that is primarily synthesized in the hypothalamus (the part of the brain that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and energy homeostasis, among many other functions) and released into the bloodstream from the posterior portion of the pituitary gland. Oxytocin’s release from the pituitary results in uterine contractions during labor and in milk ejection during breast-feeding. It has also been shown that other oxytocincontaining fibers, which arise from a nearby part of the hypothalamus, project widely to other areas of the brain and spinal cord, and play an important role in several other aspects of mammalian reproduction, including sexual behavior and pair-bonding, as well as the induction of maternal behavior (Numan and Insel, 2003). Consequently, some authors refer to oxytocin as the “affiliative neuropeptide.” Data on the role of oxytocin in maternal behavior in humans are scarce. Mother-infant touch and contact have been shown to stimulate oxytocin release. Newborn infants placed on the mother’s chest stimulate oxytocin release by hand movement and suckling (Matthiesen, Ransjo-Arvidson, and Nissen, 2001), and mother-infant skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth elevates maternal oxytocin levels (Nissen, Lilja, Widstrom, and UvnasMoberg, 1995). Data on the role of oxytocin in human sexual behavior are even more limited (Meston and Frohlich, 2000). Examples of what is known include that circulating levels of oxytocin increase during sexual arousal and orgasm in both men and women, and that there is a positive correlation between oxytocin levels and the intensity, but not the duration, of orgasmic contractions in male and female young adults (Carmichael, Warburton, Dixen, and Davidson, 1994). Another class of brain neurotransmitters called opioids appear to play a crucial role in facilitating affiliative behavior. Opioids are naturally occurring compounds that act in the brain much like opium or heroin. One might reasonably ask why our brains should have evolved receptors that respond to addictive drugs when addiction is maladaptive and potentially lethal. The proximate explanation is that this opioid system can effectively block physical pain. However, it has recently been shown from both animal and human studies that the release of endogenous opioids together with oxytocin occurs during parturition and suckling, and this event is highly conserved across mammalian species. The function of endogenous opioids in the brain is hypothesized to promote the positive affect arising from birth and suckling that reinforces maternal care. It is certainly the case that blocking the action of the endogenous

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opioids in rhesus monkey mothers impairs the quality of their interaction with offspring (Martel, Nevison, Rayment, Simpson, and Kaverne, 1993). The infant is not rejected from suckling, but the mother’s usual possessive preoccupation with the infant declines. Mothers do not develop the usual strong grooming relationship with their infant, and they permit other females to groom and handle the baby at leisure. Mother is not the normal attentive caregiver, and mother-infant interactions are invariably infantinitiated. If the endogenous opioid system in the monkey is positively linked to mother-infant bonding, then heroin addiction, which chronically downregulates the opioid receptor, might be predicted to have severe consequences for human maternal bonding. Women who are heroin-addicted have many aspects of their social and economic life disrupted, making the data difficult to disentangle. Nevertheless, the facts are that by one year of age, nearly 50 percent of children of addict mothers are living away from their biological mother, and by school age only 12 percent remain with the biological mother (Mayes, 1995). These infants have been abandoned for adoption or are taken into the care of their grandparents or of other female kin. Moreover, in a follow-up of fifty-seven methadone-maintained mothers compared with controls matched for ethnicity, socioeconomic status, infant birth weight, and gestational age, opiate-addicted mothers were far less likely to have remained the child’s primary parent, and the children were significantly more likely to have been referred to child protective service agencies because of neglect, abandonment, or abuse. Likewise, mothers who use cocaine, an addictive drug that acts via the same “reward” substrate of the brain (the ventral striatum), tend to hold their babies less often at home, and to experience greater hostility and lower levels of oxytocin (Light, Grewen, Amico, Boccia, Brownley, and Johns, 2004). A question of some importance to understanding the biology of motherinfant bonding is where in the brain endogenous opioids have their effect, and how this relates to the pathological condition of addiction. The opioid system has long been known to act on receptors in the ventral striatum, a phylogenetically ancient part of the brain concerned with “reward” (Koob and Le Moal, 1997). This part of the brain receives other neurotransmitters, including dopamine projections, that serve to detect contexts in which rewards occur differently from prediction, in order to enable “updating” of the stimulus (Schultz and Dickinson, 2000). The mother-infant bonding process entails obsessive grooming, which brings about the release of endogenous opioids in the brain (Keverne, Martinez, and Tuite, 1989). This grooming by mothers is focused on face, hands, and genitalia, and these are the phenotypic features of infant monkeys that show the greatest changes during

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early development. Because primates show extended postpartum care, offspring recognition requires the continual updating of changes in these morphological features and in the behavioral development of the infant. This updating of infant recognition involves visual and emotional pathways in the brain that are linked to the ventral striatal “reward” area. The positive emotional responses that infants can so effectively elicit thus enable parental care to occur without the continual hormonal priming by pregnancy and parturition. Interestingly, areas of the human brain that, using MRI, have been shown to be responsive to babies crying or to pictures of a romantic partner include many of the brain structures involved in reward and addiction (Bartels and Zeki, 2000, 2004; Lorberbaum et al., 2002). Living in large social communities requires a “social glue” that extends beyond the biological life events of mating, pregnancy, and parturition that release oxytocin and endogenous opioids, which are sufficient for bonding in mammals with small brains. The development of larger brains has, to some extent, emancipated social decision-making from the exclusivity of contexts determined by the hormones of pregnancy and mating (Keverne, Martel, and Nevison, 1996). Women do not have to undertake pregnancy and parturition in order to be good mothers, or to take decisions that make them good mothers. These evolutionary transitions to large brains and hormonal emancipation have had significant consequences for interactions between the sexes and for female-infant interactions in the matriline. In humans, sexual bonding fulfills more than a reproduction role, while female-infant bonding is neither restricted by the hormones of pregnancy nor limited to the postpartum period. Parenting and alloparenting are continuous lifetime occupations for female primates living in social groups, an evolutionary development that has impacted significantly on brain evolution. Brain growth is costly in terms of energy, and postponing the greater part of this to the postpartum period not only has reduced the energy demands of pregnancy on the mother, but also has ensured that the infant’s brain develops in an environment that promotes social skills integral to achieving adult social cohesion. Evolution of the human brain has further enhanced cognitive skills and invention, including the invention of synthetic drugs that usurp the brain’s phylogenetically old neural circuitry for reward. So rewarding are these drugs that they become self-fulfilling, substituting for socially valued relationships as a consequence of addiction. GENETIC DETERMINANTS AND EARLY ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

Gene-targeting experiments to induce mutations (gene “knockout” studies) have demonstrated that at least ten specific genes are necessary for the development of maternal behavior (Leckman and Herman, 2002). Many

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of these genes are linked to the same brain regions and to the same hormones and neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and dopamine. In contrast, only one gene has thus far been identified as being essential for normal infant responsiveness, the mu-opioid receptor gene. In that study, Moles, Kieffer, and d’Amato (2004) reported that the “knockout” mouse pups, compared with “normal” pups, emitted fewer ultrasonic vocalizations when removed from their mothers, but they emitted the same number of ultrasonic vocalizations when they were exposed to the cold. These “knockout” pups also failed to show a preference toward their mothers’ cues, and did not emit ultrasonic calls after brief maternal exposure. Genes are important but are not the whole story. A growing body of work indicates that the future maternal behavior of newborn animals (as assessed when they begin to reproduce as adult animals) can be dramatically influenced by the care received in the days following birth. Further, some aspects of the pup’s stress response throughout life appear to be established early in life. One particularly compelling set of studies concerns the differential outcomes associated with the naturally occurring variations that rodent mothers display in maternal licking/grooming (Francis, Diorio, Liu, and Meaney, 1999). In a subsequent cross-fostering study, investigators determined that the amount of licking and grooming that a female pup receives in infancy is associated with how much licking and grooming she provides to her offspring as a new mother. Most impressively, they also found that the female offspring of the low licking and grooming dams became high licking and grooming mothers if they had been cross-fostered by high licking and grooming dams. The converse was also true. The molecular basis of these changes in behavior is now beginning to be understood. For example, Weaver, Cervoni, Champagne, D’Alessio, Sharma, Seckl, Dymov, Szyf, and Meaney (2004) have recently clarified that the individual differences are due to enduring changes in gene expression, which are due in part to highly specific differential patterns of adorning DNA with molecules called methyl groups in the first days of life. This complex programming also appears to influence aspects of learning and memory. Evidence from investigations of social primates also highlights the importance of early mothering in determining how the daughters will ultimately mother (Harlow, 1963; Suomi and Ripp, 1983). It is also clear that the effects of early maternal deprivation in primates may be difficult to reverse; many maternally deprived monkeys, as adults, are able to function normally under usual conditions but are unable to cope with psychosocial stressors (Kraemer et al., 1991; Suomi, Delizio, and Harlow, 1976). On the other hand, in rodent models, environmental enrichment in the peripubertal period

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appears to compensate for the effects of early maternal separation (Francis et al., 2002). In sum, despite genetic constraints, early caregiving experiences can have enduring consequences on individual differences in subsequent maternal behavior, anxiety regulation, and patterns of stress response. Data from animal studies indicate that the interval surrounding the birth of the rat pup or the rhesus infant is a critical period, which likely has enduring, but not immutable, neurobiological and behavioral consequences.

Early Life Experience, Risk, and Resiliency in Humans Building on the early work of Bowlby (1969, 1973), efforts to characterize the reciprocal interaction in the early caregiver-infant dyad and to assess its impact have provided a powerful theoretical and empirical framework in the fields of social and emotional development (Cassidy and Shaver, 1999; Leckman et al., 2005). Since the mid-1970s, clear evidence has emerged that significant disturbances in the early parent-child relationship (reflected in such things as child abuse and neglect or insecure attachments) contribute to an increased risk for developing both internalizing and externalizing disorders (Sroufe, Carlson, Levy, and Egeland, 1999). While early adversity and insecure attachment may not be a proximal cause of later psychopathology, they appear to confer risk. Conversely, longitudinal studies of high-risk infants suggest that the formation of a special relationship with a caring adult in the perinatal period confers a degree of resiliency against the development of psychopathology later in life (Werner and Smith, 2001). It is likely that in addition to affecting the key elements in the neural circuitry of affiliative behaviors, these early interactions have a profound effect on the individual’s view of the world and the multiplicity of the social relationships it contains. A growing body of evidence indicates that human caregivers’ levels of responsivity to their children can be traced in part to the caregivers’ own child-rearing histories and attachment-related experiences (Miller, Kramer, Warner, Wickramaratne, and Weissman, 1997). Caregivers’ attachmentrelated experiences are hypothesized to be encoded as “internal working models” of self and others that establish styles of emotional communication that either buffer the individual in times of stress or contribute to maladaptive patterns of affect regulation and behavior (Belsky, 2005; Bretherton and Munholland, 1999). For example, adult attachment interviews about mothers’ attachment-related memories were searched for indications of traumatic experiences, such as separations (e.g., hospitalization, evacuation from warendangered cities into children’s camps) or loss of family members (fathers,

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grandparents, etc.). Then their children were observed in the Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure in order to classify their strategies of reestablishing contact with the mother after two brief separations—no longer than three minutes each. Indications of disturbance/disorganization attachment strategies were observed more frequently among the infants whose mothers had indicated the presence of such traumatic experiences in their past (Grossmann, personal communication, 2003). It is also important to recognize that some behaviors typically viewed as psychopathological may indeed be adaptive under certain living situations. For example, an aggressive, insecurely attached infant (perhaps later to become conduct-disordered or remorseless) may receive more support in a neglectful environment and survive, while a meek sibling would not survive under the same circumstances (Belsky, 2005). Of special interest in this context is recent theoretical and empirical work on the role of secure attachment relationship in shaping the experience and expectations of the infant (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, and Target, 2002). By entering into a synchronous affective communication with the infant, the caregiver provides an external support for the infant’s developing bioregulatory abilities, and thereby conveys resilience to stress-coping capacities throughout life. The experience of caregiver’s and child’s microlevel matching of affective states and level of arousal during face-to-face interactions, beginning around the second month of life, provides the basis for children’s social development, empathy, and moral internalization (Feldman, Greenbaum, and Yirmiya, 1999; Feldman, Weller, Leckman, et al., 1999). Maternal gaze-matching, facial expressions, vocalizations, and regulation of arousal states during face-to-face play provide critical environmental inputs during the maturation of the visual cortex. Furthermore, by synchronizing with infant arousal state, mothers entrain the infant’s biological rhythms (Lester, Hoffman, and Brazelton, 1985; Feldman, Weller, Sirota, and Eidelman, 2003), providing a “resonance” (Trevarthan, 1993) of internal and external experience, self and other, brain and behavior. Work on the detailed nature of these developmentally sensitive periods of risks or resiliency enhancement for affect regulation may inform intervention programs after trauma (Heim and Nemeroff, 2001), or with high-risk families (see below).

Early Interventions Enhance Parental Sensitivity and Child Attachment Security Attachment security is a resiliency factor across the life span. In a recent meta-analysis of eighty-eight intervention studies, Bakermans-

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Kranenburg, Van IJzendoorn, and Juffer (2003) found that, overall, interventions were effective in enhancing parental sensitivity and child attachment security. Interventions focused on parenting skills, social supports, or maternal well-being were significantly more successful. So were interventions that included both mother and father. Thus, the body of research on early interventions underscores the importance of devising clear-cut, short-term, behavioral interventions for a variety of at-risk populations. One caveat of this important study is that the time since the termination of treatment was not systematically evaluated. It is thus impossible to determine whether the improvement observed immediately after treatment was short-lived or had a long-term impact on risk and resiliency to later psychopathology. Thus far there have been at least three selective intervention studies with random assignment and prenatal initiation, and at least one-year duration, focused on child behavioral adjustment (Leckman et al., 2004). The first set of studies was based on an intervention model that included home visits, parent meetings, and medical care (Brooks-Gunn, Klebanov, Liaw, and Spiker, 1993; McCarton, Brooks-Gunn, and Wallace, 1997). This intervention showed early effects at two and three years of age that attenuated by five years of age. A second intervention that included home visits by nurses, parent meetings, and medical care showed less of an effect at four years of age that became significant at five and six years of age (Gutelius et al., 1972, 1977). A third set of studies that relied on home visits by nurses and focused on low-income, unmarried mothers (that began prenatally and continued for thirty months) has shown a remarkable number of positive outcomes as late as fifteen years of age, including fewer subsequent pregnancies, reduced use of welfare, lower rates of child abuse and neglect, and fewer arrests for criminal behavior among the offspring (Olds, Eckenrode, et al., 1997; Olds, Henderson, et al., 1998, 1999; Olds, Robinson, et al., 2002, 2004). These studies by Olds and colleagues provide some of the strongest evidence to date that early intervention can make a difference in the lives of high-risk children. Although the mechanism by which these effects are achieved is unknown, Olds and colleagues argue that one key element is the length of time between the first and second pregnancies of the mothers participating in the home visitation program. On average, the time to the second pregnancy was more than sixty months in the experimental group that participated in the home visitation program, versus less than forty months in the comparison group. This suggests that there was the potential for a greater maternal investment in the children who were in the Nurse Home Visitation Program, compared with the children born to the comparison mothers. A recent study based in Denver, by the same group of investigators, docu-

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mented that new mothers visited by nurses had fewer subsequent pregnancies (29 percent vs. 41 percent) and births (12 percent vs. 19 percent); they delayed subsequent pregnancies for longer intervals; and during the second year after the birth of their first child, they worked more than women in the control group (6.83 vs. 5.65 months). Nurse-visited mother-child pairs interacted more responsively than those in the comparison group. At six months of age, nurse-visited infants were less likely to exhibit emotional vulnerability in response to fearful stimuli (16 percent vs. 25 percent). Remarkably, at twenty-one months, nurse-visited children born to women with low psychological resources were less likely to exhibit language delays (7 percent vs. 18 percent); and at twenty-four months, they exhibited mental development superior to their control group counterparts. In sum, data from selective early intervention programs indicate that the period surrounding the birth of the infant is a critical one that likely has enduring behavioral consequences. The most compelling data suggest that these early intervention programs reduce a variety of maladaptive outcomes, such as early involvement in the juvenile justice system. Less clear is the impact of these early interventions on the later rates of depression and anxiety disorders as these children reach maturity. Nor is it clear what effect these early intervention programs have on an individual’s stress responsivity, susceptibility to drug abuse, or capacity as a parental caregiver. It is also worth noting that none of these selective early intervention programs has monitored maternal preoccupations as a possible proximal predictor of individual differences in outcome (table 6-1). Nonetheless, this program (now called the Nurse-Family Partnership Program) may reflect a form of alloparental care that is making a real difference.

Conclusions Behavioral, genetic, and neurobiological studies in model mammalian systems have the potential to inform biomedical research, clinical practice, and, particularly, early intervention programs for high-risk expectant parents. “Good enough” genes combined with “good enough” parental care are needed to ensure positive outcomes in childhood and beyond. Among these positive outcomes are a resiliency to subsequent adversities in life and the capacity to be a good enough parent for the next generation, and possibly improved physical health. Consequently, it is possible that effective early intervention programs may have positive consequences for generations to come. Measures of “primary parental preoccupations” may be useful in

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future early intervention programs as an index of change within a key domain of functioning. Close collaborations between clinicians and the designers of model intervention programs have been long-standing. These collaborations are now beginning to include neuroimagers, developmental and behavioral neuroscientists, geneticists, and immunologists. Our capacity to study genes, the development of the brain, and the determinants of immunological health has never been stronger. Future studies should permit the examination of how successful early intervention programs influence brain development, problem-solving abilities, and stress responses, as well as alter vulnerability to later mental and physical illnesses.

Acknowledgments In preparing this chapter we have benefited tremendously from the opportunity provided by a Dahlem Workshop that took place in the fall of 2003 in Berlin. We are grateful for our discussions with Michael B. Hennessy, Gisela Klann-Delius, Carsten Schradin, Dietmar Todt, and Dietrich von Holst, as well those with other colleagues during the course of the workshop, including Lieselotte Ahnert, Jay Belsky, Alison S. Fleming, Klaus E. Grossmann, Megan R. Gunnar, Gray W. Kraemer, Michael E. Lamb, Karlen Lyons-Ruth, Thomas G. O’Conner, Cort A. Pedersen, Miriam Steele, Colwyn Trevarthen, and Larry J. Young. Other investigators have also made important contributions to this formulation, including Linda C. Mayes, Ruth Feldman, and James E. Swain. Portions of this chapter are adapted from a chapter that originally appeared in Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis, edited by C. S. Carter, L. Ahnert, K. E. Grossmann, S. B. Hrdy, M. E. Lamb, S. W. Porges, and N. Sachser, Dahlem Workshop Report 92 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), pp. 303–349.

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Swain, J. E., Leckman, J. F., Mayes, L. C., Feldman, R., and Schultz, R. T. (2004). Functional brain imaging: The development of human parent-infant attachment. Neuropsychopharmacology, 29, S195. Teicher, M. H., and Blass, E. M. (1977). First suckling response of the newborn albino rat: The roles of olfaction and amniotic fluid. Science, 198, 635–636. Tennov, D. (1979). Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. New York: Stein and Day. Tomasello, M. (1999). Discourse and representational redescription. In Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Trevarthan, C. (1993). The self born in intersubjectivity: The psychology of an infant communicating. In U. Neisser (ed.), The Perceived Self: Ecological and Interpersonal Sources of Self-knowledge, pp. 121–173. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. (2005). “Stepping away from the mirror: Pride and shame in adventures of companionship”—reflections on the nature and emotional needs of infant intersubjectivity. In C. S. Carter, L. Ahnert, K. E. Grossmann, S. B. Hrdy, M. E. Lamb, S. W. Porges, and N. Sachser (eds.), Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis, Dahlem Workshop Report 92. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Tzourio-Mazoyer, N., De Schonen, S., Crivello, F., Reutter, B., Aujard, Y., and Mazoyer, B. (2002). Neural correlates of woman face processing by 2-month-old infants. Neuroimage, 15, 454–461. Weaver, I. C., Cervoni, N., Champagne, F. A., D’Alessio, A. C., Sharma, S., Seckl, J. R., Dymov, S., Szyf, M., and Meaney, M. J. (2004). Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 847–854. Werner, E. E., and Smith, R. S. (2001). Journeys from Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience, and Recovery. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Winnicott, D. W. (1956/1975). Primary maternal preoccupation. In Winnicott, Collected Papers: Through Paediatrics to Psycho-analysis, pp. 300–305. New York: Basic Books.

PART

Taxonomies of Love

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7

Styles of Romantic Love clyde hendrick and susan s. hendrick

John Alan Lee’s The Colours of Love (1973) stimulated considerable research interest following its publication. The volume offered a broad taxonomy of romantic love that was intuitively appealing, was based on extensive historical analysis of romantic literature, and was supported empirically by a complex interview procedure Lee called the Love Story Card Sort. This methodology was very labor-intensive, as described in a fifty-page appendix to Lee’s book. The card sort consisted of approximately 170 phrases, each on a green card. Examples included “The night after I met X . . .” and “During the time I was most deeply in love, some of the things I did. . . .” Each green card had matching white cards with multiple possible answers, ranging from a half-dozen to over fifteen alternatives. As an example, the sort 43 green card read, “The night after I met X,” and some of the possible responses included “I could hardly get to sleep,” “I dreamed about X,” and “I wrote a letter to X.” Multiple alternatives could be selected by an individual. The way an individual worked his or her way through the Card Sort basically told the story of one particular love in that individual’s life. Needless to say, data analytic procedures were quite difficult. In his chapter in The Psychology of Love, Lee (1988) was less than thrilled with most of the research based on his ideas. He complained about the ahistorical nature of this research and the limited information that he felt

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could be derived from a rating scale: “There are no satisfactory shortcuts to an adequate analysis of so complex an experience as love. Only elaborate instruments such as the Love Story Card Sort can distinguish between ideologies that are rich in historical variation and overlapping in cultural expression” (Lee, 1988, p. 63). Needless to say, Lee lost his argument against the use of rating scales. Nearly all research based on his theory has used them. This chapter details our own successful research program on the love styles, using a set of rating items we call the Love Attitudes Scale. Sometime after completing the writing of his chapter for The Psychology of Love, but before its publication, Lee apparently accepted the ubiquity of rating scales, as witnessed by a gracious and complimentary letter to us (J. A. Lee, personal communication, November 25, 1987) on our first empirical article on the love styles (C. Hendrick, Hendrick, Foote, and Slapion-Foote, 1984).

Defining Love as the Love Styles In the quote in the preceding section, Lee (1988) defined the components extracted from his card sorts as ideologies of love. He has also referred to the components as styles of loving, a label popularized in a book by Lasswell and Lobsenz (1980). “Styles” probably is a better label than “ideology” because styles can easily be construed as interactional; and, as Lee noted, someone may simultaneously engage in two different love styles with two different romantic partners. We have construed the love styles as attitude/belief systems that include a variable emotional core, and possibly some linkage to personality traits. Thus “love styles” appears to be a suitable label for a set of constructs that are partially attitudes/beliefs, partially facets of personality, and are related, at least loosely, to patterns of romantic social behavior. Lee (1973) used an analogy of a color wheel as the conceptual scaffold to build his typology of love. There were three primary “colors” mapped onto three primary love styles: eros, ludus, and storge. Judicious mixture of the three primaries yielded three secondaries: pragma, mania, and agape. Other derivative mixtures are possible, but Lee and succeeding researchers have focused overwhelmingly on these six types of love. It takes a paragraph to adequately describe the content of each of the six types of love. However, a snapshot summary yields the following descriptions: eros (passionate, erotic), ludus (game-playing, uncommitted), storge (friendship), pragma (practical, calculating), agape (altruistic, giving), and mania (obsessional). The love styles were appealing to us as an approach to romantic love because they allow wide latitude in personal definitions of love, and they

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mostly match commonsense views of what romantic love might be. As one might expect from a taxonomy, the love styles are based on the content of categories. Most behavioral scientists are trained to study processes, and believe that not much scientific progress can be made with taxonomies. But pure, abstracted process is no panacea. Our goal was to retain the content while transforming that content into variables that could be scaled and quantified. That became our approach to transforming Lee’s taxonomy of love into a theory of love.

The Love Styles as a Theory of Love When we began our research program, our explicit goal was to transform the six categories of love into six dimensions that might (hopefully) be independent of each other. Six dimensions of love would allow for strong hypothesis testing of the love styles vis-a`-vis many other relationship variables. CONCEPTUALIZING THE THEORY

Conceptualizing the love styles as six dimensions required that we construe each love style as a continuous variable. Measurement techniques are discussed in the next section. We construed the six love styles as a sixdimensional matrix located within an individual’s cognitive space. At any given moment, the individual can be assigned a measurement point on each of the six dimensions. This approach creates a love style profile for each individual. The “amount” of each love style that an individual manifests can literally be plotted on a graph. The shape of the profile, its change over time, and its relationship to other variables become potential empirical questions to be answered by research guided by hypotheses. To date, our research has not dealt with profiles per se, but with each of the six dimensions individually and the relationships of the individual dimensions to other variables. Questions concerning stability of individual love styles, and correlations with other variables, needed to be answered before more integrative but complex analyses, such as profile analyses, could be attempted. It is easy to see the advantages of this approach. The very first question was whether the six love styles were independent of each other. The answer was mostly “yes,” as described below. Second, the love styles can easily be linked to other relational constructs, such as respect, communication style, intimacy, and the like. Some of the love styles may be more stable than others, suggesting a relationship to personality traits. This possibility is easily assessed, given personality traits that are construed as variables. Finally, the

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love styles can readily be related to other theories of love when construed as dimensional. A few commentators have claimed that the love styles do not constitute a theory. This claim reflects the process-oriented ideology of quantitative social science. We believe that even in its pure taxonomy form, Lee’s approach is one legitimate type of theory. Our quantification of the six categories preserved a strong element of the content of the taxonomy but transformed the approach into a process theory. Thus we classify our approach to the love styles as a strong content/process theory of romantic love. How well the theory fares depends on its record of empirical results. And those results depend on the quality of measurement of the six dimensions. MEASURING THE LOVE STYLES

Our initial attempt at quantification of the love styles (C. Hendrick, Hendrick, Foote, and Slapion-Foote, 1984) used a set of fifty true/false items developed by Lasswell and Lasswell (1976), plus four other items. We transformed all items to five-point rating scales. Many items showed gender differences, but factor analyses were only partially supportive of the six styles proposed by Lee. In our next attempt at scale construction (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986), we revised and standardized a set of forty-two items (seven items to assess each of the six love styles). In two studies at two different universities, factor analysis yielded six orthogonal factors that matched expectations almost perfectly. Alphas and test-retest correlations were adequate, and correlations among the six love scales were modest. We concluded that Lee’s taxonomy could be dimensionalized. On the basis of this initial validation of the Love Attitudes Scale (LAS), we launched a fruitful research program. Over the years, there were some criticisms of the LAS. Johnson (1987) noted that the items were a mix of general and specific relationship statements and that the relative proportions of such items differed across the six scales of the LAS. In response, we rewrote nineteen general items to create a completely relationship-specific version of the LAS (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1990). Results with the new version were completely consistent with the original version, and because of the substantial number of studies already completed, we continued to use the 1986 version. Over time, we noticed that other researchers were “borrowing” subsets of the seven-item scales to create even briefer scales. We finally decided we had no choice but to join the revisionists, so we set to work to extract the best four-item version from each seven-item scale. The results exceeded our

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expectations (C. Hendrick, Hendrick, and Dicke, 1998). The psychometrics for this twenty-four-item version of the LAS were excellent, and in some respects even better than for the longer version. WHAT THE LOVE ATTITUDES SCALE MEASURES

We believe that the brief scales of the LAS capture the essence of the six constructs that Lee discovered through long and intensive efforts. Eros. Strong physical attraction, emotional intensity, a preferred physical appearance, and a sense of inevitability of the relationship define the central core of eros. Ludus. Love is a game to be played with a diverse set of partners over time. Deception of the partner and lack of disclosure about self and other partners are prime attributes of ludus. Because of ludus’s lack of honesty, college students disagree with items for this love style. However, Lee (1973) noted that this approach reflects a desirable reality for many people. In fact, substantial numbers of college students behave ludically during some phases of their mate selection process. Storge. This style is love as friendship. It is quiet and companionate. The fire of eros is alien to storge. Storge has sometimes been dubbed “love by evolution” rather than “love by revolution.” Pragma. With this style, love is a shopping list of desired attributes (e.g., fitting into the family, good parent, etc.). Computer dating is a good metaphor to describe pragma. Mania. This style might be called “symptom” love. Mania is intense, alternating between ecstasy and agony. Manic love, when strongly felt, usually does not end well. Agape. This style is sacrificial, placing the loved person’s welfare above one’s own. In romantic love, pure agape is manifested only sporadically. In settled relationships, agape is ordinarily reduced by the demands of equity in long-term relationships and increased by life events such as one partner’s illness.

Research with the Love Styles Along with other researchers, we have studied the six love styles with respect to many other relationship variables. This section provides a selective overview of this research. First, however, we need to discuss the issue of how the love styles might be related to the cultural phenomenon known as “falling in love.”

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“Falling in love” is a widely recognized cultural phenomenon. It is also complex. Shaver, Morgan, and Wu (1996) argued that love is a basic emotion. We have also argued that love in general has a strong emotional component (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2003b). Perhaps Hatfield’s (1988) concept of passionate love most closely reflects “falling in love.” A side issue involves whether or not passionate love involves sexual desire. Some (e.g., Regan, 1998; Regan and Berscheid, 1999) view sexual desire as an important component of romantic love. Hatfield (1988) is more wary of such an automatic linkage. For example, young children may fall passionately in love even before they have any understanding of sexual love. We tend to agree with Hatfield, and we also subscribe to Fisher’s (2000) view that sex and passionate love evolved as separate, but loosely linked, emotion systems. We will return to this issue again in the context of a critique of the love styles from an attachment approach. So how is the intense emotional experience of falling in love related to the love styles? Each of the six love styles is, at minimum, an attitude/belief complex. The degree of emotion and “traitness” attached to each complex should depend on the content of the beliefs. For example, eros and mania have a strong “emotion switch,” whereas storge, pragma, and ludus appear to be relatively lacking in emotion. People high on the latter three love styles may not experience the emotional rush of “falling in love.” Those high on mania, especially, may experience it all too easily. This approach is converging on the notion of falling in love as an “emotional storm” leading to at least temporary changes in a range of beliefs and attributes, including the love styles, as well as changes in underlying hormonal and brain chemistry (e.g., Hatfield and Rapson, 1987; Liebowitz, 1983). Such thinking led us to predict wide-ranging differences on many relational variables for college students “in love” versus students “not in love.” Our general prediction was that “lovers wear rose colored glasses” (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1988). Indeed, we found differences on many variables that supported our predictions. Students in love were less permissive and instrumental in their sexual attitudes than students not in love. Being in love also gave a boost to self-esteem ratings, and lowered self-monitoring. Students in love were also lower in sensation-seeking. They were more committed, invested, and self-disclosing than students not in love. With regard to the love styles, college students who were in love were more erotic and agapic, and less ludic, than students who were not in love. Further results also implicated the manic system.

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We concluded that the six love styles are relatively independent attitude/ belief systems about love that have developed over the last two thousand years (e.g., see Singer, 1984). Falling in love is best construed as a global emotional phenomenon that has wide-ranging attitudinal and bodily effects, including at least temporary changes in three of the six love styles. The love styles and falling in love are thus related, but are conceptually distinct constructs. Falling in love may well be experienced differently, depending on whether an individual is high on a single love style, and which one, or moderate on several of them. For example, someone high on eros should experience the classic full-blown syndrome of falling in love, as should someone high on mania. In contrast, someone high on pragma would probably have only a mild experience of falling love. Someone high on ludus would not fall in love. Thus the love styles, along with other variables, undoubtedly moderate the experience of falling in love. Clearly, multiple factors influence (and are influenced by) falling in love and the mean level of some of the love styles themselves (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1988). We expect that because love styles are substantially attitude-based, they are subject to change depending on type of relationship and life stage. The individual, the partner, and the interaction between the two, as well as social network and sociodemographic factors, could all be expected to influence some of the love styles to some extent. Although, as noted, we have not conducted profile analyses of the love styles as a set, it is possible that such an approach in future research will offer valuable information concerning the relative strength and stability of love styles across the life span. RESEARCH WITH THE LOVE STYLES: INTRAPERSONAL, INTERPERSONAL, AND SOCIAL STRUCTURAL FACTORS

If the love styles are not the same as the “emotional storm” characteristic of falling in love, then how might they be similar to or different from the less emotionally volatile weather pattern called friendship? Both love and friendship are voluntary relationships consisting of affectional bonds and varying degrees of interrelatedness. In fact, although romantic love and platonic friendship typically differ in sexual involvement and emotional intensity, love relationships often contain elements of deep friendship. In written accounts of their romantic relationships, college students expressed themes of friendship (storge) more often than of any of the other love styles (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1993). In this same research, when asked to name their best friend, nearly half of the students named their romantic partner.

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Humans are products of both nature and nurture, and although we may all have an innate “need to belong” in interpersonal relationships (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), that need is expressed differently by different people in different situations. Human orientation to love is a product of temperament and personality as well as of interactions with romantic partners and expressions of where someone fits in the social structure. Research detailing these aspects of the love styles is presented in the following sections. The individual: Love styles and personality Early in the research program, we found self-esteem, which can be considered an aspect of personality, to be related to two of the love styles: positively to eros (more passionate love equals greater self-esteem) and negatively to mania (more possessive, dependent love equals lower self-esteem) (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986). Self-disclosure, which can also be thought of as an expression of personality, has been related to the love styles (for example, positively to eros and negatively to ludus; see S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1987b). Sensation-seeking also appears to be part of personality, and ludus was positively related to several components of sensation-seeking (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1987b). This latter finding, especially, is not surprising, considering the game-playing lover’s need for variety (see also Richardson, Medvin, and Hammock, 1988, for similar results). Exploring links between the love styles and more traditional aspects of personality, White, Hendrick, and Hendrick (2004) found the love attitudes to be related to several personality dimensions as measured by the NEO Personality Inventory—Revised (Form S; Costa and McCrae, 1985, 1992). The NEOPI-R measures the personality factors of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience (informally known as the Big Five). Several of these factors were related to the love styles. Passionate eros was positively related to agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion, and negatively related to neuroticism. Friendshiporiented storge was not related to agreeableness, but was otherwise similar to eros in its relationships with personality variables. Game-playing ludus showed almost the opposite pattern, relating negatively to agreeableness and conscientiousness, and positively to neuroticism. Practical pragma was related positively to conscientiousness, and negatively to openness to experience, while possessive mania and neuroticism were positively related. Altruistic agape was not related to the five factors. In research similar to that of White et al. (2004), Heaven, Da Silva, Carey, and Holen (2004) explored personality, attachment, and love styles, and also found extensive relationships between the Big Five domains and the love

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styles. Their results were fairly consistent with those of White et al. For example, eros was positively related to extraversion and conscientiousness, and negatively related to neuroticism. They also found that anxious attachment mediated the relationship between neuroticism and the love styles to which it was related. White et al. found that mania mediated the relationship between neuroticism and relationship satisfaction, so it appears that neuroticism, in particular, is complexly related to relational constructs such as the love styles. Just as love styles are related to individual phenomena, so they are also related to interpersonal factors. The interpersonal factors: Love styles and sexuality Although romantic love and sexuality are not the same, we have posited that they “are inextricably linked, with love as the basis for much of our sexual interaction, and sex as the medium of expression for much of our loving” (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1987a, p. 159). To explore love styles in conjunction with sexuality, specifically sexual attitudes, we developed the Sexual Attitudes Scale (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1987c), a forty-three-item Likert scale with subscales measuring permissiveness (casual sexuality); sexual practices (responsible, tolerant sexuality); communion (idealistic sexuality); and instrumentality (biological sexuality). We correlated the Sexual Attitudes Scale and the Love Attitudes Scale (as well as factored them together) across several studies, finding some consistent relationships between the subscales of the two measures. Casual sexuality (permissiveness) and game-playing love were positively related—a logical finding for a lover who likes a variety of partners, not wanting to get too close to any single one. In addition, passionate love was consistently related to both idealized sexuality (communion) and responsible sexuality (sexual practices) (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1987a). We continued to assess the sexual attitudes and love styles in research, exploring such variables as gender, culture/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and relationship satisfaction, detailed below. In one multi-method attempt to link sex with love, we asked respondents to write narrative accounts of how love and sexuality (the latter construed broadly) were linked in their close, romantic relationships. Their responses were content-analyzed and then developed into the Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2002), a seventeen-item scale reflecting the dimensions Love Is Most Important, Sex Demonstrates Love, Love Comes Before Sex, and Sex Is Declining. Results of research employing this new measure substantiated our proposition that romantic love and sexuality

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are deeply intertwined and can neither subsume each other nor escape each other. The social structural factors: Love styles and demographic characteristics Gender is one characteristic of the individual that has tremendous repercussions in the social structure. Gender is a master status variable (e.g., Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels, 1994), perhaps even more powerful than race/ethnicity. Very early in the love styles research, we found a number of gender differences in several of the love styles (C. Hendrick, Hendrick, Foote, and Slapion-Foote, 1984), causing us to question whether women and men might actually “love differently.” For example, men are consistently more endorsing of (or at least less in disagreement with) gameplaying love, whereas women, more than men, agree with friendship and practical love. Using the newer short form of the scale (C. Hendrick et al., 1998), men also appear to very consistently endorse agape or altruistic love more than women do. However, although the genders may differ in average scores on some of the love styles, when the love scales are correlated with other relationship constructs, women’s and men’s correlation patterns are very similar (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1995). Culture/ethnicity is another demographic variable that has relevance to the love styles. Love is neither a recent nor a peculiarly Western phenomenon. Basing their discussion on Chinese literature up to three thousand years old, Cho and Cross (1995) proposed that forms of love such as passionate love, obsessive love, devoted love, and casual love, as well as free mate choice, were known in earlier time periods. Using the Love Attitudes Scale, these authors assessed the love styles of Taiwanese students currently living in the United States, and found that while the six factors they obtained did not map exactly onto the six subscales of the LAS, there were many similarities. Consistent with these findings, Sprecher, Aron, Hatfield, Cortese, Potapova, and Levitskaya (1994) explored Russian, Japanese, and American love styles. Although these groups differed on certain dimensions (e.g., Japanese were less endorsing of romantic beliefs), “the young adults from the three countries were similar in many love attitudes and experiences” (Sprecher et al., 1994, p. 363). Murstein, Merighi, and Vyse (1991) found French college students more endorsing of agape, and American students reporting more storgic and manic love attitudes. Finally, Contreras, Hendrick, and Hendrick (1996) found that Mexican American and Anglo married couples differed only modestly on love attitudes (showing no differences

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on passionate, friendship, or altruistic love) and sexual attitudes. As with the findings for gender, similarities across groups appear to be more pronounced than differences. Although most love styles research has been conducted with young couples, love exists across the life span. A modest amount of research has explored love and love styles in mature couples. For example, Grote and Frieze (1994) assessed love predictors of relationship satisfaction for middle-aged married couples, finding that passionate love and friendship love were positive predictors of satisfaction, while game-playing love was a negative predictor. Such findings are consistent with those for younger couples and with those of Contreras et al. (1996), who found passionate love to be the strongest predictor of marital satisfaction for a group of couples varying widely in age. A direct comparison between college students and their parents (InmanAmos, Hendrick, and Hendrick, 1994) found no similarities in love styles between students and their own parents. When comparing means for the student group with those of the parent group, however, love styles were very similar for both generations. Montgomery and Sorell (1997) looked at love styles and relationship constructs in four separate groups: (a) young, nonmarried adults of college age, (b) married adults under thirty without children, (c) married persons age twenty-four to fifty with children in the home, and (d) married persons fifty to seventy with no children at home. The greatest differences between the groups occurred between the married and nonmarried persons, whereas the other groups differed little. Montgomery and Sorell noted that “Individuals throughout the life-stages of marriage consistently endorse the love attitudes involving passion, romance, friendship, and self-giving love” (1997, p. 61). Based on this research, although age does not seem to be a great demarcation factor for love attitudes, marital status may be more important, and should be explored further. Sexual orientation is also a demographic characteristic of interest in relationships. Although little research has been conducted assessing love styles and sexual orientation, one study (Adler, Hendrick, and Hendrick, 1986) speaks to that question. Gay males and heterosexual males in New York and West Texas were asked about their love attitudes (and other relationship variables), and for the most part, no sexual orientation differences emerged. For location, however, New York respondents were less manic than were Texas respondents, and gay men in New York endorsed altruistic love significantly less than did gay men in Texas or heterosexual men in either location. As Peplau and Spaulding (2000) concluded, “Efforts to apply basic

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relationship theories to same-sex couples have been largely successful. There is much commonality among the issues facing all close relationships, regardless of the sexual orientation of the partners” (p. 123). Overall, considering the demographics of gender, culture/ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation, we might agree with Jankowiak and Fischer (1992) that passionate love (and perhaps other facets of romantic love ) are nearly universal. Whether truly universal or not, however, romantic love is important to partnered relationships. One measure of importance is its connection with relationship satisfaction, a significant component of general relationship quality (Fletcher, Simpson, and Thomas, 2000). LOVE AND SATISFACTION

An aspect of our focus on love has been an intense interest in how love correlates with relationship satisfaction. In some of our earliest couple research (S. Hendrick, Hendrick, and Adler, 1988), we focused on two main themes: partner similarity and the prediction of both satisfaction and staying together/breaking up. Assessing fifty-seven college dating couples, we found relationship partners to be significantly similar on eros, storge, mania, and agape. We also found eros to be a positive predictor, and ludus a negative predictor, of relationship satisfaction for both women and men, with mania an additional negative predictor for women. After two months, we recontacted a subsample of thirty couples to determine which ones were still together. Some twenty-three couples were still intact, while seven had broken up. Based on their earlier responses to the relationship measures, we determined that the intact couples had been more passionate and less gameplaying in their love styles than had the breakup couples. The similarity findings of this study were replicated by Morrow, Clark, and Brock (1995), who found partners to be similar in love styles. They also found correlations between love styles and several positive relationship qualities (e.g., investment, commitment). The findings that love styles predicted relationship satisfaction fueled additional couple research. As noted earlier (Contreras et al., 1996), research with Mexican American and Anglo couples revealed a number of significant relationships between love styles and satisfaction, with passionate love “the most consistent predictor of marital satisfaction for both wives and husbands, across all ethnic categories” (p. 412). In a study of relational quality in the context of dual-career and family work issues, Sokolski and Hendrick (1999) surveyed 160 married couples in which one or both spouses were law, medical, or graduate students. Spouses showed significant similarity on the love styles of eros, ludus, storge,

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and pragma; and eros, storge, and agape were positively associated with satisfaction for both wives and husbands (ludus was negatively associated for both). Meeks, Hendrick, and Hendrick (1998) surveyed love styles and several other relationship variables in 140 dating college couples. Partners were significantly similar on four of the six love styles (as well as a number of other relevant constructs), and in the final regression analysis, positive love (a combination of agape, storge, and eros) was one of the positive predictors of relationship satisfaction, while game-playing love was one of the negative predictors. Thus, based on a variety of research findings from young dating couples, young married couples, and older married couples, partners are typically similar on several of the love styles, and several of the love styles are significantly related to relationship satisfaction, with eros always a positive predictor of satisfaction and ludus always a negative one. Although the focus of most of our research is on love and its many facets, our most recent work has broadened out from love and its influence on satisfaction to include a relationship construct that is both understudied and intriguing: respect. RESPECT, LOVE, AND RELATIONSHIPS

Our research on respect arose in response to the narrative biographical work of Lawrence-Lightfoot (2000). In her volume on respect, she details accounts of persons whom she believes live their lives in such a way as to exemplify varied aspects of the totality of respect. Her accounts profile a nurse-midwife, pediatrician, high school teacher, photographer, law professor, and chaplain/counselor to dying patients; these persons cross gender and racial/ethnic lines. The elements of respect that they exemplify include empowerment, healing, dialogue, attention, curiosity, and self-respect. Based on these concepts, we developed a brief measure of respect (S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2004) used to assess persons’ respect for their romantic partner. The brief (six-item, unifactorial) measure is psychometrically solid and is related in a predictable fashion to several relationship variables, including the love styles. Second only to passionate love in its power to predict relationship satisfaction, the respect scale also shows potential as a generic measure of respect for others. Since respect was also found by Feeney, Noller, and Ward (1997) to be a consistent element of marital quality, and since we believe that a truly mature love—a consummate love, if you will (Sternberg, 1986)—has mutual respect as one of its foundational properties, the study of respect seems to us to be a logical extension of our study of love.

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As described above, a large amount of research supports the theory of the love styles. However, it may be interesting to conclude this section with an overview of another theory that seriously questioned the love styles’ viability. AN ATTACHMENT CRITIQUE OF THE LOVE STYLES

Most criticisms of the love styles research have been relatively minor, focusing largely on scaling issues involving the LAS. Shaver and Hazan (1988; see also Shaver, Hazan, and Bradshaw, 1988), however, proposed that attachment theory could “subsume” the love styles and other love theories. “Romantic love, viewed from an attachment perspective, involves the integration of three behavioral systems: attachment, caregiving, and sexual mating” (Shaver and Hazan, 1988, p. 482). At that time, adult attachment was conceptualized as three types: secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent. Shaver and Hazan argued that attachment styles and love styles matched as follows: secure (eros), avoidant (ludus), anxious/ambivalent (mania). They believed the other three love styles did not represent love at all, stating that “Storge is interesting primarily because in some ways it is not a romantic style at all. . . . Pragmatic lovers are not lovers at all in an emotional sense. . . . Agape, or ‘self-sacrificing’ love, seems to be related to what we have called the caregiving component of love. It is not a style of love in its own right” (1988, pp. 496–497). We clearly do not agree with such an approach, and we, along with other scholars, have concerns about adult attachment and the way it has developed. The concept of attachment was originally quite narrow in meaning: “a biobehavioral safety-regulating system in which the parent is the child’s primary protector and haven of safety” (Goldberg, Grusec, and Jenkins, 1999, p. 476). Goldberg et al. complained that the narrow definition has been broadened so much that attachment now simply means “parent-child relationships.” Adult attachment was necessarily such a broadened concept from the onset. Hazan and Zeifman (1999) made a strong case for adult romantic bonds as attachment bonds. Kirkpatrick (1998) rebutted this argument, however, by pointing out that the attachment system is not centrally involved in romantic relations of adults, and that adult bonding differs in a wide variety of ways from infant attachment. Berman and Sperling (1994) argued that attachment and caregiving collapse into a single system in adulthood, a position we find congenial because it seems veridical with the adult world as we know it. Thus, romantic love is not attachment, but, we would argue, the two are

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separate systems in adulthood (see C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2004, for a more detailed explication). In fact, attachment/caregiving, sexuality, and love become the three loosely linked, evolved structures that Fisher (1998) identified as attachment, lust, and attraction, respectively. These three systems presumably evolved independently but became linked over time because of their adaptive value (see C. Hendrick, 2005, for an overview of the relevance of evolutionary theory for psychology).

Love Styles and Other Theories of Love Though space precludes an exhaustive comparison of the many theories of love (see S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2000, for a review), the question naturally arises as to how the theory of the love styles compares with the other theories. A few examples are discussed briefly below, along with mention of the measurement of love. COMPARISON OF THEORIES

From the many theories available, we compare four that share some commonalities with the love styles. Passionate vs. companionate love Berscheid and Walster (1978) provided this classic formulation in detail. This theory construes love in two stages. First, there is the fire of passionate attraction that over time morphs into the quiet satisfaction of companionate love, if the relationship survives the initial stage of passionate love. In its original form, this approach was an “either/or theory” of love; either passion or companionship, but not both at the same time (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2003a). Hatfield (1988) has softened that position, noting that people are capable of both kinds of love at the same time, but that it is difficult to maintain. In our research, as noted previously, it is currently quite common for young lovers to claim that their partner is their best friend. There may have been a cultural change over the last few generations. When courtship and marriage were more formal role relationships, friendship was perhaps not expected at the beginning of marriage, but evolved over time, if the marriage endured. Today, the expectations for emotional intimacy between the partners begin early in the relationship. Passionate love clearly maps onto eros and, to some extent, mania. Companionate love matches storge most closely, and may include elements of pragma and agape. Ludus is both anti-passion and anti-friendship.

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Prototype theory Fehr (1988, 1993) articulated a detailed theory based on eliciting the features of love in general. Several components of love emerge from feature listing, but companionate features are clearly predominant. For example, features consistently found include trust, caring, honesty, friendship, and respect (Fehr, 1993). Even when features were listed explicitly for romantic love, trust, honesty, and happiness ranked well above passion and sexuality (Regan, Kocan, and Whitlock, 1998). The method of feature listing differs substantially from rating scales. The differences in results must be due in part to method variance. Clearly the love styles, such as storge, pragma, and agape, are related to the companionate features Fehr has found. However, eros is not very important for the prototype approach, in contrast to the strong predictability it has shown in research with the love styles. Love stories Sternberg is perhaps best known for his triangular theory of love (e.g., 1986). His more recent theory that love is a life story (1996, 1998) fits more clearly with the theory of love styles. Love stories vary across individuals and across time, just as the love styles do. Further understanding the guiding metaphors of one’s own love stories may give more ability for one to structure a satisfying love life. A similar statement holds true for understanding one’s own love styles. It would be interesting to do a fine-grained comparison of the twenty-five love stories presented in Sternberg (1998) with the six love styles, but such efforts are beyond the scope of this chapter. Love ways Perhaps this theory is most similar to the love styles. One example (Hecht, Marston, and Larkey, 1994) used a rating approach similar to the LAS. They found five factors designated as five types of love: committed, intuitive, secure, traditional, and companionate. Other methods in this research program included detailed interviews and qualitative analysis. The love ways is still a work in progress, but the structural approach is very similar to the research approach to the love styles. A detailed comparison of the contents revealed by the two approaches remains to be done. COMPARISON OF LOVE MEASURES

In one study (C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1989) we compared five rating instruments that assessed romantic love. These five instruments in-

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cluded nineteen subscales. Of present interest is the fact that we intercorrelated and factored these nineteen subscales. Five factors were extracted. The first one accounted for 32 percent of the variance and clearly reflected passionate love. The second factor accounted for 14 percent of the variance and reflected closeness and lack of conflict. The other three factors were small and not as clear in interpretation. We noted that the first two factors closely matched Walster and Walster’s (1978) definitions of passionate and companionate love. Thus, despite the great variety of items and rating scales, in the end what emerged from an analysis of instruments was primarily the passionate love and the companionate love with which we began this section. Whatever one’s theoretical perspective on love—and it is clear that our own perspective is informed by the love styles—applicability/usability/practicality/applications should be of substantial concern. Although Lewin is reputed to have said that there is nothing so practical as good theory, he might also have observed that a theory without practicality is not good, or at least not as good as it might be. We would agree, and indeed the love styles’ practical and clinical utility is part of their appeal.

Love Styles and the Real World: From Theory to Practice We were initially drawn to the love styles theory because it offered several options in thinking about, experiencing, and expressing love, and variety in love is a wonderful strength of this approach. Whether presenting research papers, teaching classes, granting interviews for television or print media, or giving talks to community groups, we have found that as we offer detailed descriptions of the styles, people’s faces light up with recognition. They see themselves, their partners, and other people in their lives in terms of the love styles, and because the love style descriptions are “accessible,” they can be practically useful. People retain these descriptions and use them as part of their commonsense psychology. In fact, students typically want to have their partners complete the LAS, community persons often respond similarly, and television interviewers or newspaper reporters will complete their assignment—and then want to talk “informally” about their own love lives. The love styles and the LAS are useful tools in couple therapy. Partners can better understand both their own and their partner’s love behavior when they have learned about their own and their partner’s responses to the LAS; they gain a “language” for talking about these aspects of their relationship. Along with an extended language can come an inclination to make more

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positive attributions about a partner’s love behavior (e.g., “He bought me a book instead of flowers for Valentine’s Day, not because he is unromantic but because he is a friendship/practical lover”). Therapists know that more positive attributions can influence communication, conflict resolution, and a number of other relationship behaviors in a desirable direction. (For a more complete discussion of therapeutic use of the love styles approach and a case example employing it, see S. Hendrick, 2004.) Finally, our approach to love styles research over an extended time period has been to view it as one theoretical/empirical/practical alternative to understanding the very complex phenomenon of romantic love in intimate relationships. We have never proposed it as a “complete” approach or “the only” approach. Lee’s (1973) initial work was meant to enlarge the study of love, to broaden its conceptualization and its appeal. We have stayed within this tradition.

References Adler, N. L., Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (1986). Male sexual preference and attitudes toward love and sexuality. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 12 (2): 27–30. Baumeister, R. F., and Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529. Berman, W. H., and Sperling, M. B. (1994). The structure and function of adult attachment. In M. B. Sperling and W. H. Berman (eds.), Attachment in Adults: Clinical and Developmental Perspectives, pp. 3–28. New York: Guilford Press. Berscheid, E., and Walster, E. (1978). Interpersonal Attraction, 2nd ed. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Cho, W., and Cross, S. E. (1995). Taiwanese love styles and their association with selfesteem and relationship quality. Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs, 121, 283–309. Contreras, R., Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (1996). Perspectives on marital love and satisfaction in Mexican American and Anglo-American couples. Journal of Counseling and Development, 74, 408–415. Costa, P. T., Jr., and McCrae, R. R. (1985). The NEO Personality Inventory Manual. Odessa, Fla.: Psychological Assessment Resources. ———. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and NEO FiveFactor Inventory (NEO-FFI) Professional Manual. Odessa, Fla.: Psychological Assessment Resources. Feeney, J. A., Noller, P., and Ward, C. (1997). Marital satisfaction and spousal interaction. In R. J. Sternberg and M. Hojjat (eds.), Satisfaction in Close Relationships, pp. 160–189. New York: Guilford Press.

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Fehr, B. (1988). Prototype analysis of the concepts of love and commitment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 557–579. ———. (1993). How do I love thee? Let me consult my prototype. In S. Duck (ed.), Individuals in Relationships, pp. 87–120. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Fisher, H. E. (1998). Lust, attraction, and attachment in mammalian reproduction. Human Nature, 9, 23–52. ———. (2000). Lust, attraction, attachment: Biology and evolution of three primary emotion systems for mating, reproduction, and parenting. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 25, 96–104. Fletcher, G. J. O., Simpson, J. A., and Thomas, G. (2000). The measurement of perceived relationship quality components: A confirmatory factor analytic approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 340–354. Goldberg, S., Grusec, J. E., and Jenkins, J. M. (1999). Confidence in protection: Arguments for a narrow definition of attachment. Journal of Family Psychology, 13, 475–483. Grote, N. K., and Frieze, L. H. (1994). The measurement of friendship-based love in intimate relationships. Personal Relationships, 1, 275–300. Hatfield, E. (1988). Passionate and companionate love. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 191–217. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Hatfield, E., and Rapson, R. (1987). Passionate love: New directions in research. In W. H. Jones and D. Perlman (eds.), Advances in Personal Relationships, vol. 1, pp. 109–139. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press. Hazan, C., and Zeifman, D. (1999). Pair bonds as attachments: Evaluating the evidence. In J. Cassidy and P. R. Shaver (eds.), Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, pp. 336–354. New York: Guilford Press. Heaven, P. C. L., Da Silva, T., Carey, C., and Holen, J. (2004). Loving styles: Relationships with personality and attachment styles. European Journal of Personality, 18, 103–113. Hecht, M. L., Marston, P. J., and Larkey, L. K. (1994). Love ways and relationship quality. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 11, 25–43. Hendrick, C. (2005). Evolution as a foundation for psychological theories. In S. Strack (ed.), Handbook of Personology and Psychopathology, pp. 3–23. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Hendrick, C., and Hendrick, S. S. (1986). A theory and method of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 392–402. ———. (1988). Lovers wear rose colored glasses. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 5, 161–183. ———. (1989). Research on love: Does it measure up? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 784–794. ———. (1990). A relationship-specific version of the Love Attitudes Scale. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 5, 239–254. ———. (2003a). Love. In J. J. Ponzetti, Jr., et al. (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family, 2nd ed., vol. 3, pp. 1059–1065. New York: Macmillan Reference USA.

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———. (2003b). Romantic love: Measuring Cupid’s arrow. In S. J. Lopez and C. R. Snyder (eds.), Positive Psychological Assessment: A Handbook of Models and Measures, pp. 235–249. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. ———. (2004). Sex and romantic love: Connects and disconnects. In J. H. Harvey, A. Wenzel, and S. Sprecher (eds.), The Handbook of Sexuality in Close Relationships, pp. 159–182. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum. Hendrick, C., Hendrick, S. S., and Dicke, A. (1998). The Love Attitudes Scale: Short form. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15, 137–142. Hendrick, C., Hendrick, S., Foote, F. H., and Slapion-Foote, M. J. (1984). Do men and women love differently? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 1, 177– 195. Hendrick, S. S. (2004). Close relationships research as a resource for couple and family therapy. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 30, 13–27. Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (1987a). Love and sex attitudes: A close relationship. In W. H. Jones and D. Perlman (eds.), Advances in Personal Relationships, vol. 1, pp. 141–169. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press. ———. (1987b). Love and sex attitudes and religious beliefs. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 5, 391–398. ———. (1987c). Love and sexual attitudes, self-disclosure, and sensation seeking. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 4, 281–297. ———. (1993). Lovers as friends. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10, 459–466. ———. (1995). Gender differences and similarities in sex and love. Personal Relationships, 2, 55–65. ———. (2000). Romantic love. In C. Hendrick and S. S. Hendrick (eds.), Close Relationships: A Sourcebook, pp. 203–215. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. ———. (2002). Linking romantic love with sex: Development of the Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 19, 361–378. ———. (July 2004). Giving “respect” the respect it deserves. Paper presented at the Conference on Personal Relationships, Madison, Wis. Hendrick, S. S., Hendrick, C., and Adler, N. L. (1988). Romantic relationships: Love, satisfaction, and staying together. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 980–988. Inman-Amos, J., Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (1994). Love attitudes: Similarities between parents and between parents and children. Family Relations, 43, 456–461. Jankowiak, W. R., and Fischer, E. F. (1992). A cross-cultural perspective on romantic love. Ethnology, 31, 149–155. Johnson, M. P. (November 1987). Discussion of papers on love styles and family relationships. In K. E. Davis (chair), New Directions in Love Style Research. Symposium conducted at the Preconference Theory Construction and Research Methodology Workshop. Atlanta: National Council on Family Relations. Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1998). Evolution, pair-bonding, and reproductive strategies: A reconceptualization of adult attachment. In J. A. Simpson and W. S. Rholes (eds.), Attachment Theory and Close Relationships, pp. 353–393. New York: Guilford Press.

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Lasswell, M., and Lobsenz, N. M. (1980). Styles of Loving: Why You Love the Way You Do. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Lasswell, T. E., and Lasswell, M. E. (1976). I love you but I’m not in love with you. Journal of Marriage and Family Counseling, 38, 211–224. Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., and Michaels, S. (1994). The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2000). Respect: An Exploration. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books. Lee, J. A. (1973). The Colours of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving. Don Mills, Ont.: New Press. ———. (1988). Love-styles. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 38–67. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Liebowitz, M. R. (1983). The Chemistry of Love. Boston: Little, Brown. Meeks, B. S., Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (1998). Communication, love, and relationship satisfaction. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15, 755–773. Montgomery, M. J., and Sorell, G. T. (1997). Differences in love attitudes across family life stages. Family Relations, 46, 55–61. Morrow, G. D., Clark, E. M., and Brock, K. F. (1995). Individual and partner love styles: Implications for the quality of romantic involvements. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12, 363–387. Murstein, B. I., Merighi, J. R., and Vyse, S. A. (1991). Love styles in the United States and France: A cross-cultural comparison. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 10, 37–46. Peplau, L. A., and Spaulding, L. R. (2000). The close relationships of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. In S. S. Hendrick and C. Hendrick (eds.), Close Relationships: A Sourcebook, pp. 111–123. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Regan, P. C. (1998). Romantic love and sexual desire. In V. C. de Munck (ed.), Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, pp. 91– 112. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Regan, P. C., and Berscheid, E. (1999). Lust: What We Know About Human Sexual Desire. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Regan, P. C., Kocan, E. R., and Whitlock, T. (1998). Ain’t love grand! A prototype analysis of the concept of romantic love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 15, 411–420. Richardson, D. R., Medvin, N., and Hammock, G. (1988). Love styles, relationship experience, and sensation seeking: A test of validity. Personality and Individual Differences, 9, 645–651. Shaver, P. R., and Hazan, C. H. (1988). A biased overview of the study of love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 5, 473–501. Shaver, P. R., Hazan, C., and Bradshaw, D. (1988). Love as attachment: The integration of three behavioral systems. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 68–99. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Shaver, P. R., Morgan, H. J., and Wu, S. (1996). Is love a “basic” emotion? Personal Relationships, 3, 81–96.

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Singer, I. (1984). The Nature of Love, vol. 1, Plato to Luther, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sokolski, D. M., and Hendrick, S. S. (1999). Fostering marital satisfaction. Family Therapy, 26, 39–49. Sprecher, S., Aron, A., Hatfield, E., Cortese, A., Potapova, E., and Levitskaya, A. (1994). Love: American style, Russian style, and Japanese style. Personal Relationships, 1, 349–369. Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93, 119– 135. ———. (1996). Love stories. Personal Relationships, 3, 59–79. ———. (1998). Love Is a Story. New York: Oxford University Press. Walster, E., and Walster, G. W. (1978). A New Look at Love. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. White, J. K., Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (2004). Big five personality variables and relationship constructs. Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 1519–1530.

8

Searching for the Meaning of “Love” ellen berscheid

In his preface to The Psychology of Love, Zick Rubin observed that the science of love was still in its infancy. “One sign of this immaturity,” he wrote, “is the fact that the investigators represented in this volume share so little of a common vocabulary” (1988, p. viii). Because love means different things to different people, Rubin advised that “Love researchers might do well to move toward a more common conceptual vocabulary” (p. ix). Indeed, adequate conceptualization is an “eternal verity” in the realm of scientific progress. Clear conceptualization of a phenomenon must precede its empirical investigation and the subsequent integration of empirical findings relevant to the phenomenon. No one would have disagreed with Rubin then, or would disagree now, that a common conceptual vocabulary of love is critical to progress of research on love—but there is a problem.

The Problem of Conceptualizing Love In a television interview after his engagement to Diana was announced, Prince Charles was asked if the couple was in love. Diana quickly replied for him: “Of course,” she said with a smile. Charles added, under his breath, “Whatever ‘in love’ means” (Kantrowitz and McGuire, 2005). Charles’s uncertainty is not surprising. Theorists and researchers of love have spent a

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good deal of time and effort trying to pin down what love is, but no single conceptualization of love has been agreed upon, although some have completed the exercise to their personal satisfaction. The problem, as Murstein put it, is that “The word love is bandied about more promiscuously than almost any other word in the English language” (1988, p. 13). The word gives the appearance of being “bandied about” because, as love theorists and researchers Susan and Clyde Hendrick (1987) observe, “The language of love is highly impoverished in Western society and probably throughout the world” (p. 162); that is, the word love is used in an astounding array of situations to describe an enormous range of attitudes, emotions, feelings, and behaviors toward objects and people. In this respect, love is not different from many other words, for all human language is characterized by polysemy. As the anthropologist and linguist Roy D’Andrade states, “Rarely does any word have only one sense” (1989, p. 797). Love is not one of those rare words. Because love has more than one meaning, there can be no single definition of love. The fact that the word love has many meanings makes it difficult to write even a single sentence about love that is unassailable and true under all conditions. Ernest Hemingway, who used love as the theme of many of his novels, would have appreciated the difficulty, for he aspired to write only what he knew “truly.” When he experienced writer’s block, Hemingway (1964) would say to himself, “All you have to do is write one true sentence” (p. 12). But writing just one “true” sentence was not easy, and composing a “true” paragraph sometimes consumed his entire day (see Hotchner, 1955). Hemingway’s writing style—short and lean sentences strung together in staccato fashion—has been much parodied, but it probably evolved in the service of his aim to write only true sentences, for the longer and more complex the sentence, the more likely it is to include false elements. One thinks of Hemingway because out of the millions, trillions, perhaps even centillions of sentences written about love, very few can stand alone and still strike one as “true.” One of those few is “Love is a word.” One recognizes, of course, that had the oracle of Delphi uttered this sentence to those seeking her wisdom about love, she would have been pelted with stones. Nevertheless, when drowning in a sea of conjecture, assumption, and just plain blather about love, it is prudent to find a rock to stand on, and “Love is a word” is not as small a rock as it may seem at first glance. As a word, love is used by people to represent something—many things, actually—in their communications with other people, and despite the fact that love is one of the most polysemous words in the English language, people generally know what a person using the word is trying to commu-

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nicate. Love in the phrase “I love ice cream” does not have the same meaning as love in the phrase “I love you,” for example. People generally know what love means in common discourse because they construe its meaning from knowledge of precisely who, in what situation, in what culture, is using the word to describe his or her attitudes, emotions, feelings, and behaviors about a person or a thing. It is the context in which love is used that establishes its meaning. Because the word love is used in an almost infinite variety of contexts, it has an almost infinite variety of meanings. This fact is unfortunate from the point of view of those who wish to construct a simple definition of love and a set of algorithms representing its causes and consequences. Nevertheless, few have been deterred from attempting the feat. To extract from the muddle of meanings of love a definition of what love really is, most scholars have grabbed their taxonomic broom and tried to tidy up the mess by sorting the myriad meanings of love into neat piles, each believed to reflect a variety of love.

Taxonomies of Love People have been trying to classify the varieties of love at least since the twelfth century (see Berscheid and Regan, 2005, p. 325). Virtually all taxonomies of love start with an examination of the language of love. People’s conceptions of love are gleaned through an examination of their descriptions of love experiences in diaries and novels, plays, and other literary works, or directly asking questions, in interviews or on questionnaires, to elicit what love means to them. The taxonomist then sorts the different meanings of love according to their similarity. The sorting process has become highly sophisticated in recent years, with prototype analysis (e.g., Fehr and Russell, 1991) and factor analysis and its cousins (e.g., Sternberg and Grajek, 1984) often used (see Berscheid and Meyers, 1996, for a description of these and other methods), but the objective of the exercise remains the same: to identify commonalities and differences among the ways in which people use the word love in their daily lives, and thus its meanings. After the meanings of love are sorted into piles, each is given a name that describes its content and the variety of love it is assumed to represent (e.g., romantic love). Many classification schemes of love have been constructed. Some of the types listed in one scheme may be similar to those listed in some other love taxonomies (e.g., “romantic love” usually appears), but most taxonomies also contain unique varieties (e.g., “fatuous love”; Sternberg, 1986) and

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unique names for the same variety (e.g., “pragmatic love”; Kelley, 1983/ 2002). Precisely which varieties of love appear in a particular taxonomy depends on many things, including the sorting technique used and how the taxonomist exercises his or her artistic license to label the different piles. Taxonomies of love also differ because the characteristics of the people whose meanings of love are sampled differ. A difference in the people sampled is likely to make a difference in the meanings found, because the meaning of a word and the frequency with which it is used are a function of the individual’s social world and the communication demands it makes. Not everyone experiences the same demands. Meanings of a word may differ among cultures, and even within the same culture they may differ by persons’ gender, age, occupation, social status, and other characteristics. Moreover, people’s social and physical environments change over time and, as a result, what people need and want to communicate to others changes. As a consequence, language is not static; it is constantly adapting to the needs of people who use it. Thus, the meaning of a word, even within a subculture in a single culture, may change over time and, therefore, a taxonomy of love constructed at a previous point in time may differ from a taxonomy constructed today.

Theories of Love(s) Love taxonomies usually carry the assumption that each type of love identified is different from the others in important respects, including the experience of that type of love and its manifestations in observable behavior. Constructing a taxonomy of love is preliminary to developing a theory of love for each variety of love the taxonomy identifies. As Harold Kelley writes: The single word love refers to different phenomena. . . . Consequently, in both common lore and scientific thought, there are a number of different models of love. It is important to realize that these models are not alternative, competing views of a single phenomenon, “love.” Rather, they are conceptualizations of different phenomena, each of which has historically been termed love. The different models are addressed to the major forms or types of love. They imply that one person’s “love” for another should always be qualified as to the type or combination of types it involves. (1983/ 2002, p. 280)

Kelley thus argues that it is unlikely there can be one theory of love, for love is not a single phenomenon. Rather, there are several different phenom-

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ena, each of which is sometimes called love but which, more accurately, is actually a particular variety of love that is different in important ways from other varieties of love. Kelley’s statement that the word love should always be qualified as to the type or combination of types referred to has not always been heeded in the study of love, and therein lies the source of a great deal of theoretical confusion about love. Another source of confusion is that even when the word love is qualified by an adjective that specifies a particular variety of love, that variety may have been given different names by different taxonomists and love theorists; that is, a single variety of love may have several aliases. In sum, the taxonomic exercise of sorting the different varieties of love is preliminary to constructing a theory of love—or, more precisely, a theory of a specific type of love. Kelley also states that any theory about a specific form or variety of love should include descriptions of the observable phenomena associated with that kind of love (e.g., actions and feelings); the current causes responsible for the observed phenomena; the historical antecedents of the current causes and phenomena; and the future course of the phenomena.

A Taxonomy of Loves Some two decades ago, I reasoned that for the behavioral scientist who wishes to predict behavior, the most compelling reasons for differentiating seemingly like things from each other are (a) evidence that each is associated with different behaviors; and (b) evidence that each is generated by different causes. Four varieties of love seemed to satisfy those criteria at the time, and they continue to satisfy those criteria today (Berscheid, 1985, 2006). Together, the four seemed to me to be exhaustive of the basic types of love, or positive affect, people may experience toward others, although within a specific relationship, all or only some may be experienced at a single point in time (I shall return to this later). I hasten to add that there is nothing original about each of the four types of love in the taxonomy I reintroduce here. Each has been named in at least some other love taxonomies, elaborated by at least some other love theorists, and investigated by many researchers, although each has been given a number of different names. Each appears to have different immediate, or proximal, causes, but I believe all have the same historical, or ultimate, cause: the human biological heritage as it developed over evolutionary time. Because the capacity for experiencing each of the four types of love appears to be innately given, I also theorize that each is pancultural.

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The first type of love I named in the 1985 quadrumvirate is “attachment love.” As originally identified by Bowlby (e.g., 1979) and by Harlow (1958), and as has become well established since, the attachment system appears to be “innate,” or unlearned. Thus its historical cause lies in the human evolutionary history, specifically, the need for infants to stay in close proximity to a protector in order to survive. The immediate cause of behaviors associated with this kind of love is a threatening situation; its characteristic behaviors are those that promote proximity to the protector; and its interpersonal target is usually a familiar person who is older, stronger, and wiser than the individual. As both Bowlby and Harlow emphasized, reward-punishment principles are not among the causal conditions of attachment love. Although Bowlby theorized that attachment is characteristic of all humans over their life span, this normative feature of attachment theory has been almost wholly neglected in favor of investigations of its individual difference component, “which attempts to explain stable, systematic deviations from the modal behavioral patterns and stages” (Simpson and Rholes, 1998, p. 4). Investigations of individual differences in attachment orientation, or different “adult attachment styles” (e.g., secure and insecure), now fill volumes (e.g., see Cassidy and Shaver, 1999). In contrast, the modal behavior patterns and stages of attachment for all humans over the life span are not yet well known. COMPASSIONATE LOVE

The second type of love involves concern for another’s welfare and taking actions to promote it, regardless of whether those actions are perceived to result in future benefits to the self. In the original taxonomy, I called this kind of love “altruistic love,” although it goes by a number of other names, including “charitable love,” “brotherly love,” “communal love,” “agape,” and Maslow’s term, “B-love,” or love for another’s being. Perhaps the most useful name at present is “compassionate love” (as I have renamed it here), because contemporary theorists and researchers have recently revived interest in this variety of love (e.g., Fehr and Sprecher, 2004) and currently are using the “compassionate love” label. The caregiving system, also identified by both Bowlby and Harlow, would seem to underlie this kind of love. It, too, has been theorized to be a part of the human biological heritage. Indeed, many have observed that the attachment system could not have evolved without the complement of a caregiving system. Humans, born immature and vulnerable, need older,

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stronger, and wiser humans to respond to their distress calls in order survive to maturity and reproductive age. Those who received such protection and care survived over evolutionary time, as did, presumably, a human predisposition to help the weak and distressed. Whereas the historical cause of compassionate love lies in the evolutionary history of the human, its principal immediate cause, as outlined in the vast social psychological literatures on “caregiving,” “social support,” and “prosocial behavior,” is the perception that another is in distress. Its characteristic behaviors depend on the nature of the distress that is perceived, because the motive underlying the behavior is alleviation of the distress. The social target of the behaviors is a distressed person. If it is true that all humans are born with an unlearned caregiving system that results in responding to distress calls made by other members of the species, then, as is true of the attachment system, the causal conditions for activation of the caregiving system do not follow reward-punishment principles. COMPANIONATE LOVE/LIKING

In the original taxonomy, I called the third variety of love “friendship love,” but at present, the term “companionate love/liking” makes a stronger connection to the relevant literatures. In addition to “companionate love,” “liking,” and “friendship love,” this variety of love has been given several other names, including “philias,” “affection,” “affiliation,” and “pragmatic love.” As the label “pragmatic love” suggests, this affect system, unlike the attachment and caregiving systems, is very much based on rewardpunishment principles; that is, it is well established that we feel positive affect for—“like”—those who reward us, and we dislike those who punish us. Its historical cause is, again, our evolutionary heritage, and the painpleasure principle that has served as the basic motivating principle underlying almost all psychological theories of behavior, especially the learning theories. The current causes of liking, its associated characteristic behaviors, and its typical interpersonal targets are listed and discussed in the “interpersonal attraction” chapter of every social psychology textbook. For example, we like people who are familiar (as opposed to unfamiliar), who are similar (as opposed to dissimilar), who like us (as opposed to dislike us), and who are physically attractive (as opposed to unattractive) (see Berscheid and Regan, 2005). These characteristics of a target tend to make our interactions with him or her rewarding, at least more rewarding than interactions with persons who do not possess these characteristics. Generally, we try to achieve and maintain proximity to liked persons and to behave in ways we believe

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they will find rewarding, in order to ensure that they will want to continue to interact with us. ROMANTIC LOVE

The fourth kind of love in the quadrumvirate is “romantic love,” which appears in virtually every taxonomy of love. Of all the types of love, laypersons and love theorists have been most interested romantic love, partly because it has been, and continues to be, the sine qua non for marriage in many societies. This type of love also is known by other names, including “passionate love,” “addictive love,” and “erotic love.” As the word erotic suggests, sexual desire is frequently associated with this type of love (see Berscheid and Regan, 2005, p. 334, for a sample of theories that link romantic love to sexual desire). Nevertheless, investigations of the role of sexual desire as a causal antecedent of romantic love have been sparse. Indeed, in The Psychology of Love, I asked, “Whatever happened to old-fashioned lust?” (Berscheid, 1988). Since then, however, evidence has been gathered in support of the thesis that sexual desire (also known as lust) is an important, perhaps even necessary, causal condition of romantic love—a causal condition that differentiates this type of love from the other three types, and thus satisfies the criteria for inclusion in a taxonomy of varieties of love. THE CASE FOR LUST IN THE STUDY OF ROMANTIC LOVE

Returning to Charles sitting on the sofa alongside Diana, squirming under the glare of the television lights and mumbling “Whatever ‘in love’ means,” I, too, wondered what “in love” means. I especially wondered if the meaning of the phrase was different from what people mean when they simply say they “love” another. Although the phrase “in love” and the word love often have been treated as synonyms by love researchers, I suspected that each refers to a different variety of love in the common lexicon of the college students we so frequently study (Berscheid, 1985, p. 436). To find out what people mean when they use the phrase “in love,” as opposed to the word love, Sally Meyers and I (Berscheid and Meyers, 1996; Meyers and Berscheid, 1997) developed what we called the “social categorical method,” which simply involves asking individuals to list all the people in their personal social worlds who belong in certain social categories; for example, “family members,” “friends,” “people I love.” Respondents can name a person in more than one category and, in fact, it is the overlap in membership among the different categories that is of interest (e.g., the overlap between “family members” and “people I love”). College students listed people in their personal worlds who belonged in ten different social cate-

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gories, three of which were of special interest: “people I love,” “people with whom I am in love,” and “people for whom I feel sexual attraction/desire.” Our first hypothesis was that membership in the “love” category would be larger than membership in the “in love” category. It was. People “love” many more people than they are “in love” with, suggesting that the two terms are not synonyms in the common language of love. Whereas, on average, nine or so people were named in the “love” category, usually only one person was named in the “in love” category. Women loved more people than men did, and both men and women loved more women than men. Additionally, and as illustrated by Diana’s alacrity in answering the interviewer’s question and Charles’s befuddlement, men experienced more difficulty than women in deciding if a person belonged in their “love” category, and they also had more difficulty deciding if a person belonged in their “in love” category, suggesting that these words may have a fuzzier meaning for men than they do for women. Our second hypothesis was that the phrase “in love” refers to a specific type of love, whereas the term love is generic, referring to all types of love. Thus, we expected the membership of the “in love” category to be encapsulated in the “love” category. It was. Almost all persons named in the “in love” category were also named in the “love” category (93 percent); fewer of those in the “love” category were also named in the “in love” category (23 percent). Our third hypothesis addressed the meaning of the phrase “in love.” We hypothesized that if “in love” refers to a sexual kind of love, then members of the “in love” category should also be listed as members of the “sexual attraction/desire” category. They were. Most (87 percent) of those named in the “in love” category were also named in the “sexual attraction/desire” category; in contrast, few (14 percent) in the “love” category were also sexually desirable. People were sexually attracted to more persons than they were “in love” with, suggesting that simply being sexually desirable was not enough to admit a person to the “in love” category. Something else was needed. A clue to at least one more thing that is needed was provided by the high overlap in membership of the “in love” category and the “friend” category. Most (74 percent) of the persons named in the “in love” category were also named in the “friend” category, a finding consistent with those of S. Hendrick and Hendrick (1993), who found that, at least in our society at this time, romantic love and friendship are strongly connected. (It should be noted that members of the “love” category, who often were family members, were not especially likely to be named as friends.)

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Among the conclusions we drew from this study was that our respondents were clear about how love and sexuality are linked. When another is liked (a friend) and sexually attractive, that person qualifies for membership in the “in love” category, but if a person is only liked (only a friend) or only sexually attractive, that individual is unlikely to be in the “in love” category. Our respondents, then, would know the meaning of the phrase “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.” We speculated that the “love” portion of the phrase is generic love, referring to caring, respect, liking, and other features of positive regard, whereas the “not in love” portion signifies that sexual desire is absent. The phrase “love but not in love” seems to be heard most often when one partner in a relationship that had been progressing toward marriage (or had been thought by one of the partners to be progressing) terminates the relationship with the “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” reason. Generally, an absence of sexual desire is accepted as a valid reason for dissolution of a courtship relationship. Whether it also has become an acceptable reason for dissolving a marital relationship is an empirical question. If it has, marital stability is threatened because there is some evidence that sexual desire for a specific partner may be time-limited; for example, Sprecher and Regan (1998) found that the longer a couple had been together, the less passionate love they felt for one another. We also concluded that the phrase “in love,” as used in the common lexicon of love, refers to “romantic love.” Some years ago, Elaine [Hatfield] Walster and I distinguished between romantic love and companionate love (Berscheid and Walster, 1974, 1978), a distinction that has endured and has appeared in quantitatively derived taxonomies of love (e.g., Fehr, 1994; C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986). Hatfield has since elaborated the difference between the two (e.g., Hatfield, 1988; Walster [Hatfield] and Walster, 1978), and the results of the Meyers and Berscheid (1997) study, as well as others (e.g., see Regan, 1998), further illuminate the difference. They suggest that • romantic love—liking with sexual desire • companionate love—liking without sexual desire • lust—sexual desire without liking. If the causes of romantic love include not only the causes of companionate love/liking (e.g., similarity) but also the causes of sexual desire, then in order to predict who is likely to fall in love with whom and when, both sets of causes must be taken into consideration. As previously noted, much is known about the causal conditions conducive to liking another. Unfortunately, much less is known about the causes of sexual attraction/desire. Its

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historical cause, of course, lies in our evolutionary history, for without sexual desire, Homo sapiens would have become extinct. The current causes of sexual desire have not been well established (see Regan and Berscheid, 1999), although they often include good general health and the availability of an appropriate target, usually a physically attractive, fertile person of the opposite sex, as evolutionary psychologists maintain. Its characteristic behaviors typically include planned pursuit of a person of the opposite sex with the motive to mate sexually with that person.

Summing Up The quadripartite view of love I have reintroduced here seems to me to be the human biologically based and innately given positive interpersonal affect systems, at least at the psychological level of analysis. My thesis is that each deserves to be treated separately because each has different causes for activation and different consequences (i.e., associated behaviors and interpersonal targets). With respect to different targets, for example, we can be attached to persons whom we do not like or respect, are not sexually attracted to, and, as Bowlby and other ethologists have observed, have been more a source of punishment than of reward. We can, and often do, exhibit caregiving behavior toward people we do not know, are not attached to, do not like, are not sexually attracted to, and from whom we expect no reward; their distress activates our caregiving system, and we respond. We often like people to whom we are not attached, as well as people whom we find sexually repulsive, but we can be sexually attracted to unfamiliar people we do not particularly like, and may even dislike. In my original presentation of this taxonomy (Berscheid, 1985), I hypothesized that within a single relationship and at a single point in time, one or more of the four types of love may be experienced. Much more needs to be learned, however, about the usual progression of these varieties of love within a relationship over time—indeed, whether there is a typical progression over time. Investigation of this matter, as well as others, is not possible if the four varieties of love are melded, as some love theorists do. For example, in The Psychology of Love, Shaver, Hazan, and Bradshaw (1988) theorized that romantic love is a combination of attachment love, caregiving love, and sexuality. Evaluation of that thesis requires much more information about each type of love than is currently available. More needs to be known, for instance, about how quickly adult attachments develop and who is likely to become attached to whom. Not all “romantic” partners are older, wiser, and stronger than oneself, and turned to under threat conditions; and

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not all partners are weaker, vulnerable, and distressed, and thus invite caregiving love. Again, my thesis is simply that each variety of love needs to be treated separately until there is clear evidence that all deserve to be placed under one umbrella. This is especially true because it may be the case that one variety of love inhibits the development and expression of another kind of love in a relationship. For example, the cultural anthropologist Arthur Wolf (1995) has found suggestive evidence that attachment love and caregiving love may be contrasexual. Investigation of that and many other hypotheses is not possible if the different varieties of love are not recognized and respected, and researchers consistently use a single name for each. Love researchers remain in great need of a common vocabulary of love.

References Berscheid, E. (1985). Interpersonal attraction. In G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (eds.), The Handbook of Social Psychology, 3rd ed., vol. 2, pp. 413–484. New York: Random House. ———. (1988). Some comments on love’s anatomy: Or, whatever happened to oldfashioned lust? In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 359–374. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ———. (2006). Seasons of the heart. In M. Mikulincer and G. Goodwin (eds.), Dynamics of Love: Attachment, Caregiving, and Sex, pp. 404–422. New York: Guilford Press. Berscheid, E., and Meyers, S. A. (1996). A social categorical approach to a question about love. Personal Relationships, 19–43. Berscheid, E., and Regan, P. (2005). The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. New York: Prentice-Hall. Berscheid, E., and Walster [Hatfield], E. (1974). A little bit about love. In T. L. Huston (ed.), Foundations of Interpersonal Attraction, pp. 355–381. New York: Academic Press. ———. (1978). Interpersonal Attraction, 2nd ed. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Bowlby, J. (1979). The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds. London: Tavistock. Cassidy, J., and Shaver, P. R. (eds.). (1999). Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications. New York: Guilford Press. D’Andrade, R. G. (1989). Cultural cognition. In M. I. Posner (ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Science, pp. 795–830. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Fehr, B. (1994). Prototype-based assessment of laypeople’s views of love. Personal Relationships, 1, 309–331. Fehr, B., and Russell, J. A. (1991). The concept of love viewed from a prototype perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 425–438. Fehr, B., and Sprecher, S. (July 23, 2004). Compassionate love: Conceptual, relational, and behavioral issues. Paper presented at the Conference for the International Association for Relationship Research, Madison, Wis.

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Harlow, H. F. (1958). The nature of love. American Psychologist, 13, 673–685. Hatfield, E. (1988). Passionate and companionate love. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 191–217. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Hemingway, E. (1964). A Moveable Feast. New York: Scribner’s. Hendrick, C., and Hendrick, S. S. (1986). A theory and method of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 392–402. Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (1987). Love and sex attitudes: A close relationship. In W. H. Jones and D. Perlman (eds.), Advances in Personal Relationships, vol. 1, pp. 141–169. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI. ———. (1993). Lovers as friends. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 10, 459–466. Hotchner, A. E. (1955). Papa Hemingway. New York: Random House. Kantrowitz, B., and McGuire, S. (February 21, 2005). Now you ask me? Newsweek, pp. 34–37. Kelley, H. H. (1983/2002). Love and commitment. In H. H. Kelley, E. Berscheid, A. Christensen, J. H. Harvey, T. L. Huston, G. Levinger, E. McClintock, L. A. Peplau, and D. R. Peterson, Close Relationships, pp. 265–314. Clinton Corners, N.Y.: Percheron. Murstein, B. I. (1988). A taxonomy of love. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 13–37. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Myers, S. A., and Berscheid, E. (1997). The language of love: The difference a preposition makes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 347–362. Regan, P. C. (1998). Of lust and love: Beliefs about the role of sexual desire in romantic relationships. Personal Relationships, 5, 139–157. Regan, P. C., and Berscheid, E. (1999). Lust: What We Know About Human Sexual Desire. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Rubin, Z. (1988). Preface. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. vii–xii. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Shaver, P., Hazan, C., and Bradshaw, D. (1988). Love as attachment: The integration of three behavioral systems. In. R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 68–99. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Simpson, J. A., and Rholes, W. S. (1998). Attachment in adulthood. In J. A. Simpson and W. S. Rholes (eds.), Attachment Theory and Close Relationships, pp. 3–21. New York: Guilford Press. Sprecher, S., and Regan, P. C. (1998). Passionate and companionate love in courting and young married couples. Sociological Inquiry, 68, 163–185. Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93, 119– 135. Sternberg, R. J., and Grajeck, S. (1984). The nature of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 312–329. Walster [Hatfield], E., and Walster, G. W. (1978). A New Look at Love. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Wolf, A. P. (1995). Sexual Attraction and Childhood Association: A Chinese Brief for Edward Westermarck. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

9

A Duplex Theory of Love robert j. sternberg

The duplex theory of love captures two essential elements of the nature of love: first, its structure (a triangular subtheory), and second, its development (a subtheory of love as a story). The subtheory of love as a story is an attempt to specify how various kinds (triangles) of love develop. We consider each of the subtheories and then the duplex theory as a whole.

The Triangular Subtheory of Love The triangular theory of love (Sternberg, 1986, 1988a, 1988b, 1997, 1998a) holds that love can be understood in terms of three components that together can be viewed as forming the vertices of a triangle. The triangle is used as a metaphor, rather than as a strict geometric model. These three components are intimacy (top vertex of the triangle), passion (left-hand vertex of the triangle), and decision/commitment (right-hand vertex of the triangle). The assignment of components to vertices is arbitrary. These three components have appeared in various other theories of love and, moreover, seem to correspond rather well to people’s implicit theories of love (Aron and Westbay, 1996). Each of these three terms can be used in many different ways, so it is important to clarify their meanings in the context of the present theory.

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THREE COMPONENTS OF LOVE

The three components of love in the triangular theory are intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment. Each component manifests a different aspect of love. Intimacy Intimacy refers to feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness in loving relationships. It thus includes those feelings that give rise, essentially, to the experience of warmth in a loving relationship. Sternberg and Grajek (1984) cluster-analyzed data from the loving and liking scales of Rubin (1970) and a close relationships scale of Levinger, Rands, and Talaber (1977); as a result, they identified ten clusters in intimacy: (1) desire to promote the welfare of the loved one, (2) experienced happiness with the loved one, (3) high regard for the loved one, (4) being able to count on the loved one in times of need, (5) mutual understanding with the loved one, (6) sharing of one’s self and one’s possessions with the loved one, (7) receipt of emotional support from the loved one, (8) giving of emotional support to the loved one, (9) intimate communication with the loved one, and (10) valuing of the loved one. Passion Passion refers to the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation, and related phenomena in loving relationships. The passion component includes those sources of motivational and other forms of arousal that lead to the experience of passion in a loving relationship. It includes what Walster and Walster (1981) refer to as “a state of intense longing for union with the other” (p. 9). In a loving relationship, sexual needs may well predominate in this experience. However, other needs—such as those for self-esteem, succor, nurturance, affiliation, dominance, submission, and self-actualization—may also contribute to the experiencing of passion. Decision/commitment Decision/commitment refers, in the short term, to the decision that one loves a certain other, and in the long term, to one’s commitment to maintain that love. These two aspects of the decision/commitment component do not necessarily go together, in that one can decide to love someone without being committed to the love in the long term, or one can be committed to a relationship without acknowledging that one loves the other person in the relationship.

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The three components of love interact. For example, greater intimacy may lead to greater passion or commitment, just as greater commitment may lead to greater intimacy or, with lesser likelihood, greater passion. In general, then, the components are separable but interactive. Although all three components are important parts of loving relationships, their importance may differ from one relationship to another, or over time within a given relationship. Indeed, different kinds of love can be generated by limiting cases of different combinations of the components. KINDS OF LOVE

The three components of love generate eight possible limiting cases when considered in combination. Each of these cases gives rise to a different kind of love (described in Sternberg, 1988a, 1988b). It is important to realize that these kinds of love are, in fact, limiting cases: no relationship is likely to be a pure case of any of them. They are shown in table 9-1. Non-love refers to the absence of all three components of love. Liking results when one experiences only the intimacy component of love, in the absence of the passion and decision/commitment components. Infatuated love results from experiencing the passion component, in the absence of the other components of love. Empty love emanates from the decision that one loves another and is committed to that love, in the absence of both the intimacy and passion components of love. Romantic love derives from a combination of the intimacy and passion components. Companionate love derives from a combination of the intimacy and decision/commitment components of love. Fatuous love results from the combination of the passion and decision/commitment components, in the absence of the intimacy component. Consummate, or complete, love results from the full combination of all three components. In sum, the possible subsets of the three components of love generate different kinds of love as limiting cases. Most loves are “impure” examples of these various kinds: they partake of all three vertices of the triangle, but in different amounts. GEOMETRY OF THE LOVE TRIANGLE

The geometry of the “love triangle” depends upon two factors: the amount of love and the balance of love. Differences in amounts of love are represented by differing areas of the love triangle: the greater the amount of love, the greater the area of the triangle. Differences in balances of the three kinds of love are represented by differing shapes of triangles. For ex-

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Table 9-1 Taxonomy of kinds of triangles of love Type of Love Non-love Friendship Infatuated love Empty love Romantic love Companionate love Fatuous love Consummate love

Intimacy

Passion

Commitment

No Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes

No No Yes No Yes No Yes Yes

No No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes

ample, balanced love (roughly equal amounts of each component) is represented by an equilateral triangle. MULTIPLE TRIANGLES OF LOVE

Love does not involve just a single triangle. Rather, it involves a great number of triangles, only some of which are of major theoretical and practical interest. For example, it is possible to contrast real and ideal triangles. One has not only a triangle representing his or her love for the other, but also a triangle representing an ideal other for that relationship (see Sternberg and Barnes, 1985). The ideal may be based in part on experience in previous relationships of the same kind, which form what Thibaut and Kelley (1959) refer to as a “comparison level,” and in part on expectations of what the close relationship can be. It is also possible to distinguish between self- and other-perceived triangles. In other words, one’s feelings of love in a relationship may or may not correspond to how the significant other perceives one as feeling. Finally, it is important to distinguish between triangles of feelings and triangles of action. It is one thing to feel a certain way about a significant other, and another thing to act in a way consistent with these feelings. Each of the three components of love has a set of actions associated with it. For example, intimacy might be manifested in action through sharing one’s possessions and time, expressing empathy for another, communicating honestly with another, and so on. Passion might be manifested through gazing, touching, making love, and so on. Commitment might be manifested through sexual fidelity, engagement, marriage, and so on. Of course, the actions that express a par-

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ticular component of love can differ from one person to another, from one relationship to another, or from one situation to another. Nevertheless, it is important to consider the triangle of love as it is expressed through action, because action has so many effects on a relationship. DATA

Data presented here are based on Sternberg, 1997. Other data can be found in Sternberg, 1988a, 1998a. Participants in a first study were eightyfour New Haven area adults, equally divided between men and women, who answered an advertisement in a local newspaper. To be eligible for participation, they were required to be over eighteen, primarily heterosexual, and either married or currently involved in a close relationship. The range in age was from nineteen to sixty-two, with a mean age of twenty-eight and a standard deviation of eight years. Length of the close relationship ranged from 0.10 to 22.00 years, with a mean of 4.54 years and a standard deviation of 4.60 years. Participants in a second study were 101 New Haven area adults, including fifty men and fifty-one women who answered an advertisement in a local newspaper. Eligibility requirements were the same as in study 1. Participants ranged in age from eighteen to seventy-one, with a mean of thirty-one years and a standard deviation of eleven years. Length of the close relationship ranged from one to forty-two years, with a mean of 6.3 years and a standard deviation of 8.6 years. All participants received a Triangular Love Scale (Sternberg, 1997, 1998a). There were twelve Likert scale items measuring each of the three components. An example of an intimacy item would be “I have a warm and comfortable relationship with .” An example of a passion item would does.” be “I cannot imagine another person making me as happy as An example of a commitment item would be “I view my relationship with as permanent.” Other scales were also administered, such as the Rubin Liking Scale and the Rubin Love Scale. Half of the participants (males and females in equal numbers) were instructed to rate all of the statements for six different love relationships (mother, father, sibling closest in age, lover/spouse, best friend of the same sex, and ideal lover/spouse) in terms of how important each statement was, in the participants’ minds, to each of the six relationships. The other half of the participants (again, males and females in equal numbers) were instructed to rate the statements on how characteristic each was in their own lives for each of the six relationships. Importance is a value judgment; characteristicness, a judgment of the actual state of an existing relationship. If the triangular theory and measure are viable, then there ought to be a

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significant interaction between relationship and component: in other words, different relationships ought to show different blends of the three components of the theory. Such a significant interaction was obtained and, in fact, had the highest F value (58.25) and accounted for the most variance (.023) of any of the two-, three-, or four-way interactions studied. The actual means made sense in terms of the theory. For example, one would expect the mean characteristicness ratings for the lover relationship to vary less for passion versus intimacy and commitment, where passion seems crucial, than for the other relationships, where it does not. For lover, the mean passion rating was 6.91. The next highest rating was for mother at 4.98, a difference of 1.93. In contrast, the mean for lover on intimacy was 7.55, and the next highest mean, for friend, was 6.78, a difference of only .77. Similarly, for commitment, the difference between lover and the next highest mean, mother, was only 1.07. The importance ratings showed the same pattern even more strongly. The internal consistency analysis revealed that all but four of the thirtysix test items served their appropriate functions in the triangular test. Moreover, the subscale reliabilities, which were in the .80s and .90s, and the overall scale reliabilities, in the high .90s, were quite favorable. Intercorrelational analyses revealed that although action means were lower than feeling means, the two kinds of ratings were very highly correlated (generally in the .90s), so action ratings were disregarded in subsequent analyses. The intercorrelational analyses also revealed that, for characteristicness ratings overall, intimacy and commitment were more highly correlated than either intimacy and passion or passion and commitment. For importance ratings, the correlation of intimacy with passion was lower than the correlation of intimacy with commitment or of passion with commitment. Factor analyses revealed three factors for the characteristicness ratings, corresponding to the three components of the triangular theory, and four factors for the importance ratings, with decision/commitment splitting into decision and commitment as separate factors. In general, then, the factor analytic results were supportive of the theory. Finally, the external validation revealed moderate to high correlations with Rubin (1970) scale scores, although there was no clear convergentdiscriminant pattern with respect to liking and loving. The three subscales of the Sternberg Triangular Love Scale correlated more highly with satisfaction ratings than did either the Rubin Liking Scale or the Rubin Loving Scale. Study 2 was done in order to remedy some of the problems that arose in

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study 1. Most important, the study involved a replication sample somewhat larger than in study 1, and the Sternberg Triangular Love Scale was revised to help remediate some of the deficiencies in the scale that were observed in study 1. The main deficiencies in that study were that an excessive number of items showed their highest corrected correlation with a subscale other than the one in which they appeared, and that the correlations among the three subscales seemed excessively high. In the follow-up study, the crosscorrelations of items to scales other than their own were substantially reduced, and so were correlations among subscales, especially for characteristicness ratings. With respect to internal validation, both characteristicness and importance ratings revealed a three-factor structure corresponding to the components of the triangular theory. With respect to external validation, correlations with overall satisfaction were again very high (median .76 for the three subscales), and higher than those for the Rubin scales. In sum, the results were, on the whole, supportive of the triangular subtheory, although the scale was less than a perfect measure of the constructs specified by the theory.

The Subtheory of Love as a Story Love triangles emanate from stories. Almost all of us are exposed to large numbers of diverse stories that convey different conceptions of how love can be understood. Some of these stories may be explicitly intended as love stories; others may have love stories embedded in the context of larger stories. Either way, we are provided with varied opportunities to observe multiple conceptions of what love can be. These stories may be observed by watching people in relationships, by watching television or movies, or by reading fiction. It seems plausible that as a result of our exposure to such stories, over time we form our own stories of what love is or should be. Sternberg (1994, 1995, 1996, 1998b; Sternberg, Hojjat, and Barnes, 2001) has proposed and tested a theory of love as a story, whereby the interaction of our personal attributes with the environment—which we in part create—leads to the development of stories about love that we then seek to fulfill, to the extent possible, in our lives. Various potential partners fit these stories to greater or lesser degrees, and we are more likely to succeed in close relationships with people whose stories more, rather than less, closely match our own. Although the stories we create are fundamentally our own, they draw on our experience of living in the world—on fairy stories we may have heard when we were young, on the models of love relationships we observe around us in parents and relatives, on television

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and movies, on conversations with other people about their relationships, and so forth. KINDS OF STORIES

Although the number of possible stories is probably infinite, certain genres of stories seem to keep emerging again and again in pilot analyses we have done of literature, film, and people’s oral descriptions of relationships. Because the stories we have analyzed were from participants in the United States, our listing is likely to show some degree of cultural bias. The stories contain some overlap, so that people with certain stories higher in their hierarchies might be expected to have others higher in their hierarchies as well. For example, an autocratic government story and a police story have overlapping elements—one partner maintaining authority and surveillance over the other—so that people with a strong preference for one of these stories might have a strong preference for the other. Stories we have found to be particularly useful in conceptualizing people’s notions of love are shown in table 9-2. This nonexhaustive working list of stories is based upon an analysis of love stories in literature, previous psychological research by the authors and others, and interpretations of informally gathered case material. ASPECTS OF STORIES

Several aspects of the stories are worth noting. These aspects are important to keep in mind because they apply to all the kinds of stories. First, the current list of twenty-six kinds of stories represents a wide range of conceptions of what love can be. Some of the conceptions are more common (e.g., love as a garden) than others (e.g., love as pornographic). Second, each story has a characteristic mode of thought and behavior. For example, someone with a game-based story of love (see also the “ludus” love style as described by C. Hendrick and Hendrick [1986] and Lee [1977]) will behave very differently toward a loved one than will someone with a religion-based love story (see also the anxious-ambivalent attachment style proposed by Hazan and Shaver [1987] and Shaver, Hazan, and Bradshaw [1988]). Third, as implied above, there is a substantial overlap between the view of love as a story and other views of love. As noted, the story of love as a game seems compatible with Lee’s (1977) ludus love style; the religious story seems likely to lead to an anxious-ambivalent attachment style (Shaver, Hazan, and Bradshaw, 1988); the fantasy story sounds similar to typical conceptions of romantic love (e.g., Walster and Walster, 1981; Sternberg, 1986);

Table 9-2 Taxonomy of some love stories 1. Addiction. Strong, anxious attachment; clinging behavior; anxiety at thought of losing partner. 2. Art. Love of partner for physical attractiveness; importance to person of partner’s always looking good. 3. Business. Relationships as business propositions; money is power; partners in close relationships as business partners. 4. Collection. Partner viewed as “fitting in” some overall scheme; partner viewed in a detached way. 5. Cookbook. Doing things a certain way (recipe) results in relationship being more likely to work out; departure from recipe for success leads to increased likelihood of failure. 6. Fantasy. Often expects to be saved by a knight in shining armor or to marry a princess and live happily ever after. 7. Game. Love as a game or sport. 8. Gardening. Relationships need to be continually nurtured and tended to. 9. Government. (a) Autocratic. One partner dominates or controls the other. (b) Democratic. Two partners share power equally. 10. History. Events of relationship form an indelible record; keep a lot of records, either mental or material. 11. Horror. Relationships become interesting when you terrorize or are terrorized by your partner. 12. House and Home. Relationships have their core in the home, through its development and maintenance. 13. Humor. Love is strange and funny. 14. Mystery. Love is a mystery, and you shouldn’t let too much of yourself be known. 15. Police. You’ve got to keep close tabs on your partner to make sure he or she toes the line, or you need to be under surveillance to make sure you behave. 16. Pornography. Love is dirty, and to love is to degrade or be degraded. 17. Recovery. Survivor mentality; view that after past trauma, a person can get through practically anything. 18. Religion. Views love either as a religion or as a set of feelings and activities dictated by religion. 19. Sacrifice. To love is to give of oneself or for someone to give of himself or herself to you. 20. Science. Love can be understood, analyzed, and dissected, just like any other natural phenomenon. 21. Science Fiction. Feeling that partner is like an alien—incomprehensible and very strange. 22. Sewing. Love is whatever you make it. 23. Theater. Love is scripted, with predictable acts, scenes, and lines. 24. Travel. Love is a journey. 25. War. Love is a series of battles in a devastating but continuing war. 26. Student-Teacher. Love is a relationship between a student and a teacher.

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and so on. The difference is that the love story point of view tries to capture the richness of the story that may lead to different structural love relations, as characterized by the variety of theories now extant. Whereas these theories propose various structures by which to view loving relationships, the emphasis in this theory is upon the content of the story. The structure is seen as the structure of stories, as discussed above. Fourth, having a particular love story can lead to certain depictions of what a loving relationship is, almost in the same way that we speak of “automatic thoughts” in cognitive therapy (e.g., Beck, 1976; Ellis, 1973). We may not even be aware that we have these views, or that they are idiosyncratic to the particular story we hold about love. Rather, we often will view them as more or less “correct” characterizations of what love is or should be, and we will view partners who fail to measure up as somehow being inadequate. Alternatively, we may view ourselves as inadequate if we cannot conform to the view we have of relationships. Thus, if someone views love as a business but cannot form a business type of relationship after several tries, he or she may view himself or herself as inadequate. Fifth, love stories have within them complementary roles, which may or may not be symmetrical. We look for someone who shares our story or who at least has a compatible story that can more or less fit with ours, but we may not always look for someone who is just like ourselves. Thus, people look for others who are, at one level, similar, but, at another level, different. From this point of view, neither similarity theory (Byrne, 1971) nor complementarity theory (Kerckhoff and Davis, 1962) is quite right with respect to love. Rather, what we seek depends on the level we are addressing. Sixth, stories have certain adaptive advantages and disadvantages. A story may be more or less adaptive to the demands of a given cultural milieu. Seventh, certain stories seem to have more potential for success than others. Some stories, for example, may run themselves out quickly, and thus lack durability over the long term, whereas others may have the potential to last a lifetime. Eighth, stories are both causes and effects: They interact with the rest of our lives. The stories we bring to relationships may cause us to behave in certain ways, and even to elicit certain behavior from others. At the same time, our own development and our interactions with others may shape and modify the stories we have, and thus bring to our relationships. Our stories are so intertwined with the rest of our lives that it would be hopeless to try to definitively ease out cause and effect. We may have multiple stories represented hierarchically, so that the stories are likely to vary in salience for us. In other words, we will prefer some

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stories over others, so that we may find partners differentially satisfying as a function of the extent to which they match our more, rather than less, salient stories. A Likert-type scale presenting items representing multiple stories allows participants to show preferences for multiple stories. Stories are probably best understood in terms of prototypical conceptions of meaning (Rosch, 1973, 1978), which have been applied to notions of love and have been shown to yield viable models of how people conceive of love (e.g., Barnes and Sternberg, 1997; Fehr, 1988; Fehr and Russell, 1991). For example, a prototypical feature of love would be intimacy. On the prototypical view, conceptions of love do not have defining features, but characteristic features that, although not necessary and sufficient, are more or less suggestive of a construct. For example, if someone has a “mystery story,” there may be no defining features that uniquely identify that story as a mystery story, but prototypical features are characteristic of mysteries (e.g., a mystery to be solved, a sleuth trying to solve the mystery, a shadowy figure draped in mystery whom the sleuth is trying to understand, information that is nonobvious and possibly deliberately hidden, and so forth). The theory of love as a story falls within a contemporary tradition of trying to understand the role of narrative in people’s lives (Bruner, 1990; Cohler, 1982; Josselson and Lieblich, 1993; McAdams, 1993; Murray and Holmes, 1994; Sarbin, 1986; Taylor, 1989). Stories are also related to other constructs that are, and have been, of interest to psychologists, such as scripts (Schank and Abelson, 1977) and schemas, both adaptive (Piaget, 1972) and maladaptive (Young and Klosko, 1993). There may be crucial differences between stories and these other constructs, however. First, scripts and their cognate constructs are defined as stereotypical action sequences, whereas stories may or may not be. Typically, stories, with their plots, themes, and well-developed characters, are substantially richer and more elaborate than scripts and related constructs. Second, scripts and related constructs are typically subsets of stories, in that they may be embedded into stories (e.g., a character visiting both a doctor’s office and a fast-food restaurant in a single story). Third, stories more typically (but not always) have underlying meanings through their themes than scripts and related constructs do. No one claims that any profound meaning underlies, say, a typical visit to a doctor’s office or a fast-food restaurant. More detail regarding differences, and the theory in general, can be found elsewhere (Sternberg, 1996, 1998b). DATA

In two validation studies (Sternberg, Hojjat, and Barnes, 2001), we sought to test some aspects of the view of love as a story. In order to em-

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pirically test some predictions of the theory of love as a story, we devised a Likert scale-based questionnaire that assesses people’s stories. We opted for such a questionnaire rather than for qualitative narratives because a scale more readily provides quantitative tests of the theory. A total of 105 individuals (fifty-five women and fifty men) from the introductory psychology participant pool at Yale University participated in the first study in exchange for course credit. Participants ranged in age from seventeen to twenty-six, with a mean age of nineteen. To participate, individuals must have been involved in a close relationship (by their own definition) either presently or in the past. Fifty percent of individuals (52) were involved in a close relationship at the time of participation. For 81 percent of participants, the total number of self-described intimate relationships in which they had been involved was less than five, for 17 percent, it was between five and ten, and for the remaining 2 percent, the number was greater than ten. Participants in the second study were eighty-six Yale University undergraduate and graduate students who formed forty-three heterosexual couples involved in close relationships and who were recruited via flyers and posters. Each couple was paid $20 for their participation. Participants ranged in age from seventeen to twenty-six years, with a mean age of twenty years. Couples were accepted for participation only if the duration of their relationship was at least one year and both members agreed to take part. All participants received a love stories scale. The items included 1. Addiction: “If my partner were to leave me, my life would be completely empty.” 2. Art: “Physical attractiveness is quite honestly the most essential characteristic that I look for in a partner.” 3. Business: “I believe close relationships are partnerships, just like most business relationships.” 4. Fantasy: “I think people owe it to themselves to wait for the partner they have always dreamed about.” 5. Game: “I view my relationships as games; the uncertainty of winning or losing is part of the excitement of the game.” 6. Garden: “I believe a good relationship is attainable only if you are willing to spend the time and energy to care for it, just as you need to care for a garden.” Participants also received other scales, such as the Triangular Love Scale. In the first study, we assessed reliability of a love stories scale and internally validated a measure of love stories, looking in two different ways (hierarchical cluster analysis and factor analysis) at representations of the la-

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tent structure that underlies love stories. In the second study, we externally validated our measure, relating scores on it to scores obtained for measures generated by other theories. We also specifically tested the prediction, consistent with similarity theories of attraction and satisfaction (e.g., Byrne, 1971), that members of couples will be more satisfied and successful in their close relationships to the extent that their profiles of stories match well. At the same time, of course, we realized that many elements besides stories enter into satisfaction (see Gottman, 1994; Sternberg and Hojjat, 1997). Stories differed widely in popularity. The most popular stories were travel, gardening, democratic government, and history (in that order). Least popular stories were horror, collectors, autocratic government, and game (in that order). There were significant sex differences favoring men for art, pornography, sacrifice, and science fiction. There was a significant difference favoring women for travel. We found that whereas all three components of the triangular theory of love (Sternberg, 1986)—intimacy, passion, and commitment—positively predicted satisfaction, those stories that showed significant correlations with satisfaction all negatively predicted the satisfaction ratings. The stories with significant negative correlations were business, collector, game, governor, governed, horror (both terrorist and victim), humor (comedian), mystery (mystery figure), police (officer), recovery (helper), science fiction, and theater (both actor and audience). It appears, therefore, that maladaptive stories in themselves can lead to dissatisfaction, but that adaptive stories do not necessarily lead to satisfaction. Similarity theory predicts that couples who are more similar will be more likely to be attracted to one another and will have a better basis for being satisfied in their close relationships. But similarity with respect to what? In the second study, we tested similarity with respect to love stories, as well as other aspects of love. In general, the results were consistent with the notion that having more similar stories (as well as more similar triangular profiles of love) is related to greater satisfaction in close relationships. In particular, there was a strong correlation (.65) between story profiles of men and women involved in close relationships, which survived even under the most conservative of circumstances (.15). Moreover, the degree of discrepancy in couples’ profiles of stories was negatively correlated with ratings of satisfaction (–.45), as predicted by the theory.

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Conclusion Love can be understood as involving triangles that characterize the structure of love. Interestingly, hate can be characterized in the same way, with related components (Sternberg, 2003). The triangles are formed from three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment. Different combinations of the three components yield different kinds of love. On an individual basis, all three components are strongly associated with happiness and satisfaction in relationships. Couples tend to be happier when the sizes (amounts of love) and shapes (types of love) of their triangles roughly correspond. Stories give rise to different kinds of triangles. At present, there are twenty-six stories in the taxonomy, although doubtless there are many more that could be added. Each story involves two roles, and the roles may or may not be symmetrical. Stories develop as an interaction between personality and experience. No stories are individually associated with happiness and satisfaction in relationships, although some are associated with dissatisfaction. Couples tend to be happier in relationships when they have roughly matching story profiles (i.e., patterns of more and less preferred stories). If we wish fully to understand love, we must understand it in all of its aspects.

Note The most recent, complete version of the Triangular Love scale can be found in Sternberg (1998a). The most recent version of the Love Stories Scale can be found in Sternberg (1998b).

References Aron, A., and Westbay, L. (1996). Dimensions of the prototype of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70 (3): 535–551. Barnes, M. L., and Sternberg, R. J. (1997). A hierarchical model of love. In R. J. Sternberg and M. Hojjat (eds.), Satisfaction in Close Relationships. New York: Guilford Press. Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. New York: International Universities Press. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Byrne, D. (1971). The Attraction Paradigm. New York: Academic Press. Cohler, B. J. (1982). Personal narrative and the life course. In P. Baltes and O. G.

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Brim, Jr. (eds.), Life Span Development and Behavior, vol. 4, pp. 205–241. New York: Academic Press. Ellis, A. (1973). Rational-emotive therapy. In R. J. Corsini (ed.), Current Psychotherapies. Itasca, Ill.: Peacock. Fehr, B. (1988). Prototype analysis of the concepts of love and commitment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 557–579. Fehr, B., and Russell, J. A. (1991). Concept of love viewed from a prototype perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 425–438. Gottman, J. (1994). Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. New York: Simon and Schuster. Hazan, C., and Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511–524. Hendrick, C., and Hendrick, S. S. (1986). A theory and method of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 392–402. Josselson, R., and Lieblich, A. (eds.). (1993). The Narrative Study of Lives. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Kerckhoff, A. C., and Davis, K. E. (1962). Value consensus and need complementarity in mate selection. American Sociological Review, 27, 295–303. Lee, J. A. (1977). A topology of styles of loving. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3, 173–182. Levinger, G., Rands, M., and Talaber, R. (1977). The Assessment of Involvement and Rewardingness in Close and Casual Pair Relationships, National Science Foundation Report DK. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. McAdams, D. P. (1993). Stories We Live By. New York: Morrow. Murray, S. L., and Holmes, J. G. (1994). Storytelling in close relationships: The construction of confidence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 650–663. Piaget, J. (1972). The Psychology of Intelligence. Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield Adams. Rosch, E. (1973). On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories. In T. E. Moore (ed.), Cognitive Development and the Acquisition of Language, pp. 111–144. New York: Academic Press. ———. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch and B. B. Lloyd (eds.), Cognition and Categorization, pp. 27–48. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Rubin, Z. (1970). Measurement of romantic love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 265–273. Sarbin, T. (ed.). (1986). Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct. New York: Praeger. Schank, R. C., and Abelson, R. A. (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Shaver, P., Hazan, C., and Bradshaw, D. (1988). Love as attachment: The integration of three behavioral systems. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 68–99. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93, 119– 135. ———. (1988a). The Triangle of Love. New York: Basic Books. ———. (1988b). Triangulating love. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 119–138. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

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———. (1994). Love is a story. The General Psychologist, 30, 1–11. ———. (1995). Love as a story. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 12, 541– 546. ———. (1996). Love stories. Personal Relationships, 3, 59–79. ———. (1997). A construct-validation of a triangular love scale. European Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 313–335. ———. (1998a). Cupid’s Arrow. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. (1998b). Love Is a Story. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. (2003). A duplex theory of hate: Development and application to terrorism, massacres, and genocide. Review of General Psychology, 7 (3): 299–328. Sternberg, R. J., and Barnes, M. L. (1985). Real and ideal others in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1586–1608. Sternberg, R. J., and Grajek, S. (1984). The nature of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 345–356. Sternberg, R. J., and Hojjat, M. (eds.). (1997). Satisfaction in Close Relationships. New York: Guilford Press. Sternberg, R. J., Hojjat, M., and Barnes, M. L. (2001). Empirical aspects of a theory of love as a story. European Journal of Personality, 15, 1–20. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Thibaut, J. W., and Kelley, H. H. (1959). The Social Psychology of Groups. New York: Wiley. Walster, E. H., and Walster, G. W. (1981). A New Look at Love, 2nd ed. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. Young, J. E., and Klosko, J. S. (1993). Reinventing Your Life. New York: Dutton.

10

Giving and Receiving Communal Responsiveness as Love margaret s. clark and joan k. monin

The term love is used in many different ways. It may refer to intense sexual feelings, to thinking about being with another person almost all the time, to motivation to be with that person, to feelings of friendship, and to selfless devotion to others. No one usage is correct. Here we explicate just one meaning of love: love as communal responsiveness in relationships, both as it is felt and enacted toward a partner and as a partner feels and enacts it toward the self. We discuss interpersonal processes that comprise and facilitate communal responsiveness and processes that detract from communal responsiveness, and what gives rise to those processes. We believe that when a relationship is characterized by mutual, consistent communal responsiveness, its members feel both loved and loving. We also discuss how the structure of a person’s entire set of communal relationships may influence feelings of love. In talking about communal responsiveness, we build both upon a long-standing program of research on communal relationships (cf. Clark and Mills, 1979, 1993; Mills and Clark, 1982) and a more recent discussion of responsiveness in relationships by Reis, Clark, and Holmes (2004).

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What Is Communal Responsiveness? The nature of communal responsiveness is, perhaps, most easily conveyed by providing concrete examples of its enactment. Consider each of the following interactions. A young child bursts into tears. He explains to his mother that a classmate teased him about his haircut. His mother hugs him and listens carefully to what he is saying. She assures him that she thinks his hair looks just fine, but takes care not to dismiss his concerns. She asks what he thinks. He says he does not like his haircut, and she responds, “If you want a new haircut, let’s go get you one.” She jokes a bit about the teaser, emphasizing that perhaps if someone attended to him, he would not be so mean. Her focus is squarely on her child’s needs for security and receipt of care. She comforts and cheers him now, and endeavors to prepare him for future resilience and compassion toward others. Imagine a different scene. A woman stands close to her husband. She unself-consciously begins to sing. Her husband smiles and starts to harmonize, singing a few lines and making up some funny lyrics. They both laugh and continue to sing. Each feels comfortable and is aware that both are enjoying the interaction. Now picture a young woman talking with her older brother. The woman says she is bored with her job and wants to return to school, get her master’s degree in biology, and teach high school biology. He’s surprised. He would love to have her current high-paying and powerful sales position. Yet he maintains a focus on her. He asks her questions about her current unhappiness and ambitions. He indicates understanding, comments that she would make a very good teacher, and helps her explore ways of completing the necessary coursework. Finally, consider a woman who, in the midst of a meeting, realizes that she has missed a lunch date with a friend. She feels awful, leaves the meeting, and calls to apologize and express her distress and guilt. Her friend is not angry. Without a trace of annoyance in her voice, that friend focuses on the transgressor’s needs, not her own, reassuring her friend that she understands how busy and stressed the woman has been. She says, “Don’t worry—we’ll get together another time.” She adds that she, herself, has made such mistakes, thus providing a comforting social comparison. She returns promptly to the transgressor’s stress, puts it in perspective, and suggests ways of coping. The transgressor feels gratitude and expresses it. The transgressor is relieved. We believe most people would judge each of these relationships as a loving one. Each involves communal responsiveness. What these situations have in

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common is that one person has exposed his or her needs or desires and, in so doing, his or her vulnerabilities. The partner, in turn, has focused squarely on the first person’s welfare and has responded in a manner that promotes that welfare. This responsiveness takes different forms, as in seeking to remediate a hurt (in the case of the child who was teased), involving the partner in enjoyable activities (in the case of the husband and wife harmonizing), supporting progress toward a partner’s goals (in the case of the brother and sister), or suppressing self-focused, angry reactions and offering assurance of continuing care (in the case of the woman whose friend missed an appointment). Moreover, the partner has done so with no strings attached. Importantly, the partner has not exploited the person’s vulnerabilities in such a manner as to hurt the person further. The mother has not asked the child, “So, what stupid thing did you do that made them tease you?” The husband has not laughed at his wife’s singing. The brother has not mocked his sister’s goals, and the friend has not responded to the woman who missed lunch with anger, rejection, and derision. The partners have been responsive with seemingly little focus on the self— even when the self was implicated. The mother did not worry that having an unpopular child would reflect poorly on her. The brother did not calculate his own costs in helping his sister explore educational opportunities. The friend did not stop talking to the woman who missed their lunch date nor demand an apology. In mutual, communally responsive relationships, partners focus on one another’s needs and welfare, attending to needs and promoting welfare. They are confident that their partner will do the same and, as a result, they feel safe, secure, and relaxed within the relationship. Such responsiveness includes providing benefits to one’s partner, both tangible and intangible, that fulfill the partner’s needs when that is necessary (taking the partner to get a desired haircut), enhance the partner’s enjoyment of life (singing along with the partner), and supporting a partner’s growth toward goals (researching a partner’s career options). Although we have not included an example to illustrate this, communal responsiveness also can be largely symbolic, as when one person writes another a supportive note, sends a card or flowers, or simply expresses affection. When a person states that he or she loves another, we think that person often means he or she is, and intends to be, very communally responsive toward the other, and has experienced and anticipates the same from the other. Stating that a loving relationship involves individuals’ communal responsiveness places the emphasis on the person who is responsive, and might be taken to imply that all one needs for a loving relationship is two people

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willing and able to be responsive to one another. However, we place at least equal emphasis on the self-generated actions of the person who is to be the recipient of responsiveness. Potential recipients of responsiveness must have faith that the other will care, and must act in accord with that faith. In terms of actions, potential recipients of responsiveness must be open about their needs, what they enjoy, what their goals are, and even what their transgressions have been (and how they feel about those transgressions), so that the partner can understand, validate, and respond communally to the person—three processes that Reis and his colleagues (Reis and Shaver, 1988; Reis and Patrick, 1996) have identified as central to establishing intimacy. They also must be willing to accept gestures of responsiveness from a partner. The child revealed that he was upset about being teased. The sister revealed her goals. The friend acknowledged her transgression and her feelings of distress and guilt. All these actions facilitated the partner’s responsiveness and, in turn, the responsiveness was accepted.

How Can One Tell if Love, as Exemplified by Communal Responsiveness, Characterizes a Relationship? Defining loving relationships as ones characterized by communal responsiveness suggests that to index the quality of a relationship, it is best to measure the presence of interpersonal processes contributing to communal responsiveness and any interpersonal processes antithetical to achieving a sense of communal responsiveness. That is, a high quality relationship should be characterized by such things as helping, involving the other in enjoyable activities, supporting the partner’s movement toward goals, free expression of emotions indicative of need states, self-disclosure of joys and woes, and a willingness both to ask for and to accept help. It ought not to be characterized by hurtful actions and, less obviously, not by independence and behaviors such as record-keeping. We firmly believe that mutual communal responsiveness leads not only to security and comfort, but also to personal growth and optimal physical and mental health (Clark and Finkel, 2005). We further think that defining a loving relationship as one that is characterized by communally responsive acts and behaviors that support such acts is superior to using other, more common methods of assessing relationship quality, such as having a person rate how satisfied he or she is with a relationship, counting the number of conflicts in a relationship, or examining whether a relationship remains stable or not. After all, people may be satisfied with a relationship just because it exceeds expectations set by past, possibly low quality, relationships, and

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ratings of satisfaction reveal nothing about why a person is satisfied or not. Assessing conflict at least gets at interpersonal processes in relationships, but conflict is not always bad. Indeed, from our perspective, when conflict consists of constructive complaints about neglected needs and is responded to with attention to those needs, conflict is a part of communal responsiveness. Finally, relationships may be stable simply because people have poor alternative options (Rusbult and Martz, 1995) or feel they must remain in a relationship because of personal or social prescriptions (Cox, Wexler, Rusbult, and Gaines, 1997) rather than because the relationship is characterized by communal responsiveness.

What Relationship Processes Characterize High Quality, Loving Relationships? Most straightforwardly, repeated, noncontingent acts of being communally responsive to one’s partner, and one’s partner being communally responsive to oneself, contribute to a sense of love, be it within a friendship, a romantic relationship, or a family relationship. The longer the time period over which this occurs, the longer it is expected to continue; and the fewer lapses there are in such behavior, the greater the sense of love ought to be. Most generally, responsiveness refers to one partner taking actions that promote the other person’s welfare (Reis et al., 2004). However, as already suggested, there are different types of responsiveness. One type occurs when a person has lost something or has experienced some harm, and aid could be used, as well as when a person provides something desirable to a person (who lacks it, whereas most others in that person’s situation have it). This is commonly called helping, and has received considerable research attention. Another type involves supporting a partner as he or she works toward a goal, short-term or long-term, shared or individual. A person may simply want to relax for an afternoon, make the Olympic trials in the marathon, lose ten pounds, or go on a dream vacation. This type of responsiveness has not received much attention from psychologists, although there are exceptions (Feeney, 2004). It may take the form of listening to the person articulate a dream, indicating understanding and acceptance, offering encouragement, stifling an urge to label the goal as crazy or unrealistic, or offering concrete help. Importantly, it may also take the form of cheering for the person as successful steps are made toward the goal and celebrating the person’s attainment of the goal (Gable, Reis, Impett, and Asher, 2004). A third type of responsiveness involves combining forces with another person to create something enjoyable and beneficial to one or both—an enjoyable conversation, a tennis game, harmonizing a song, a collaborative

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project, or a dance. A fourth category of positive responsiveness includes caring behaviors in response to a transgression by one’s partner. Assuming that one’s natural reaction in such a situation is to retaliate or express anger, merely restraining oneself from doing so must be counted as responsiveness. Forgiveness, reassurance of continuing care, and indications of understanding are responsiveness in this sense. A final, important type of responsiveness to another person is symbolic. It may occur in the absence of any clear need for support or joint participation in an activity, and consists in conveying that one really does care about the partner and will be there if needed. This can be done through words (e.g., “I love you”), physical actions (e.g., a hug), cards, and even affectionate teasing. It can be conveyed by attending a partner’s graduation ceremony, musical performance, or athletic competition, or listening to a partner practice a speech.

Why Is Responsiveness So Important? Most obviously, responsiveness provides the partner with support, goods, information, appraisals, and money that he or she can use. Less visibly, it provides the partner with an ongoing sense of security—a sense of security that allows him or her to relax, enjoy life, explore, and achieve, knowing that the self is not the only one looking out for his or her welfare. Knowing that another person is watching out for one’s welfare allows one, at least to some extent, to take the focus of attention off the self and, in particular, off protecting the self, permitting one to focus attention elsewhere, including on relationship partners (Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, and Nitzberg, 2005). At the same time, it conveys that the partner truly cares about the self. This, in turn, allows a person to feel comfortable opening up, revealing emotions, stating needs, seeking and accepting help, sharing goals, revealing creations, and engaging the other in joint activities—all things that themselves elicit further responsiveness. In the absence of evidence that the partner cares, emotions, goals, and creativity are often closely guarded, because a partner who does not care can use this information to exploit or harm a person.

The Importance of Responsiveness Being Noncontingent For responsiveness to promote a sense of security, as noted above, it is essential that it be noncontingent. In this regard, consider a target’s reaction to noncontingent responsiveness. Say, for instance, that a man states that he will be happy to have his wife’s relatives visit, with no further com-

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ment, versus agreeing to the same thing if she promises to do all the housecleaning for a month. To what will she attribute his willingness to have her family visit? In the first case, she is likely to attribute it to her spouse’s concern for her; in the second case, the thought that it is due to his concern for her will be discounted to the extent that she believes what he really wants is for her to clean the house. Now consider the same scenario from the husband’s perspective. To what will he attribute his own actions in each case? Self-perception suggests that he will see himself as caring in the former case but, perhaps, smart, manipulative, or selfish in the second case. The upshot of the former (but not the latter) offer should be a wife who feels loved and a husband who feels loving. Promoting attributions of care and nurturance constitutes one category of reasons why noncontingent responsiveness is so important, but there is another reason as well. It is that the initial impetus for noncontingent responsiveness is, naturally, the potential recipient’s needs and desires. However, the most important impetus for contingent responsiveness will often be the giver’s desire for something in return or as repayment of a perceived debt. As a result, a partner’s needs may often be neglected and a partner may receive undesired or harmful “benefits.” NONCONTINGENT ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIVENESS

Noncontingent acceptance of support also is an important quality of communal relationships. This refers, simply, to being willing to accept a partner’s acts of responsiveness without repaying and without indicating that one feels the necessity to repay or wishes he or she could repay. Gracious acceptance with no protest sends the message that one feels comfortable with the gesture, welcomes it, and desires the relationship. Insisting on repayment or displaying discomfort suggests that one might prefer that the communal relationship not exist (or that it be less strong). On the other hand, expressing gratitude or thanks is acceptable and, in our view, often important. Indeed, when the giver is uncertain of whether the responsiveness is appropriate to the communal strength of the relationship, such expressions serve the important function of indicating that the gesture was welcome. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN: ELICITING RESPONSIVENESS

Responsiveness is key to establishing a sense of love in a relationship, but for a partner to be responsive, he or she must know what to do to enhance the other’s welfare. At times it is obvious because the situation is a strong cue. If a person walking down a sidewalk has dropped a sheaf of papers and is frantically attempting to gather them, it is pretty clear some help is in order. Yet, frequently, partner needs, desires, goals, and fears are

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not obvious. Thus, for high levels of communal responsiveness to characterize a relationship (and to be felt by its inhabitants), its members must be willing to express their needs, goals, desires, and fears freely. This can be accomplished through self-disclosure.

How Much Responsiveness Is Required? How Much Need Should Be Revealed? How much responsiveness is required for people to label the relationship as one involving love? People assume differing levels of responsibility for the welfare of different partners. Clark, Mills, and their colleagues refer to the degree of responsibility assumed as the communal strength of the relationship (Mills, Clark, Ford, and Johnson, 2004). People have implicit hierarchies of communal relationships, and relationships with strangers anchor the bottom of that hierarchy. (Most people assume some minimal communal responsibility even for strangers; for example, they tell them the time with no expectation of repayment.) They typically have stronger communal relationships with acquaintances and neighbors, yet stronger communal relationships with friends (and best friends stronger still), and typically the strongest ones with children and romantic partners. People feel greater responsibility for the welfare of those higher in their hierarchies, and the needs of people higher in the hierarchy take precedence over the needs of people lower in the hierarchy. People also have implicit hierarchies of the responsibility they expect from each member of their set of communal partners, and they are more likely to self-disclose and seek help from those highest in their hierarchies. Often relationships in these two hierarchies are symmetrical, meaning that people feel about the same level of communal responsibility for the partner as they expect the partner to feel toward them. However, the communal strength of relationships may be unequal. For instance, parents typically feel far more communal responsibility for the welfare of their minor children than those children feel toward them. Returning to the question of what constitutes a loving relationship, it is our sense that the terms love and loving are used to refer to a communal relationship when that relationship surpasses some implicit threshold of communal strength. However, other factors may influence a person’s sense that a communal relationship is characterized by love, such as the length of time a particular relationship has been characterized by a high level of communal responsiveness and the length of time a high level of communal responsiveness is expected to continue. In thinking about what contributes to a sense of love, it is interesting to re-

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turn to our point that communal relationships need not be symmetrical in strength. As stated above, parents typically feel more responsibility for the welfare of their minor children than those children feel for the welfare of their parents. However, does this mean that the parents love the children more than the children love the parents? Not necessarily. The reason is straightforward. Both feeling a strong communal responsibility for another person and perceiving that another person feels a strong communal responsibility for the self contribute to a sense of love (whether the relationship is symmetrical or not). Hence, even when a relationship is characterized by asymmetrical communal strength, it need not be characterized by asymmetry in the amount of love the participants feel for one another (although it may be). Just what those thresholds of communal strength—length of past, expected communal strength, and relative positions in hierarchies—must be for the term love to be used, undoubtedly differs between people. Just how it differs is likely based on their own past experiences and the resulting comparison levels they set for responsiveness expected in relationships.

The Importance of Certainty Communal relationships differ not only in strength and in placement within a person’s hierarchy of other communal relationships, they also differ in felt certainty about the communal nature of the relationship (Mills and Clark, 1982). We can be absolutely sure about the level of communal strength of a given relationship, somewhat uncertain, or very uncertain. Many factors drive certainty. An obvious one is the length of time a communal relationship has existed. All else being equal, the longer a communal relationship has existed, the more certainty should exist. A person’s history in other communal relationships may well influence his or her certainty about the strength of a present one. A history of failed communal expectations may well carry over and influence one’s certainty about a current relationship. Variability over time in a partner’s responsiveness is also a factor, with greater variability creating more uncertainty. Finally, the extent to which a partner has sacrificed his or her own self-interest to be responsive ought to increase certainty (Holmes and Rempel, 1989). Uncertainty of the communal strength of relationships should undermine the sense that the relationship is characterized by love.1 1. Interestingly, others have defined love as involving arousal plus a label (e.g., Dutton and Aron, 1974; Berscheid and Walster, 1974). Uncertainty and variability may be associated with greater anxiety and arousal that may contribute to a sense of love defined in this manner, but not to a sense of love as discussed in this chapter.

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Placement of the Self in One’s Communal Hierarchy People are not responsive only to partners’ needs; they also feel responsible for their own needs. They place themselves in their own hierarchy of communal relationships, most times at or near the top because most people feel tremendous levels of responsibility for the self. We believe that placement of the self in the hierarchy has implications for the sense of love that the self feels for a partner as well as for the sense of love that the partner feels for the self. In particular, if the self is placed at the very pinnacle of the person’s hierarchy, and especially if the self is placed far above the partner, then even the strongest communal partner’s needs will never take precedence over the needs of the self. Sacrifices will not be made for the partner, and it is less likely that the self will forgive the partner for transgressions against the self. Whereas the self can feel some sense of love and caring in such relationships and the partner can feel some sense of being loved, the very fact that the self’s welfare always takes precedence over that of the partner should serve as a fairly strong signal to both parties that the love is not exceptionally strong. Such placement of the self above all others is a factor that may strongly undermine felt love. If the self is placed either at the same level as the partner (as many spouses may do) or at a level lower than the partner (as mothers may often do with regard to relationships with a child), the story is very different. In such cases, sacrifices will be made, the needs of the partner will sometimes (given equal strength) or often (if the self is placed below the partner) take precedence over the needs of self, forgiveness will take place regularly, and so on. The few relationships a person has that fit this category are often considered the most loving relationships. The placement of self relative to a partner is, we believe, a potent determinant of this.2 This is precisely why, we believe, sacrificing self-interest to be responsive to a partner promotes certainty about the communal nature of the relationship (Holmes and Rempel, 1989).

2. An important caveat is that some people are high in a trait known as unmitigated communion (Helgeson and Fritz, 1998). They place the needs of a partner above their own needs, neglect their own needs, and fail to alert a partner to their own needs. It is our belief that this trait may arise from a person’s having low self-esteem, feeling unworthy of care, and/or having a great desire to win others over and to please them. This is not a trait that contributes to optimal communal responsiveness nor to mutual feelings of love.

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Numbers of Communal Relationships at Various Levels Reis et al. (2004) suggested that communal relationships are typically arranged in terms of a hierarchy of communal strength and also that, when arranged in such hierarchies, they tend to form triangles with many very low strength communal relationships at the base, fewer in the middle, and a very few, very high strength relationships at the top. The numbers of people tied in communal strength at various levels within a person’s (generally roughly) triangular set of communal relationships may influence a person’s sense of the relationship. Being one of many people at a particular communal strength may create a different sense than being the only person or one of a very few people at that level. If one is uniquely high in another person’s hierarchy of relationships, one may feel especially loved. Suddenly having to share a spot in another’s hierarchy (e.g., a child who has just acquired a sibling) may cause one to question the other’s love. WHAT IS IDEAL AND WHAT IS REAL?

The amount of communal responsibility a person ideally assumes for another person and the amount enacted toward that person can differ. Moreover, the amount of communal responsibility a person ideally expects from another person and the amount received can differ. In assessing what produces a sense of love, we believe that actual responsiveness is most important. However, we also believe that the level of responsiveness a person knows he or she ideally wishes to express contributes to feeling loving, and the responsiveness a person expects from a partner contributes to feeling loved.

The Importance of Individual Differences in Tending to Perceive That Others Will Be Communally Responsive Thus far we have discussed a loving relationship as being one that is objectively characterized by communal responsiveness. Of course there is variability between individuals in their general, chronic tendencies to be communally responsive (or to behave in such a way as to elicit communal responsiveness), and variability between individuals in their tendencies to perceive that others are communally responsive to them (given the same objective circumstances). Indeed, such differences have become the topic of much interest within psychology. We do not wish to dwell extensively on these differences. We would simply note that the social and developmental psychology literature provides ample

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evidence that such differences are important both to (a) whether or not any particular relationship will be characterized by communal responsiveness and to (b) holding communal responsiveness constant; that is, to whether members of a relationship will perceive a particular relationship to be communally responsive. Many (conceptually overlapping) traits are relevant in this regard (Reis et al., 2004). They include communal orientation (Clark et al., 1987), selfesteem (Leary and Baumeister, 2000; Leary, Haupt, Strausser, and Chokel, 1998; Murray et al., 1998; Murray, Bellavia, Rose, and Griffin, 2003), rejection sensitivity (Downey and Feldman, 1996), and attachment styles (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall, 1978; Bowlby, 1982; Hazan, and Shaver, 1987; Shaver, Hazan, and Bradshaw, 1988). People who are high in communal orientation, high in self-esteem, low in rejection sensitivity, and secure in attachment styles undoubtedly are more likely, on average, to be communally responsive to their partners in any given relationship (Simpson, Rholes, and Nelligan, 1992; Clark et al., 1987), to reveal vulnerabilities, to ask for help from partners (Simpson et al., 1992), and to perceive their partners as communally responsive, especially in ambiguous situations (Collins and Feeney, 2004; Downey and Feldman, 1996). They also are less likely to be threatened by negative information about their partner, and less likely to withdraw from dependency on their partner in the face of any sign of rejection (Murray et al., 2003). Indeed, people who are generally confident in their partners’ positive regard even find positives in their partners’ faults (Murray and Holmes, 1993, 1999). Thus, we think it is safe to say that people high in communal orientation and high in self-esteem, and those secure in attachment styles and low in rejection sensitivity will be more likely than others to experience their close relationships as communally responsive and loving.

What Promotes Communal Responsiveness? What encourages communally responsive acts? Are there processes that support communal responsiveness and contribute to an overall sense of loving and being loved? We do not believe that much of the difference in people’s success in pulling off communally responsive relationships is due to variability in their basic knowledge of basic communal norms. Our culture teaches virtually all of us how to behave communally in such relationships. If explicitly asked, most people would readily agree that helping, providing support toward goals, including partners in enjoyable activities, readily forgiving partners, and conveying care through words and symbolic actions are

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all terrific for purposes of establishing good personal relationships. Indeed, most people are quite adept at immediately behaving communally when they desire a new friendship or romantic relationship (Berg and Clark, 1986; Clark and Mills, 1979; Clark and Waddell, 1985; Clark, Ouellette, Powell, and Milberg, 1987; Clark, et al., 1986; Clark, et al., 1989; Williamson and Clark, 1989). TRUST IS CENTRAL

What matter far more to being able to form, deepen, and, especially, to maintain communal relationships in the face of challenges, are (a) trusting that a particular partner truly cares about one’s welfare and, simultaneously, will not exploit or hurt one, as well as (b) trusting that a partner desires to be a recipient of one’s care and will accept such care, along with a mutual communal relationship. The former type of trust affords one the courage to reveal needs and seek support; the latter type of trust affords one the courage to offer support. Trust in a particular partner within a specific relationship is what is crucial to a loving relationship. Such trust is primarily built up by having an actual partner who is truly responsive to one’s welfare even in the face of his or her conflicting self-interests (Holmes and Rempel, 1989; Holmes, 2002). Of course, the propensity to trust is the central part of the individual differences that were just discussed as relevant to communal responsiveness. Yet the trust that inheres in a particular partner within a particular relationship remains important to achieving a sense of love. No matter how generally secure and trusting a person is, that person does not experience love until the trust is manifested within a particular relationship.

The Nature of a Person’s Wider Network of Communal Relationships Beyond trust in a particular partner, the nature of a person’s wider network of communal relationships may influence that person’s willingness to risk revealing vulnerabilities (and perhaps eliciting care) in new relationships or in relationships with potential to grow in communal strength. Although rarely discussed, having faith and trust in one or more communal partner(s) may well afford a person the fortitude to attempt developing other communal relationships, if additional communal relationships are desired. After all, if the new relationship does not take, there are others on whom to rely, and the self can still be seen as a good and competent communal relationship partner. At the same time, having existing strong communal

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partners may inhibit the development of new partnerships and deepening of existing ones, if the person feels a sufficient number exist, needs are being met, and resources for caring for others are limited.

To What Relationship- and Love-Enhancing Processes Does Trust Give Rise? It is our sense that trust that a particular partner truly cares for one gives rise to a host of processes, which promote the formation, maintenance, and strengthening of communal relationships. It is, perhaps, easiest to understand how trust in a partner’s care facilitates behaviors that elicit support, such as revealing one’s own vulnerabilities; self-disclosing needs, goals and desires; expressing emotions (Clark et al., 2004; Clark and Finkel, 2005); and issuing straightforward requests for help. Trust is necessary to engaging in these behaviors because the other can turn one down (thereby hurting one’s feelings and/or embarrassing one) or even exploit one’s revealed vulnerabilities. Trust is also crucial to noncontingently accepting benefits from partners, since one is signaling a willingness to be dependent on the other by so doing. Trust is also integral to the process of noncontingently providing support. People like partners more when those partners do not repay them for benefits received and do not ask for repayment of benefits given (Clark and Mills, 1979). In a diary study involving married couples and benefits given day to day, both husbands and wives reported experiencing more positive emotions after having given a benefit for communal (noncontingent) reasons and after having received a benefit on a communal, noncontingent basis than after having given or received benefits on a contingent basis (Clark, Graham, Lemay, Pataki, and Finkel, 2006). Yet, when one does care noncontingently, one is doing so with no guarantee that the person will welcome the support and no guarantee (in relationships that one hopes will be mutual) that the other will be similarly responsive to the self. Trust, we believe, provides the courage to believe that responsiveness will be welcome, and the reassurance that the other will be responsive to the self if and when such responsiveness is needed. Lack of trust, we believe, pushes one to use exchange norms that involve insisting on guarantees and that the self will be compensated for support given, and that, perhaps less obviously, provide a “cover” for the self in case one’s efforts to be responsive are declined. That is, one can think to oneself, and even say to the other, that one was really seeking something for the self, not indicating a desire for a communal relationship with the other. Preliminary evidence that a lack of trust in others does promote the

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use of exchange rules is emerging from an ongoing longitudinal study of marriages in which avoidant (but not secure) individuals show rises in use of exchange behaviors over the course of their marriages, in the face of mildly declining communal responsiveness on the part of their spouses (Clark, 2005). Trust also appears to give rise to a host of other interpersonal processes that do not directly involve providing or receiving support, but do support a more macrolevel process of becoming increasingly dependent upon one’s partner. This point has been made clearly by Murray, Holmes, and their colleagues in talking about dependency regulation (Murray, Holmes, and Griffin, 2000). They suggest that having faith that one’s partner regards one positively (and, we would say, more specifically, having trust that the partner is likely to care about one’s welfare) allows one to “take a leap of faith” and to hold positive illusions about that partner. The illusions they study consist largely in viewing partners as having traits, such as kindness, which should allow people both to risk revealing vulnerabilities and to believe that their own communal gestures will be accepted. This, we suspect, increases a person’s communal responsiveness, which in turn should encourage the partner to live up to those norms. This may be exactly why Murray, Holmes, and Griffin (1996) observe that people do tend to live up to the illusions partners have of them. Other processes to which trust may give rise, and that may also foster maintaining or increasing dependence on one’s partner, include making benign attributions for a partner’s less than perfect behavior (Fincham, 2001), being accommodating (Rusbult, Verette, Whitney, Slovik, and Lipkus, 1991; Wieselquist, Rusbult, Foster, and Agnew, 1999), and seeing one’s partner as being superior to alternative partners (Rusbult, Van Lange, Wildschut, Yovetich, and Verette, 2000).

How Might a Lack of Trust Detract from Communal Responsiveness? We view low trust in others’ care as the primary factor that interferes with the development of ongoing communal responsiveness and love in a relationship. Mistrust heightens a person’s focus on self-protection, which, in turn, typically (a) moves the self above the partner, sometimes far above the partner, in a person’s hierarchy of communal relationships; (b) makes a person very reticent to reveal vulnerabilities; and (c) heightens a person’s reluctance to be noncontingently responsive to the other, lest the other reject communal overtures (which would hurt) or not respond to the person’s own needs (in mutual communal relationships) when needs arise. The ultimate

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fallout is independence from others at best, and conflict, suspicion, tendencies to interpret partner behaviors in negative, defensive ways (Collins, 1996; Collins and Allard, 2001), and outright negative interactions at worst. We have recently studied two additional processes that, we believe, arise from a relative lack of trust in others’ care and a resultant felt need to protect the self: active use of contingent—what Clark and Mills (1979; Mills and Clark, 1982) called exchange—rules within close relationships, and a tendency to functionally segregate positive and negative information about partners in memory. Consider following contingent norms for giving and accepting benefits first. Doing so is certainly “fair” and, indeed, has been advocated as a positive technique for maintaining the quality of relationships (Walster, Walster, and Berscheid, 1978). Yet, as we have already noted, following contingent norms undermines both the giver’s sense of being nurturing and the recipient’s sense of being the object of care. It also results in responsiveness being dictated as much or more by the provider’s needs than by the potential recipient’s needs, desires, or goals. Early evidence that people do prefer noncontingent to contingent rules for giving benefits in close relationships came in the form of people who had been led to desire a communal relationship liking their partners less when those partners appeared to follow exchange norms by repaying them for benefits received or asking for repayments for benefits given (Clark and Mills, 1979; Clark and Waddell, 1985), as well as avoiding keeping track of benefits when a communal relationship was desired (Clark, 1984; Clark, Mills, and Corcoran, 1989). More recent evidence comes from studies of ongoing marriages, which show that although almost all couples start out with the view that communal norms are ideal for their relationships (Grote and Clark, 1998; Clark, 2005), and with efforts to be communally responsive, stressful times can cause members to begin calculating fairness, which, in turn, increases conflict (Grote and Clark, 2001) and appears to be associated with both low trust and decreased marital satisfaction (Clark, 2005). Yet another process to which low faith in others appears to give rise is thinking of partners as “all positive” or “all negative” at a single point in time (Graham and Clark, 2006). Graham and Clark (2006) reasoned that whereas all people feel a need to belong (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), those low in trust that others will care for them (as indexed by low self-esteem or anxious attachment) find approaching a less than seemingly perfect other very difficult. Hence, in times of low threat, they tend to defensively see others as perfect, which allows them both to approach and interact with such people and to feel that partners will reflect positively upon them. However, once they detect a fault in others, they quickly conjure up all other

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faults, which provide an excuse to avoid depending upon the person and to avoid being embarrassed by him or her. The result, Graham and Clark claim, and for which they provide evidence, is a tendency to think of partners as “all good” or “all bad” at a given point in time, a tendency that does not characterize people high in self-esteem (and trust of others), who appear to view partners in more realistic and stable ways. Although the evidence is not yet in, our sense is that a tendency to segregate a partner’s positive and negative attributes instead of integrating them will detract from communal responsiveness in a number of ways. First, a balanced sense of a partner’s strengths and weaknesses ought to support both being optimally communally responsive to that person and optimal seeking of support from that partner. For instance, if one knows that one’s partner has great mathematical skills and also is forgetful, one can both recommend that he or she apply for a desirable job requiring those skills and remind him or her of the deadline for applications; and if one needs some tutoring in math for a course one is taking, one can both ask for that help and call to remind him or her of when the help is needed. Beyond this, having a balanced view ought to allow for a steadiness in views of and communal responsiveness toward the partner across time and events (Clark and Graham, 2006; Wortman, 2005) that should, as noted above, increase trust and felt love. All-positive and all-negative views of partners, in contrast, ought to lead, respectively, to expecting too much from partners and believing they need little support (when views are positive) and avoiding supporting or relying on partners (when views are negative).

Summary and Conclusions To summarize, we believe repeated and consistent giving and receipt of communal responsiveness results in experiencing relationships as loving ones. In mutual communal relationships, such responsiveness is dependent upon each member’s trusting that the other cares and will accept care. Beyond this, sensing where one is in a partner’s hierarchy of other communal relationships and where one places one’s partner in one’s own hierarchy can have an impact on felt love with higher placements, particularly relative to the partner, thus enhancing felt love. Trust gives rise to a wide variety of interpersonal processes, including actual acts of communal responsiveness (indicating understanding, validation, and noncontingent helping; including the other in joint activities; supporting; signaling felt care) and acts that often directly elicit receipt of felt care (expressing emotion, self-disclosure, asking for support). Less obviously, trust encourages processes—such as viewing

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one’s partner in a very positive light and more positively than alternatives, making benign attributions for partner misdeeds, accommodation, and forgiveness—that permit a person to remain comfortably within the relationship and to continue acting in communally responsive ways. Low trust, in contrast, discourages communal responsiveness and revealing information about the self that may elicit communal responsiveness from others. Instead, it gives rise to behaviors, some of which, on the surface, may seem okay (and even admirable) but which, simultaneously, undermine communal responsiveness. Such behaviors include relying on the self even when receipt of support might be very useful, suppressing emotions, giving and accepting benefits only on a contingent basis, and behaving in a wide variety of defensive ways that may lead to harmful chronic ways of thinking about partners, such as segregating positive and negative thoughts about partners. Behaviors that are chronically associated with high rather than low communal responsiveness will come to elicit high rather than low feelings of love. We do not claim that communal responsiveness and the interpersonal processes with which it is associated are the only ways in which love can be productively defined. However, we do think the term is often used to refer to a relationship characterized by chronic communal responsiveness and comfort, and the security and warm feelings that accompany it. Communal responsiveness is also, we firmly believe, the most important factor contributing to the now well-documented fact that having close, loving, relationships is tremendously beneficial to one’s mental and physical health (Clark and Finkel, 2004).

Acknowledgment Preparation of this chapter was supported by National Science Foundation grant BNS 9983417. The ideas and opinions expressed in the chapter are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.

References Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., and Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Baumeister, R. F., and Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529. Berg, J., and Clark, M. S. (1986). Differences in social exchange between intimate and other relationships: Gradually evolving or quickly apparent? In V. Derlega and B.

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Winstead (eds.), Friendship and Social Interaction, pp. 101–128. New York: Springer-Verlag. Berscheid, E., and Walster, E. (1974). A little bit of love. In T. L. Huston (ed.), Foundations of Interpersonal Attraction, pp. 36–379. New York: Academic Press. Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and Loss, vol. 2, Separation: Anxiety and Anger. New York: Basic Books. ———. (1980). Attachment and Loss, vol. 3, Sadness and Depression. New York: Basic Books. ———. (1982). Attachment and Loss, vol. 1, Attachment, 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books. Clark, M. S. (1984). Record keeping in two types of relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 549–557. ———. (February, August 2005). Healthy and unhealthy interpersonal processes in (strong) communal relationships. Presidential address presented at the meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, New Orleans (February) and at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C. (August). Clark, M. S., and Finkel, E. J. (2004). Does expressing emotion promote well-being? It depends on relationship context. In. L. Z. Tiedens & C. Leach (eds.) The Social Life of Emotions, pp. 105–126. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. (2005). Willingness to express emotion: The impact of relationship type, communal orientation and their interaction. Personality Relationships, 12, 169–180. Clark, M. S., Fitness, J., and Brissette, I. (2004). Understanding people’s perceptions of relationships is crucial to understanding their emotional lives. In M. B. Brewer and M. Hewstone (eds.), Emotion and Motivation, pp. 21–46. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Clark, M. S., and Graham, S. M. (2004). Expressing emotion facilitates partner responsiveness, relationship maintenance, and relationship formation. Unpublished manuscript. Clark, M. S., Graham, S. M., Lemay, E., Pataki, S., and Finkel, E. (2006). Giving and receiving benefits in marriage: The thought counts and it is good to give and receive benefits. Unpublished manuscript. Clark, M. S., and Mills, J. (1979). Interpersonal attraction in exchange and communal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 12–24. ———. (1993). The difference between communal and exchange relationships: What it is and is not. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 684–691. Clark, M. S., Mills, J., and Corcoran, D. M. (1989). Keeping track of needs and inputs of friends and strangers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 533–542. Clark, M. S., Mills, J., and Powell, M. C. (1986). Keeping track of needs in communal and exchange relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 333– 338. Clark, M. S., Ouellette, R., Powell, M., and Milberg, S. (1987). Recipient’s mood, relationship type, and helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 94– 103. Clark, M. S., and Taraban, C. (1991). Reactions to and willingness to express emotion

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in communal and exchange relationships. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 324–336. Clark, M. S., and Waddell, B. (1985). Perceptions of exploitation in communal and exchange relationships. Personal and Social Relationships, 2, 403–418. Collins, N. (1996). Working models of attachment: Implications for explanation, emotion, and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 810–832. Collins, N. L., and Allard, L. M. (2001). Cognitive representations of attachment: The content and function of working models. In G. J. O. Fletcher and M. S. Clark (eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes, pp. 60–85. Oxford: Blackwell. Collins, N. L., and Feeney, B. C. (2004). Working models of attachment shape perceptions of social support: Evidence from experimental and observational studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87 (3): 363–383. Cox, C. L., Wexler, M. O., Rusbult, C. E., and Gaines, S. O. (1997). Prescriptive support and commitment processes in close relationships. Social Psychology Quarterly, 60, 79–90. Downey, G., and Feldman, S. I. (1996). Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1327–1341. Dutton, D. G., and Aron, A. P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 510–517. Feeney, B. (2004). A secure base: Responsive support of goal strivings and exploration in adult intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 631–648. Fincham, F. D. (2001). Attributions in close relationships: From Balkanization to integration. In G. J. O. Fletcher and M. S. Clark (eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes, pp. 3–31. Oxford: Blackwell. Gable, S. L., Reis, H. T., Impett, E. A., and Asher, E. R. (2004). What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 228–245. Graham, S. M., and Clark, M. S. (2006). The Jekyll-and-Hyding of relationship partners. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Grote, N. K., and Clark, M. S. (1998). Distributive justice norms and family work: What is perceived as ideal, what is applied and what predicts perceived fairness? Social Justice Research, 11, 243–269. ———. (2001). Perceiving unfairness in the family: Cause or consequence of marital distress? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 281–293. Grote, N. K., Naylor, K. E., and Clark, M. S. (2002). Perceiving the division of family work to be unfair: Do social comparisons, enjoyment, and competence matter? Journal of Family Psychology, 16, 510–522. Hazan, C., and Shaver, P. (1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511–524. Helgeson, V. S., and Fritz, H. L. (1998). A theory of unmitigated communion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 173–183.

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Holmes, J. G. (2002). Interpersonal expectations as the building blocks of social cognition: An interdependence theory perspective. Personal Relationships, 9, 1–26. Holmes, J. G., and Rempel, J. K. (1989). Trust in close relationships. In C. Hendrick (ed.), Close Relationships: A Sourcebook, pp. 187–220. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Leary, M. R., and Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. In M. P. Zanna (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 32, pp. 1–62. San Diego: Academic Press. Leary, M. R., Haupt, A. L., Strausser, K., and Chokel, J. T. (1998). Calibrating the sociometer: The relationship between interpersonal appraisals and the state of selfesteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1290–1299. Mikulincer, M., Shaver, P. R., Gillath, O., and Nitzberg, R. A. (2005). Attachment, caregiving, and altruism: Boosting attachment security increases compassion and helping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 817–839. Mills, J., and Clark, M. S. (1982). Communal and exchange relationships. In L. Wheeler (ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 3, pp. 121–144. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. Mills, J., Clark, M. S., Ford, T. E., and Johnson, M. (2004). Measurement of communal strength. Personal Relationships, 11, 213–230. Murray, S. L., Bellavia, G., Rose, P., and Griffin, D. (2003). Once hurt, twice hurtful: How perceived regard regulates daily marital interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 126–147. Murray, S. L., and Holmes, J. G. (1993). Seeing virtues in faults: Negativity and the transformation of interpersonal narratives in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 707–722. ———. (1997). A leap of faith? Positive illusions in romantic relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 586–604. ———. (1999). The (mental) ties that bind: Cognitive structures that predict relationship resilience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 707–722. Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., and Griffin, D. W. (1996). The self-fulfilling nature of positive illusions in romantic relationships: Love is not blind, but prescient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1155–1180. ———. (2000). Self-esteem and the quest for felt-security: How perceived regard regulates attachment processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 478– 498. Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., MacDonald, G., and Ellsworth, P. (1998). Through the looking glass darkly? When self-doubts turn into relationship insecurities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1459–1480. Reis, H. T., Clark, M. S., and Holmes, J. G. (2004). Perceived partner responsiveness as an organizing construct in the study of intimacy and closeness. In D. J. Mashek and P. Aron (eds.), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy, pp. 201–225. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum. Reis, H. T., and Patrick, B. C. (1996). Attachment and intimacy: Component processes. In E.T. Higgins and A.W. Kruglanski (eds.), Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, pp. 523–563. New York: Guilford Press.

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Reis, H. T., and Shaver, P. (1988). Intimacy as an interpersonal process. In S. Duck (ed.), Handbook of Personal Relationships: Theory, Relationships, and Interventions, pp. 367–389. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley. Rempel, J. K., Holmes, J. G., and Zanna, M. P. (1985). Trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 95–112. Rusbult, C. E., and Martz, J. M. (1995). Remaining in an abusive relationship: An investment model analysis of nonvoluntary commitment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 558–571. Rusbult, C. E., Van Lange, P. A. M., Wildschut, T., Yovetich, N. A., and Verette, J. (2000). Perceived superiority in close relationships: Why it exists and persists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 521–545. Rusbult, C. E., Verette, J., Whitney, G. A., Slovik, L. R., and Lipkus, I. (1991). Accommodation processes in close relationships: Theory and preliminary empirical evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 53–78. Shaver, P. R., and Hazan, C. (1993). Adult romantic attachment: Theory and evidence. In D. Perlman and W. Jones (eds.), Advances in Personal Relationships, vol. 4, pp. 29–70. London: Jessica Kingsley. Shaver, P., Hazan, C., and Bradshaw, D. (1988). Love as attachment. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 68–99. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Simpson, J. A., Rholes, W. S., and Nelligan, J. S. (1992). Support seeking and support giving within couples in an anxiety-provoking situation: The role of attachment styles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 434–446. Sprecher, S. (2001). Equity and social exchange in dating couples: Associations with satisfaction, commitment, and stability. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 63, 599–613. Walster, E., Walster, G. W., and Berscheid, E. (1978). Equity: Theory and Research. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Wieselquist, J., Rusbult, C. E., Foster, C. A., and Agnew, C. R. (1999). Commitment, pro-relationship behavior, and trust in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 942–966. Williamson, G., and Clark, M. S. (1989). Providing help and desired relationship type as determinants of changes in moods and self-evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 722–734. Wortman, J. (2005). Mood and perceptions of siblings among those high and low in self-esteem. Senior honors thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa.

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A Prototype Approach to Studying Love beverley fehr

What is love? This fundamental question, posed by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, is one that has captured the imagination of social scientists. However, in contrast to Shakespeare and the philosophers, poets, and writers before him, social scientists’ interest in love is a relatively recent phenomenon. The study of love did not receive serious attention from social psychologists until the 1970s, when scholars such as Rubin (1970) and Berscheid and Hatfield (1974) began to focus on this topic. Their conceptualizations and empirical investigations, particularly Berscheid and Hatfield’s (1974) and Hatfield and Walster’s (1978) distinction between companionate love and passionate love, inspired others to develop and test theories and models of love (e.g., Hazan and Shaver, 1987; C. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986; Sternberg, 1986, 1988). This period of conceptual development produced a substantial literature on experts’ theories of love (see Fehr, 2001; S. S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2000, for reviews). Thus, by now, much is known about how social scientists think about love. In contrast, much less is known about how ordinary people conceptualize love. The purpose of this chapter is to review and synthesize research on lay conceptions of love, analyzed from a prototype perspective. First, I shall address the basic question: What is love? Experts’ answers to this question are presented, followed by the answers of ordinary people. I then consider whether there are cultural

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and individual differences in lay conceptions of love. Next, I discuss the role of lay conceptions in the construction of measurement instruments. In the final section, the relationship implications of conceptions of love are explored.

What Is Love? EXPERTS’ ANSWERS

A major development in the study of love was Rubin’s (1970, 1973) groundbreaking analysis of love and the related construct of liking. Rubin defined love as an attitude that predisposes one to think, feel, and act in particular ways toward the love object. Further, he delineated three components of love: intimacy, need/attachment, and caring. Subsequent research has shown that people consider caring to be more indicative of love than need/attachment (Steck, Levitan, McLane, and Kelley, 1982). The next influential development was Berscheid and Hatfield’s (1974) model of love. They argued that love is not a single entity, but is best conceptualized in terms of two basic kinds: companionate love and passionate love. Companionate love is defined as “friendly affection and deep attachment to someone” (Hatfield and Walster, 1978, p. 2). This kind of love is characterized by caring, trust, honesty, respect, and the like (Brehm, 1992). It can be experienced for a number of significant people in one’s life (e.g., close friends, family members, romantic partners). Passionate love, in contrast, is defined as “a state of intense longing for union with another” (Hatfield and Walster, 1978, p. 9). This kind of love is characterized by emotional extremes, physiological arousal, and sexual attraction. Passionate love typically has only one, rather than multiple, targets. Subsequent theoretical developments included C. Hendrick and Hendrick’s (1986) and Lee’s (1973) typology of six different love styles: agape (altruistic, selfless love), storge (friendship-based love), ludus (game-playing love), mania (obsessive, dependent love), pragma (practical love), and eros (romantic, passionate love). Eros, ludus, and storge are considered to be the primary colors of love; mania, agape, and pragma are secondary. Another major contribution was Sternberg’s (1986) triangular theory of love. He conceptualized love as a triangle, with passion, intimacy, and decision/commitment as the vertices. The various combinations of these elements produce eight different kinds of love. For example, companionate love is composed of intimacy plus decision/commitment. Finally, Hazan and Shaver (1987) conceptualized love as attachment and argued that the three major attachment styles displayed in infancy (secure, anxious/ambivalent, and avoidant)

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are evident in people’s patterns of relating to an adult romantic partner. This approach to love has spawned literally thousands of studies on the link between attachment (now generally conceptualized in terms of the two underlying dimensions of anxiety and avoidance) and a large range of relationship phenomena, including love (see Mikulincer and Shaver, 2003, for a review). An attempt to integrate these various experts’ models of love was made by C. Hendrick and Hendrick (1989), who factor-analyzed measures of the components of these models of love. A number of passion scales, such as Hatfield and Sprecher’s (1986) Passionate Love Scale, loaded on the first factor, suggesting that passion is a major dimension of love. The second factor appeared to be a companionate love factor, although it was not as clearly defined as the first. Sternberg’s intimacy scale loaded positively on this factor; the ludus (game-playing) love style scale loaded negatively. Based on this study and other kinds of evidence, it has been argued that the major theories of love can be summarized in terms of the companionate-passionate distinction originally proposed by Berscheid and Hatfield (see Fehr, 2001). ORDINARY PEOPLE’S ANSWERS

The fact that experts have generated numerous definitions of love, rather than a single, agreed-upon definition, suggests that love may not be a classically defined concept. According to Rosch (1973a, 1973b), many natural language concepts are not amenable to classical definition (i.e., defined in terms of necessary and sufficient criterial features). Rather, such concepts are organized around their clearest cases, or best examples, which Rosch referred to as prototypes. Further, Rosch argued that members of a category can be ordered in terms of their degree of resemblance to the prototypical cases, with members shading gradually into nonmembers. Boundaries between categories therefore are blurry and ill-defined, rather than precise and clear-cut, as the classical view would have it. Rosch (see Mervis and Rosch, 1981, for a review) substantiated her claims with numerous experiments demonstrating that natural language concepts such as fruit, vegetable, and furniture are structured as prototypes, such that some instances of the concept are considered more prototypical than others. Moreover, she showed that this internal structure affects the cognitive processing of category-relevant information. For example, in a reaction time study, the category membership of prototypical instances was confirmed more quickly than that of nonprototypical instances (e.g., robins were verified as a kind of bird more quickly than were chickens; Rosch, 1973b). Might more abstract concepts such as love also be represented as proto-

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types in cognitive representation? Certainly, the failure of experts to reach consensus on a definition of love is consistent with this possibility. In a series of studies, I (Fehr, 1988) explored the hypothesis that the concept of love is more amenable to a prototype than to a classical conceptualization. I began by asking laypeople (university students) to list features or attributes of the concept of love. Features such as honesty, trust, and caring were listed frequently. Features such as dependency, sexual passion, and physical attraction were listed relatively infrequently. In all, there were sixty-eight features listed by more than one participant, suggesting that laypeople have rich, complex knowledge of this concept. Moreover, as these examples suggest, the lay conception of love seems to encompass both companionate love and passionate love. A different group of participants then rated these features in terms of prototypicality (goodness-of-example). This study revealed that features such as trust, caring, and intimacy were considered central to love, whereas sexual passion, gazing at the other, and heart rate increases were considered peripheral. Put another way, laypeople regarded features portraying companionate love as the essence of love; features depicting passionate love were considered nonprototypical of the concept. (Interestingly, these findings contradicted the stereotype that university students define love in terms of passion and romance.) This prototype structure was confirmed using a variety of methodologies. In one study, prototypical features of love were found to be more salient in memory than were nonprototypical features (Fehr, 1988, study 3). For example, participants tended to erroneously report having seen prototypical features that, in fact, had not been presented. Such false positives were less likely to occur for nonprototypical features. The prototype structure of love also was reflected in natural language use, such that it sounded awkward to insert hedges in sentences containing central, but not peripheral, features (e.g., “Pat sort of trusts Chris” sounded peculiar, whereas “Pat sort of admires Chris” was rated as more natural-sounding; Fehr, 1988, study 4). The convergence of findings across studies supported the conclusion that the concept of love is better thought of as a prototype than a classically defined concept. In subsequent research (Fehr and Russell, 1991), the focus shifted to types or kinds of love, rather than features. Based on prototype theory, it was hypothesized that some types of love would be considered more prototypical than others, in the same way that some kinds of fruit (e.g., apples) are more prototypical than others (e.g., avocados; Rosch, 1973a, 1973b). This hypothesis received support in a series of studies (Fehr and Russell, 1991). For example, we found that familial kinds of love and friendship love were con-

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sidered prototypical; romantic love, passionate love, and sexual love were considered nonprototypical. This internal structure was corroborated using a variety of different methods. For example, in a reaction time study, participants were faster to verify that maternal love is a kind of love than that sexual love is a kind of love. Participants also tended to agree that the prototypical instances were, in fact, kinds of love, but disagreed on whether the nonprototypical instances belonged. Overall, the findings converged with those found in the analysis of features of love; namely, that companionate kinds of love were considered central to the concept, whereas passionate kinds of love were considered peripheral.

Cultural and Individual Differences in Conceptions of Love The initial studies of lay conceptions of love were conducted at the University of British Columbia (Fehr, 1988; Fehr and Russell, 1991). It was possible that the prototype of love that had been uncovered in this research was unique to this particular group of respondents, rather than reflecting a more widely held conception of love, at least within North America. It was also possible that, despite agreement on prototypicality ratings, there could be individual differences in prototypes of love. If conceptions of love were to vary from one person to the next, or from one region to the next, this would have important implications for close relationships. Social interactions proceed more smoothly when partners are “reading from the same page.” Or, as Sternberg (1988) put it, “At least some of the distress in close relationships might be avoidable if each partner understood what the other meant by love and how the interpretations were related” (p. 120). CULTURAL DIFFERENCES/SIMILARITIES IN CONCEPTIONS OF LOVE

There have been a few investigations examining whether the prototype of love that was derived on the west coast of Canada (Fehr, 1988) would be replicable in other regions of North America. For example, Button and Collier (1991) examined whether similar findings would be obtained on the east coast of Canada, with both university student and community participants. The latter group consisted of provincial government employees as well as members of the public. Luby and Aron (1990) explored whether Americans living on the west coast of the United States also would hold a similar prototype of love. Their research was conducted with students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as with members of the public enrolled in music appreciation classes. There was a remarkable degree of consistency across these data sets (see Fehr, 1993), particularly for those

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features of love identified as prototypical by Fehr (1988). More specifically, five features of love were listed frequently and received the highest prototypicality ratings in each of these data sets: trust, caring, honesty, friendship, and respect. Intimacy also received high ratings in each data set. Thus, at least within North America, among university students and nonstudents alike, there appears to be consensus that it is the companionate features of love that capture the true meaning of the concept. Whether or not these findings would be replicated in non–North American samples is a worthwhile pursuit for future research. There is some evidence, for example, that people in collectivist cultures (e.g., Asia) hold a more companionate view of love than those in individualist cultures, such as North America (e.g., K. L. Dion and Dion, 1993; K. K. Dion and Dion, 1996). Thus, the prototype of love in collectivist cultures may contain an even greater concentration of companionate-like features of love than has been found in the North American studies. Unfortunately, there have been few cross-cultural prototype analyses of love per se. However, prototype analyses of the concept of emotion have been conducted in a number of diverse countries, including Palau, Micronesia (Smith and Tkel-Sbal, 1995), Turkey (Tu¨rk Smith and Smith, 1995), Indonesia (Shaver, Murdaya, and Fraley, 2001), and China (Shaver, Wu, and Schwartz, 1992). Shaver and colleagues noted that in cluster analyses of emotion terms, love was grouped with other positive emotion terms in American samples (e.g., liking, attraction, caring; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, and O’Connor, 1987). However, in Indonesia, love clustered with emotion terms that would be considered more negative (at least by North Americans), such as yearning or longing. (In the United States, for example, these terms are part of a sadness cluster.) In China the love cluster split into two subcategories; one positive and one negative (Shaver et al., 1992). Thus, there is reason to believe that people’s conceptions of love vary, depending on the cultural context. An important direction for future research will be to assess prototypes of love (rather than simply having people list emotion terms) in different cultures and to identify areas of universality as well as cultural specificity in people’s conceptions of love. For example, it is possible that the features of love, which have been identified as prototypical in North American research, may be universal and that it may be the nonprototypical features that vary by culture. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE PROTOTYPE OF LOVE

Do women and men view love differently? This is a question that was contemplated by Aristotle, and continues to intrigue philosophers and social

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scientists to this day. Whether or not people with different personalities conceptualize love differently also has been of interest, particularly to social scientists. Regarding gender, the assumption has been that it is women who are most concerned with love and romance. However, when social psychologists began conducting research on this question, they were surprised to discover that it is actually men who are the more romantic sex (e.g., K. L. Dion and Dion, 1993; Fehr and Broughton, 2001; Sprecher and Metts, 1989). For example, men are more likely than women to subscribe to romantic beliefs (e.g., true love lasts forever; when you meet the right person, you will just “know” it) and to report experiences such as falling in love at first sight. Women, on the other hand, have a more pragmatic orientation to love (e.g., socioeconomic resources should be given consideration in partner selection; it is possible to have a satisfying relationship with any number of potential partners). Women also have more of a friendship orientation to love, believing that romantic relationships should be built on a solid base of friendship (e.g., Grote and Frieze, 1994; S. S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 1995). In short, it appears that men hold a passionate conception of love, whereas women hold a companionate conception. Given these gender differences, it has been difficult to escape the conclusion (particularly in the popular press) that when it comes to love, women and men inhabit different worlds. It is difficult to justify such a conclusion, however, when researchers generally have assessed only passionate (romantic) love or only companionate (friendship) love, but not both kinds of love in the same investigation. This precludes an examination of the relative emphases that women and men place on these kinds of love. (The few researchers who have measured both kinds of love typically have conducted between-, and not within-, gender analyses.) In an attempt to shed light on this issue, Fehr and Broughton (2001) conducted a series of studies in which companionate and passionate love scales (see section on prototype-based measurement) were administered to large samples of women and men. Consistent with past research, men were found to hold a more passionate view of love than were women. Also consistent with past research, women endorsed a more companionate conception of love than did men. However, withingender analyses revealed that for both women and men, companionate love received the highest ratings, whereas passionate love received much lower ratings. This pattern is illustrated in figure 11-1. In other words, by assessing both companionate and passionate love and comparing ratings of these kinds of love within each sex, a rather different picture emerged—one in which the sexes appear to exhibit much greater agreement than disagreement.

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women men

Companionate Love

Passionate Love

Figure 11-1. The general pattern of gender differences and similarities in conceptions of love obtained across studies in Fehr and Broughton (2001).

Personality differences in conceptions of love also were examined by Fehr and Broughton (2001). The results across several studies showed that those who are high in traits saturated with nurturance (e.g., warm-agreeable) tend to hold a companionate conception of love. In contrast, low nurturance traits (e.g., cold-hearted) are associated with a more passionate conception. Dominance-related traits showed little relation to conceptions of love overall. Individual differences in prototypes of love have been examined by other researchers as well. For example, Aron and Westbay (1996) hypothesized that individuals who had successfully completed the intimacy (vs. isolation) stage of development (Erikson, 1950) would rate features of love (taken from Fehr’s 1988 prototype) that portrayed intimacy higher than those who had not achieved intimacy status. This hypothesis was supported. Contrary to expectations, however, ratings of attachment style were uncorrelated with prototypicality ratings. In another investigation, Rousar and Aron (1990) examined sexual orientation, age, and attachment style differences in ratings of the features of Fehr’s (1988) prototype of love. Overall, there was little relation between these individual difference variables and ratings of prototypicality. Before leaving this topic, it is interesting to note that individual differences emerge only when participants are specifically asked to rate features or types of love in terms of their own view of love. Individual differences typically are not found when participants are asked to provide standard prototypicality ratings (i.e., rate features or types in terms of how well they exemplify

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the concept of love). In the latter case, they may well be reporting on culturally-shared conceptions (see Fehr, 1993, for further discussion of this point.) In summary, general consensus on the meaning of love (at least within North America) does not preclude variability in conceptions of love at an individual or cultural level. Indeed, there is some evidence that conceptions of love vary, depending on one’s gender and personality. However, the most striking finding in this literature is the extent of agreement on the prototype of love.

Related Approaches to the Study of Lay Conceptions of Love Several other researchers have conducted prototype-based analyses of love. One such approach has been to elicit laypeople’s accounts of particular experiences of love, rather than asking them to describe the meaning of the concept, as in Fehr’s research. For example, Shaver et al. (1987) asked participants to describe an episode of love (along with other emotions). A prototype of love was then derived from these accounts. More specifically, features were extracted and classified as antecedents (e.g., feeling wanted/ needed by the other, finding the other attractive), responses (e.g., wanting to be physically close to the other, kissing, sex), physiological reactions (e.g., high energy, fast heartbeat), behaviors (e.g., gazing, smiling), and so on. A variation of this methodology was used by Fitness and Fletcher (1993) in their analysis of love (and other emotions) as experienced in the context of a marital relationship. In this research, married couples were asked to describe the most typical incident that would elicit feelings of love for one’s spouse. The results indicated that love experiences were triggered by events such as thinking about one’s partner, receiving support from him or her, sharing happy times, and so on. Participants also mentioned low-arousal physiological responses, such as feelings of warmth and relaxed muscles. Behaviors included the desire to be physically close to one’s partner, giving presents, hugging and kissing, and doing nothing. Although they did not explicitly conduct a prototype study, Lamm and Wiesmann (1997) asked university students in Germany to answer the question “How can you tell that you love someone?” (Other participants were asked about liking, and still others about being in love.) The responses were coded, and a feature list was derived. Responses such as positive mood, trust, and desire to be with the other were mentioned with high frequency. The researchers concluded that there was considerable overlap between their

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findings and the features that were mentioned most frequently in Fehr’s (1988) prototype analysis of love. To give a final example, Buss (1988) focused on the behavioral indicators of love. In this research, participants were asked to list behaviors that exemplify love. These behaviors then were rated for prototypicality by a new sample. Some behaviors of love were, in fact, regarded as more prototypical than others. For example, behaviors indicative of commitment (e.g., “She agreed to marry him”) received high prototypicality ratings. Other acts (e.g., “He made love to her”) received low ratings. Thus, prototype analyses of love have taken different forms. It seems likely that each of these approaches is tapping a different kind of relational knowledge. As has been suggested elsewhere (e.g., Fehr, 2005; Fitness, Fletcher, and Overall, 1993; Surra and Bohman, 1991), there are probably different levels, or at least different storehouses, of knowledge of love. At the most general level are socially shared conceptions of love. Presumably, this is the kind of knowledge that is being assessed when researchers ask participants to describe the concept of love (as in the studies by Fehr and colleagues), or to list the behaviors that are typical of love (e.g., Buss, 1988). People also are likely to hold relationship-specific representations of love, based on their experiences in relationships. This may well be the kind of knowledge that is accessed when participants are asked to describe specific experiences or episodes of love (e.g., Fitness and Fletcher, 1991; Shaver et al., 1987). In future research, it will be important to further explore the idea that people organize their knowledge of love into different levels of abstraction and to discover which body of knowledge is most likely to be accessed when making relationship-relevant decisions.

Prototype-Based Measurement of Love Prototype analyses also have been used to create measurement instruments. One approach has been to present participants with features depicting love or various types of love (derived from prototype studies). The task for the participant is to rate the extent to which the conception of love portrayed in the feature list captures his or her own view of love. For example, I (Fehr, 1994) constructed a scale to assess laypeople’s conceptions of love by presenting participants with the feature lists of fifteen different kinds of love (taken from Fehr and Russell, 1991). In this scale, participants are asked to rate how similar the view of love portrayed in each feature list is to their own conception. The researcher can then analyze ratings of the individual types of love (e.g., the extent of agreement with the romantic love

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prototype) or, alternatively, ratings can be aggregated to assess the more global concepts of companionate love and passionate love. A companionate love score is created by summing ratings of friendship love, familial love, maternal love, and so on (based on the results of a cluster analysis; see Fehr, 1994). A passionate love score is created by summing ratings of the feature lists depicting passionate love, romantic love, infatuation, sexual love, and the like. This measure was used in Fehr and Broughton’s (2001) analysis of gender and personality differences in conceptions of love discussed earlier. More recently, this scale was used to assess the implications of dating couples’ conceptions of love (and similarities in those conceptions) for relationship outcomes, discussed later (Fehr and Broughton, 2004). Another approach to measurement was taken by Aron and Westbay (1996), who factor-analyzed the sixty-eight features of the concept of love identified by Fehr (1988). Three factors were extracted and were labeled intimacy, passion, and commitment because of their similarity to the components of Sternberg’s (1986, 1988) triangular theory of love. Aron and Westbay (1996) developed scales to measure these dimensions by having participants provide prototypicality ratings of the features of love that loaded on each of these factors. These ratings were then averaged to produce intimacy, passion, and commitment scores. Thus, this approach enables researchers to assess the dimensions underlying the prototype of love. The most recent development has been the construction of distance-fromthe-prototype measures in which people rate how well they (or their relationships) “match” prototypical descriptions presented by the researcher. This methodology originally was developed in personality psychology (e.g., Broughton, 1984). In this research, participants are provided with descriptions of hypothetical characters “acting out” behaviors that are prototypical of various personality traits and are asked to rate how similar they are to these characters. Personality classifications are based on these distance-fromthe-prototype ratings. In social psychology, Hassebrauck and Aron (2001) developed a distance-from-the-prototype measure for the concept of relationship quality. More specifically, participants were asked to rate the extent to which the features of the prototype of relationship quality (e.g., trust, tolerance; Hassebrauck, 1997) were present in their romantic relationship. The distance between the participants’ ratings of their relationship and the prototype of relationship quality was then calculated. (The participants’ rating of each feature of the prototype of relationship quality was subtracted from the maximum score, the difference was squared, and the squared difference scores were summed.) More recently, Boris (2002) used this methodology to obtain distance-from-the-prototype ratings for the concept of

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love. In this study, participants rated their dating relationship in terms of the features of the prototype of love (Fehr, 1988). Distance-from-theprototype scores were calculated as in Hassebrauck and Aron’s (2001) research. (The findings of this study are presented in the next section.) In conclusion, a number of prototype-based measures of love have been developed. Which of these approaches is preferable depends on the needs of the individual researcher. If the goal is to assess lay conceptions of love (or various types of love), participants can be presented with prototypes (i.e., feature lists) and asked to rate how well that feature list approximates their own conception. If the goal is to assess components of love (e.g., intimacy, passion), participants can be asked to provide prototypicality ratings of particular subsets of features depicting these dimensions (Aron and Westbay, 1996). Finally, if the goal is to measure people’s perceptions of the extent to which their own relationship “matches” a given prototype, distance-fromthe-prototype measures seem to hold considerable promise. One advantage of prototype-based instruments is their reliance on laypeople’s understanding of the target concept. This increases the probability that the researcher and the participant have the same meaning in mind when assessing constructs. This seems particularly important when doing research on concepts such as love, where the risk is that the social scientists conducting the research and the people they are studying may not necessarily hold the same definitions.

Relationship Implications of Prototypes of Love In a landmark treatise on love and commitment, Kelley (1983) made a persuasive case for the importance of studying lay conceptions of these constructs. He argued that people rely on their knowledge of love when seeking answers to some of life’s most important questions: Do I truly love my partner? Is this the kind of love on which I should base a long-term commitment? Presumably people also rely on their conception of love when contemplating whether to remain in a relationship. For example, no longer loving one’s partner is a common reason given for terminating relationships (e.g., Sprecher and Fehr, 1998). In short, there is little argument that people’s conceptions of love are likely to have important implications for “real world” relationship dynamics. However, despite progress in mapping out what love means to ordinary people, little is known about how these conceptions translate into cognition, emotion, and behavior in actual relationships. There are a few exceptions. Fehr (1988) conducted two scenario studies to explore the implications of the prototype structure of love for judgments about relationships. In the first study, participants were presented with de-

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scriptions of various kinds of relationships that differed in their degree of love. As predicted, prototypical features (e.g., trust, caring) were rated as most applicable to the most loving relationships. In contrast, the applicability of nonprototypical features (e.g., physical attraction, thinking about the other all the time) did not vary as systematically with the level of love in the relationship. In a subsequent study, it was shown that violations of prototypical features (e.g., failures of trust or respect) were seen as undermining the level of love in a relationship to a greater extent than violations of nonprototypical features (e.g., no longer experiencing sexual attraction). Although these studies suggest that the knowledge of love that exists in people’s minds is relevant to the kinds of judgments they make about relationships, the findings are limited because actual relationships were not examined. Aron and Westbay (1996) were among the first to explore the link between conceptions of love and relationship experiences. They had participants provide prototypicality ratings of features of love depicting intimacy, passion, and commitment, as well as rate the level of intimacy, passion, and commitment that they were experiencing in a love relationship. Conceptions of love (assessed via prototypicality ratings) were not strongly associated with relationship ratings, except for a significant positive correlation between prototypicality ratings of intimacy features and the level of intimacy experienced. More recently, a few studies have examined the relation between conceptions of love and satisfaction—the most commonly examined outcome variable in close relationships research. For example, Moszkiewicz (2002) asked individuals in dating relationships to rate the extent to which each of Fehr’s (1988) features of love characterized their relationship. The correlation between ratings of the prototypical features of love (e.g., trust, intimacy) and relationship satisfaction was .64; the correlation between ratings of the nonprototypical features (e.g., sexual passion, thinking about the other all the time) was .56. Thus, when people believe that their relationship embodies the prototype of love, they tend to be more satisfied with their relationship. This is particularly true for the prototypical features. The same pattern was found by Boris (2002), who had dating couples rate their relationship in terms of Fehr’s features of love. Again, both prototypical and nonprototypical features of love were significantly associated with relationship satisfaction, and again, this relation was stronger for prototypical features (r ⫽ .73) than for nonprototypical features (r ⫽ .47). Interestingly, these findings parallel those obtained in studies that have assessed the amount of love experienced in a relationship (rather than conceptions of love). According to this

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rather extensive body of research, both companionate love (akin to a prototypical conception of love) and passionate love (akin to a nonprototypical conception) are associated with relationship satisfaction, but the relation tends to be stronger for companionate love (e.g., Hendrick and Hendrick, 1986; Sprecher and Regan, 1998; Sternberg, 1997; see Fehr, 2001, for a review). Finally, Fehr and Broughton (2004) examined the relation between conceptions of love, using Fehr’s (1994) measure, and a broad range of relational outcomes. Consistent with predictions, dating couples who conceptualized love in terms of its prototypical cases tended to report greater love and liking for their partner than those who conceptualized love in terms of its nonprototypical cases. There was also a tendency for a prototypical conception of love to be associated with higher relationship quality and greater relationship stability. Further, there was evidence that similarity between partners in conceptions of love—particularly similarity in terms of a prototypical conception of love—was associated with positive outcomes. Although these effects were relatively small, the findings provide at least preliminary evidence that the way in which people think about love has wide-ranging implications for their relationships. The assumption underlying these studies is that conceptualizing love in terms of its prototypical cases causes one to experience positive relationship outcomes. However, the correlational nature of this research precludes causal conclusions. Nevertheless, these findings raise the intriguing possibility that if people could be persuaded to think about love in terms of its prototypical features, relationship satisfaction might be enhanced. Or perhaps relationship satisfaction could be increased by inducing people to experience prototypical characteristics of love. But how might researchers accomplish this rather daunting task? In an innovative study, Boris (2002) attempted to increase dating couples’ experience of a prototypical feature of love—namely, intimacy—by having them engage in Aron and colleagues’ closeness induction procedure (Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, and Bator, 1997). This self-disclosure exercise requires participants to reveal increasingly intimate information about themselves to their partner. The exercise begins with neutral questions (e.g., “When did you last go to the zoo?”), which escalate in their level of intimacy over a forty-five-minute discussion. During the last phase, partners answer questions that require a high degree of personal disclosure (e.g., “If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone?”). Participants in the control condition are required to answer neutral questions throughout the conversation session. This manipulation was successful—participants in the intimacy condition subsequently rated

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their relationship as significantly closer than those in the control condition. Importantly, those in the intimacy condition also reported greater satisfaction and happiness with the relationship. Although only one feature of love was targeted in this study, the results are encouraging. As discussed earlier, endorsement of nonprototypical features of love is also associated with relationship satisfaction, although not as strongly as for prototypical features. This correlation suggests that relationships also might benefit if nonprototypical features of love were enhanced. A fascinating program of research by Aron, Norman, Aron, McKenna, and Heyman (2000) provides support for this idea. Aron and colleagues have devised a method for increasing excitement in relationships. (Excitement is a nonprototypical feature of love; Fehr, 1988.) In this research, couples are brought to the lab and attached to one another with Velcro straps. Their task is to crawl through an obstacle course, racing against a clock, to reach a bowl of candy. Quite remarkably, after only seven minutes of this exciting activity, couples report a significant increase in relationship satisfaction (relative to a control group and relative to the couple’s pre-experiment satisfaction ratings). Moreover, when the couples’ interactions are surreptitiously recorded, observers perceive more warmth and positivity after the excitement induction than before it. Thus, there is evidence that experiencing a nonprototypical feature of love—namely, excitement—has salutary effects on couples’ wellbeing. Obviously, future research will need to examine a broader range of prototypical and nonprototypical features than the single features that have been targeted so far. Moreover, given that a prototypical conception (and experience) of love tends to be more highly associated with satisfaction than a nonprototypical conception (and experience), it will be important to establish whether it is more beneficial to enhance prototypical, rather than nonprototypical, features of love. In research currently under way, priming methodology is being used to bring to mind either prototypical or nonprototypical features by having participants describe either a prototypical (e.g., trust) or nonprototypical (e.g., passion) love experience. The critical question is whether bringing to mind prototypical love experiences will produce greater relationship satisfaction than priming nonprototypical love experiences.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Prototype Approach In this final section, I discuss the strengths and limitations of the prototype approach to the study of love. Some areas for future investigation also are identified.

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Prototype analyses of love have yielded important description information about the content and structure of love in cognitive representation. Social psychologists, dating back at least to Heider (1958), have recognized the importance of studying “commonsense” psychology—the layperson’s understanding of psychological concepts and phenomena. However, empirical investigations of lay conceptions have been hampered by the absence of a standard methodology for doing so. Rosch’s (1973a, 1973b; Mervis and Rosch, 1981) delineation of a conceptual model, and articulation of a research methodology based on that model, paved the way for social psychological investigation of lay conceptions of love. Thus, when asked, “How do ordinary people define love?,” social scientists are now in a position to give a lengthy answer. Moreover, as discussed in this chapter, researchers have begun to investigate the link between conceptions of love and relationship outcomes. Thus, by examining how ordinary people think about love, social scientists are at least one step closer to understanding the way people think, feel, and behave in their closest relationships. Despite the considerable progress, there are still significant gaps. One shortcoming of this literature is that lay conceptions of different kinds of love have not received much attention. Virtually every article and book chapter on love makes reference to the multifaceted nature of love, or comments on its many varieties, sometimes using color-of-the rainbow analogies. Yet, where prototype analyses are concerned, little is known about the different colors (or stripes) of love. Fehr and Russell (1991) gathered feature lists for twenty different kinds of love, but did not have these features rated for prototypicality. Thus, their investigation uncovered the content of different kinds of love, but not the structure of this knowledge. A few researchers have conducted prototype analyses in which features of romantic love were elicited and rated for prototypicality (Button and Collier, 1991; Regan, Kocan, and Whitlock, 1998). Recently, another kind of love—namely, compassionate love—was targeted for a prototype analysis (Fehr and Sprecher, 2005; Sprecher and Fehr, 2005). Prototype analyses of other varieties of love not only will provide a fuller understanding of how laypeople think about love, but also will enable researchers to address a number of conceptual issues concerning the cognitive representation of concepts. One issue that merits attention is the role of nonprototypical features in defining specific types of love. For example, in their prototype analysis of compassionate love, Fehr and Sprecher (2005) expected that features such as sacrifice and putting the other ahead of self would be seen as central to this kind of love.

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However, these features received the lowest prototypicality ratings. The features that were rated highest were those that are prototypical of the concept of love itself (e.g., trust, caring). Similarly, in Regan et al.’s (1998) prototype analysis of romantic love, features that might be considered definitive of romantic love (e.g., romance, giddiness/walking on air, cannot live without one another) received lower ratings than features such as trust, honesty, respect, and caring (i.e., prototypical features of the more general concept of love). Thus, it is possible that many, if not most, varieties of love share a common core, and that it is the features that are rated as nonprototypical that serve to differentiate one kind of love from another. As mentioned earlier, prototype analyses also have the potential to address questions about the universality versus cultural specificity of conceptions of love. Prototype analyses also could provide insights into how people’s relationship experiences affect their conceptions of love. Might it be the case that limerent lovers (those who desperately pursue inappropriate love relationships) hold prototypes of love that emphasize features that others regard as nonprototypical (e.g., passion, thinking about the other all the time)? Might the experience of unrequited love, or having several failed relationships, influence one’s conception of love? These are important questions that prototype analyses are equipped to answer. Finally, prototype analyses hold promise for documenting historical changes in conceptions of love. For example, in ancient Greek and Roman times, love was seen as a state of intense torment that was experienced outside of marriage. The twelfth century witnessed the birth of courtly love in France, in which love was conceptualized as an idealistic, romantic, and elegant experience in which a married man courted a married woman who was not his wife (Brehm, 1992). It would be fascinating to conduct prototype analyses on archival sources (e.g., letters, diaries) to trace changes in conceptions of love over time. Thus, a prototype approach has the potential to address a number of issues concerning conceptions of love in different cultures, at different times, and among those with different relationship experiences. LIMITATIONS OF A PROTOTYPE APPROACH

There are many important questions about love that a prototype analysis is not equipped to answer. First, a prototype analysis is, by definition, a descriptive analysis. Experts may choose to rely on these conceptions when formulating theories of love, but these analyses, in and of themselves, do not offer prescriptions for how love should be defined or explained. Put another way, prototype analyses can answer “What?” questions (e.g.,

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“What is love?”), but are unable to answer important “Why?” questions about human behavior (e.g., “Why do people fall in love?”). Second, prototype analyses are bounded by people’s ability to articulate and describe complex concepts such as love. Some social scientists have expressed skepticism about how well laypeople can accomplish this task. Berscheid and Meyers (1996) commented that “directly asking people to describe the cultural models they use to interpret events within a particular domain is not likely to be wholly successful for the same reason that interviews with fish seldom yield mentions of water” (p. 22). As a prototype researcher, I can only respond that the hapless fish I have studied seem to do quite well when directly asked to describe the qualities of the water they inhabit. However, I believe it is important to cast a wide net to ensure that all of the relevant qualities are captured. Thus, in the initial feature-listing stages of a prototype analysis, it is crucial that large sample sizes be used. It is also crucial that feature-listing studies be followed with studies in which prototypicality ratings (and other indices of prototype structure) are gathered. Frequency-of-listing and prototypicality ratings are not strongly correlated (see, e.g., Fehr, 2004), which suggests that people may not necessarily produce the full range of important features when asked (a recall task), but “know them when they see them” (assuming that providing prototypicality ratings can be construed as a recognition task). In conclusion, prototype analyses have yielded important information on how laypeople conceptualize love. These conceptions undoubtedly play a role in determining some of the most significant, potentially life-altering decisions that people make in their lives: with whom to establish a close intimate relationship and whether to maintain or end that relationship.

Acknowledgment Preparation of this chapter was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am grateful to Susan Sprecher for her helpful comments on this chapter.

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PART

Cultural Theories of Love

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12

Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love: The Influence of Gender, Personality, and Local Ecology on Emotional Investment in Romantic Relationships david p. schmitt

Why do some people experience more profound levels of love than others? The answer to that question depends first and foremost on one’s definition of love (Hatfield and Rapson, 2002; S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2002; Lee, 1973; Murstein, 1988; Rubin, 1970). Evolutionary psychologists tend to define love in terms of emotional investments that have reproductive or fitness-enhancing consequences (Buss, 1988; Fisher, 1992; Lampert, 1997). Stable influxes of love through parental closeness and emotional presence, for instance, reliably produce children and adolescents with adaptive attachment orientations (Bowlby, 1969; Hazan and Shaver, 1987). Love tends to lead to parents bonding immediately in healthy ways with their newborn offspring, to the development of informative infatuations before the onset of more serious mating pursuits, and to the exchange of critical social support among family and friends (Fletcher and Stenswick, 2003; Hrdy, 1999; Kirkpatrick and Shaver, 1992; McAndrew, 2002; Shaver and Hazan, 1988). Love often rivets our attention to a single potential mate, instigating romantic flirtation, courtship behaviors, and eventually marriage rituals (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Moore, 1995; Tennov, 1979). Ultimately, love can culminate in physical intimacy that not infrequently results in genetic reproduction. In short, from an evolutionary perspective, love is about in-

249

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Cultural Theories of Love

creasing fitness—it leads to a greater likelihood of reproducing (and having our relatives and descendants reproduce). In support of this evolutionary perspective on love, the psychology of emotional investment appears to have deep biological substrates. Many of the core feelings of love show definite ties to discrete biological systems within human physiology and neuroanatomy (Buck, 2002; Diamond, 2004; Insel and Young, 1997). Fisher (2000, 2004) has articulated a theory whereby three distinct biological systems of love are hypothesized to have evolved in humans. Each of these systems has specialized brain circuitries, hormones, and neurotransmitters. In its simplified form, Fisher’s (2000) theory suggests that love as lust involves testosterone and leads to motivated mate-seeking with any partner. Love as romance or attraction involves dopamine and serotonin and leads to people falling in love with one particular person. Love as attachment involves oxytocin and leads to the type of longterm commitment needed to raise offspring to viability (around four years in humans, given the natural history of birth spacing and weaning patterns among forager cultures; Kelly, 1995). After that, Fisher (2000, 2004) argues, humans are functionally designed to fall in love with a different person and begin the reproductive love cycle anew. Although social context is obviously critical to the experience of love (Medora, Larson, and Hortacsu, 2002), feelings of romantic love across cultures seem to support this evolutionary perspective, including the fact that love is universal across nearly all forms and diversities of human culture (Fisher, 1992; Hatfield and Rapson, 2002; Jankowiak and Fischer, 1998; Sprecher, Aron, and Hatfield, 1994). From an evolutionary perspective, therefore, human nature appears to be fundamentally designed for the experience of love. Despite love’s deep natural roots, there exist important individual differences in the extent to which the various forms of love are experienced (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1988; Landis and O’Shea, 2000). Among the most important factors that influence love are personality, culture, and biological sex. Are people who possess certain personality trait profiles more likely to experience love? Are people from certain cultures or local ecologies more likely to experience love? Finally, is one sex (male or female) more likely to experience love? Each of these fundamental questions is treated, in turn, in this chapter.

Personality Differences in Love Love and the many emotional features of romantic relationships appear to have strong ties to core features of human personality (Asendorpf,

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1998; K. L. Dion and Dion, 1988; Shaver and Brennan, 1992; White, Hendrick, and Hendrick, 2004). The Big Five model of personality traits provides a popular heuristic of the core features of personality (Digman, 1997; John, 1990). Locating individual difference variables such as love within the Big Five can help relate emotional investment as a psychological construct to other individual difference dimensions, as well as hint at the genetics, neurology, and physiology underlying love experiences (Costa and McCrae, 2002; Fisher, 2000). Among the five dimensions that comprise the Big Five, two stand out as closely related to individual differences in love: extraversion and agreeableness (Caralis and Haslam, 2004; Davies, 1996; Heaven, Da Silva, Carey, and Holen, 2004; Wiggins, 1979). In one study, Schmitt and Buss (2000) explored a series of love-related adjectives found in the English language and identified a general love dimension they dubbed “emotional investment.” The emotional investment scale seemed to capture many of the core features of love—including aspects of passion, intimacy, and commitment (Sternberg, 1988)—and was composed of self-ratings of the adjectives loving, lovable, romantic, affectionate, cuddlesome, compassionate, and passionate. In various samples of American college students, Schmitt and Buss (2000) found the emotional investment scale had psychometrically sound internal reliability, temporal reliability over four weeks, convergent validity with Sternberg’s three dimensions of love, and displayed discriminant validity by not correlating with social desirability or relationship satisfaction. In terms of personality associations, Schmitt and Buss found the expected links with extraversion and agreeableness. Among both men and women, emotional investment significantly correlated with extraversion and agreeableness, though a little more so with agreeableness. No other dimensions of the Big Five correlated with the emotional investment scale for either sex. Given the correlational profile found by Schmitt and Buss (2000), it seems that love in terms of their evolutionary-relevant emotional investment dimension may be a mix of extraversion and agreeableness, with a little more agreeableness than extraversion (see also Digman, 1997). These findings support the view that love is related to dopaminergic and serotonergic brain circuitry (Fisher, 2004), and perhaps to heritable substrates related to these systems (Cherkas, Oelsner, Mak, Valdes, and Spector, 2004; but see Waller and Shaver, 1994). Special links of extraversion and agreeableness with love and relationship outcomes have been documented by others (Asendorpf, 1998; Schmitt, 2002; White et al., 2004). However, specific subtypes of love sometimes correlate differentially with extraversion and agreeableness (Wan, Luk, and Lai, 2000). Fehr and Broughton (2001), for example, found pas-

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Cultural Theories of Love

sionate love is more closely related to dominance or extraversion, whereas companionate love is more closely related to nurturance or agreeableness. Overall, though, it appears that individual differences in the tendency to invest emotionally in loving relationships are related to extraversion and agreeableness, psychometrically residing somewhere in between these two dimensions and forming a fundamental axis of the interpersonal circle (see Gurtman and Pincus, 2003; Wiggins, 1979).

Cultural Differences in Love In addition to love’s differential links with personality, people tend to experience love in different ways and in varying degrees across cultures (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1996; S. Hendrick and Hendrick, 2003; Inman and Sandhu, 2002; Rodrı´guez, Montgomery, and Pela´ez, 2003; Wan et al., 2000). The rules and permissions regarding when, with whom, and how we may fall in love are powerful examples of the influence of culture (Hatfield and Rapson, 1996; Neto, Mullet, Deschamps, Barros, Benvindo, Camino, Falconi, Kagibanga, and Machado, 2000). Culture can moderate how love feels, what we think about when we are in love, and which behaviors are most appropriate or pleasing in our love lives (Landis and O’Shea, 2000; Sternberg, 1998). Love must, to some degree, be a socially constructed experience and reflect the time and place within which it occurs. Within the multiple cultures of the United States, for example, there appear to be differences in the love experiences of various ethnic groups. Chinese Americans tend to experience higher levels of passionate love than European Americans, whereas Pacific Islanders tend to experience more companionate love than European Americans (Doherty, Hatfield, Thompson, and Choo, 1994). This contrasts with the finding that passionate love is sometimes higher among European Americans than Chinese Americans (Gao, 2001). Across national cultures, Sprecher and her colleagues (1994) found the percentage of people reporting they were “in love” right now was highest among Russians (67 percent) and lowest among Japanese (52 percent), with Americans in the middle (58 percent). When assessed in terms of whether one would marry without love, many people in Pakistan (50 percent) and India (49 percent) would do so, whereas very few in Japan (2 percent) or the United States (4 percent) would do so (Levine, Sato, and Hashimoto, 1995). Although the collectivism-individualism dimension might explain some of these cross-cultural findings (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1996; Hofstede, 2001; Triandis, 2001), the relationships between collectivismindividualism and measures of love experiences have proven inconsistent

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(Sprecher, Aron, and Hatfield, 1994). In contrast, evolutionary perspectives have proven quite useful in explaining cultural universals and variations of love, particularly in terms of emotional investments (Bowlby, 1988; de Munck, 1998; Jankowiak and Fischer, 1992; Rosenblatt, 1967). According to the highly influential evolutionary model of Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper (1991), early socialization adaptively channels children down one of two reproductive pathways. Children culturally exposed to high levels of stress—especially insensitive/inconsistent parenting, harsh physical environments, and economic hardship—tend to grow up expressing lower levels of emotional investment (see also Rohner and Britner, 2002). This low level of emotional investment is viewed as a form of insecure attachment and is also associated with early puberty, more prolific reproduction, and short-term mating strategies in adulthood (Chisholm, 1999; Kirkpatrick, 1998; Schmitt, 2005a). Children from cultures with lower stress, such as those with ample health care, education, and resources, should develop more emotionally investing tendencies or experience higher levels of love (Gangestad and Simpson, 2000). This more loving emotionality is thought to be rooted in secure parent-child attachment and is associated in adulthood with delayed puberty, lower fertility, and long-term or monogamous mating strategies. In each case, the different expressions of emotional investment or love are thought to be functional within their local ecology of reproduction (Belsky, 1997; Chisholm, 1996). High emotional investment is adaptive in long-term mating contexts, whereas low emotional investment is generally adaptive in short-term mating contexts.

Sex Differences in Love Some studies suggest that whether people experience love, or not, has to do with biological sex (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1973; Fehr and Broughton, 2001; Hendrick, Hendrick, Foote, and Slapion-Foote, 1984; Sprecher and Toro-Morn, 2002). For example, women are more likely to experience love and attraction for a man when he is dominant, whereas men are more likely to experience love and attraction for a woman when she is physically attractive (Fletcher, Tither, O’Loughlin, Friesen, and Overall, 2004; Kenrick, Neuberg, Zierk, and Krones, 1994; Lucas, Wendorf, and Imamoglu, 2004; Schmitt and Buss, 1996). Women are more likely to think about love in terms of emotional commitment and security, whereas men are more likely to think of love in terms of sexual commitment and the pleasure of intercourse (Buss, 2000; Cimbalo and Novell, 1993; Hazan and Shaver, 1987). Women tend to experience more of the emotional “symptoms” of love (e.g.,

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feeling giddy, tingling spine, euphoria), but men tend to report falling in love more quickly than women (Kanin, Davidson, and Scheck, 1970; Brantley, Knox, and Zusman, 2002). Finally, women tend to require love before consenting to sex (Schmitt, in press; Simpson and Gangestad, 1991), whereas men are more likely to consent to sex with complete strangers (Clark and Hatfield, 1989). In the lexical exploration of love-related adjectives described earlier, Schmitt and Buss (2000) found that women reported moderately higher levels of “emotional investment” than men, which may reflect the emotionladen aspects of love that comprise the emotional investment scale (e.g., selfratings of the words romantic and compassionate). On a scale of more sexualized person descriptors called erotophilic disposition (with adjectives such as lustful and kinky), men reported higher scores than women (Schmitt and Buss, 2000). Findings from other American and cross-cultural samples would seem to confirm the view that women score higher on love-related scales that are rooted in emotional closeness and intimacy. C. Hendrick and Hendrick (1986) measured self-reported levels of “being in love right now” and found American women (64 percent) reported significantly higher levels of love than American men (46 percent). Sprecher et al. (1994) replicated this finding, showing that significantly more women than men reported currently being “in love” across many different and diverse cultures, with Russian women reporting twelve percentage points higher than Russian men, American women reporting ten percentage points higher than American men, and Japanese women reporting twenty-one percentage points higher than Japanese men. Why the seemingly pervasive sex differences in love, at least in terms of love as emotional investment? According to Parental Investment Theory (Trivers, 1972), the relative proportion of parental investment—the time and energy devoted to the care of individual offspring—varies across the males and females of different species. In some species, males tend to provide more parental investment than females (e.g., the Mormon cricket). In other species, females bear the heavier-investing parental burdens (e.g., most mammals; Clutton-Brock, 1991). Trivers (1972) noted that sex differences in parental investment burdens are systematically linked to processes of sexual selection in ways that potentially relate to love. Within a given species, the sex that invests more in offspring tends to have a more long-term or loveoriented mating strategy, whereas the lesser investing sex tends to have a short-term or sex-oriented mating strategy (see also Andersson, 1994). Sexual selection also results in the heavy-investing sex being smaller, less aggressive, less risk-taking, earlier to mature, later to die, and generally more

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discriminating when choosing to invest in a potential mating partner (Alexander and Noonan, 1979). Among humans, many males invest heavily as parents, dedicating both direct resources and general prestige to their children (Hazan and Diamond, 2000; Pasternak, Ember, and Ember, 1997). Nevertheless, human males typically invest considerably less than females in active parenting effort across all known cultures (Low, 1989; Munroe and Munroe, 1997; Quinn, 1977). In addition, men face much lower levels of obligatory or “minimum” parental investment in offspring than women do. That is, men are not obligated to invest as much as women do in order to produce viable progeny (Symons, 1979). Women are obligated to incur the costs of internal fertilization, placentation, and gestation in order to reproduce. The minimum physiological obligations of men are considerably less—requiring only the contribution of sperm. Furthermore, all female mammals, including ancestral women, carried the requisite burdens associated with lactation. Lactation can last several years in human foraging environments, years during which it is harder for women to reproduce and invest in additional offspring (Kelly, 1995). When looked at from the evolutionary perspective of Parental Investment Theory (Trivers, 1972), this human asymmetry in obligate parental investment burdens should result in the lesser-investing sex (i.e., men) displaying lower levels of love or emotional investment in potential reproductive partners and their offspring. In support of Parental Investment Theory applying to humans, numerous studies have shown that men exhibit greater physical size and competitive aggression (Archer and Lloyd, 2002; Hyde, 1986; Reynolds and Harvey, 1994), riskier life history strategies (Daly and Wilson, 1988), relatively delayed maturation (Geary, 1998), and earlier death than women do across all known cultures (Alexander and Noonan, 1979). Many of these differences appear to be culturally universal among preadolescents (Freedman and DeBoer, 1979; Low, 1989). In addition, men’s mate preferences are, as predicted by Parental Investment Theory, almost always less “choosy” or discriminating than women’s, especially in the context of shortterm mating without love (Buss and Schmitt, 1993; Kenrick, Sadalla, Groth, and Trost, 1990; Regan, 1998; Regan and Berscheid, 1997; Simpson and Gangestad, 1991). Based on Parental Investment Theory, therefore, men are clearly the lesser-investing sex of our species, and should be inclined toward lower emotional investment in relationships and any offspring that ensue (see also Baron-Cohen, 2003; Geary, 1998; Mealey, 2000). On the other hand, according to Social Structural Theory (Eagly and Wood, 1999; Wood and Eagly, 2002), men and women may not have evolved different mating psychologies. Instead, men and women evolved dif-

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ferent physical abilities (e.g., women’s nursing abilities and men’s hunting abilities) that tend to give rise to social roles, and these social roles are what proximately cause men and women to differ psychologically in the realm of mating and love. From this perspective, when men and women occupy similar social roles (e.g., in cultures with high gender equality), they should not differ in emotional investment. In order to contrast Parental Investment Theory and Social Structural Theory, sex differences in emotional investment would need to be examined across a wide range of cultures.

The International Sexuality Description Project Beginning in 2000, Schmitt and his colleagues (see Schmitt, Alcalay, Allik, Ault, Austers, Bennett, et al., 2003; Schmitt, Alcalay, Allik, Angleiter, Ault, Austers, et al., 2004) formed a research collaboration, the International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP), to investigate the effects of sex, personality, and culture on sexual outcome variables such as love and emotional investment. A total of 15,234 participants from forty-eight nations (see Schmitt, 2005b) completed the “Sexy Seven Measure” of human sexuality (Schmitt and Buss, 2000). This self-report measure asked participants to describe themselves, using a nine-point scale on sixty-seven sexually connotative adjectives, including the adjectives loving, lovable, romantic, affectionate, cuddlesome, compassionate, and passionate, as translated from English into twenty-seven languages. The overall average of these seven adjectives comprises the emotional investment scale that can be used as a broad-based indicator of love (Schmitt and Buss, 2000). This large ISDP data set provides a unique opportunity to examine both the intranational and international correlates of self-reported love across diverse cultural forms. For example, within each of the ISDP nations, high levels of emotional investment may be universally associated with high levels of extraversion and agreeableness, and not with other personality traits. Such a finding would provide evidence that love in terms of emotional investment has conceptual equivalence across cultures, and would heuristically help to guide researchers toward the psychological foundations of love. PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES IN LOVE ACROSS THE ISDP

The internal reliability of the emotional investment scale was moderate to high across most of the ISDP nations (for details, see Schmitt, 2005b). Not surprisingly, the internal reliability of the emotional investment scale was highest in the United States (a ⫽ 0.87), where the precise meanings of the Sexy Seven Measure’s love-related adjectives are probably clearest.

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Within each of the ISDP nations, high levels of emotional investment, as measured by the Sexy Seven Measure, were expected to be associated with high levels of extraversion and agreeableness, as measured by the Big Five Inventory (Benet-Martı´nez and John, 1998). This was largely the case, with all reported correlations falling in the positive direction. In only two nations (Indonesia and Malaysia) did neither extraversion nor agreeableness reach the level of statistical significance in correlating with emotional investment, though relatively small sample sizes in these nations may have led to inadequate power to detect the expected associations. In most nations, the positive correlations were stronger between emotional investment and agreeableness than between emotional investment and extraversion. However, these correlational differences were rarely statistically significant, so emotional investment as measured by the Sexy Seven Measure can only be said to fall somewhere in between extraversion and agreeableness (see Wiggins, 1979). Love was also found to be unassociated with neuroticism across most cultures, with only a few positive or negative correlations observed. Overall, these findings provide evidence that love in terms of emotional investment has a reasonable degree of conceptual equivalence across cultures, and future researchers may wish to focus on the substrates of the extraversion and agreeableness dimensions when investigating individual differences in love. CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN LOVE ACROSS THE ISDP

Across the ISDP, national levels of emotional investment (after controlling for sex of participant) ranged from relatively low levels in Tanzania, Hong Kong, and Japan, to relatively high levels in the United States, Slovenia, and Cyprus. Overall, there was a significant effect of nation on emotional investment, with a trend for East Asian cultures to score lower than others on emotional investment. For example, encoding each national mean as representative of North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/ Southeast Asia, or East Asia (for details on these groupings, see Schmitt et al., 2003; Schmitt, Alcalay, Allensworth, Allik, Ault, Austers, et al., 2004), there was a significant main effect of world region on emotional investment. East Asia had significantly lower levels of emotional investment than all other regions, whereas North America had significantly higher levels than all other regions (see Schmitt, 2005b). Across individual nations, the evolutionary theory of Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper (1991) predicted that higher levels of emotional investment would be associated with national indicators of lower stress—such as ample

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health care, education, and resources—as well as with secure forms of romantic attachment, lower fertility, and more long-term-oriented mating strategies (see also Chisholm, 1999; Schmitt, 2005a). The United Nations Statistical Division tracks the degree to which individual nations have adequate health care, education, and resources, and quantifies this variability in the form of the Human Development Index (HDI; United Nations Development Programme, 2001). HDI scores were available for forty-six of the ISDP nations (scores were unavailable for Taiwan and Serbia). As seen in table 12-1, national emotional investment levels positively correlated with the national HDI scores. This association was present among both men and women, supporting the evolutionary theory of Belsky et al. (1991). At the direct level of gross domestic product (GDP), the links did not reach statistical significance, but all were in the predicted direction, with higher levels of emotional investment associated with higher levels of GDP. Belsky et al. (1991) hypothesized that the link between social stress and loving emotional investment is rooted in attachment security (see also Chisholm, 1999; Rohner and Britner, 2002; Shaver and Hazan, 1988). In support of this view, higher levels of emotional investment at the national level were positively related to secure attachment, negatively related to preoccupied attachment, and negatively related to fearful attachment among women. Indeed, among the eight nations with the lowest levels of emotional investment (Taiwan, Morocco, Ethiopia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and Tanzania), all were above average in national levels of preoccupied romantic attachment. Emotional investment was also associated with national levels of self-esteem, in terms of both Rosenberg’s measure of self-esteem as administered in the ISDP (Schmitt and Allik, in press), and Diener and Diener’s (1995) cross-cultural assessment of self-worth (see table 12-1). These findings replicate those of K. K. Dion and Dion (1975) and provide an additional indication that securely attached individuals (i.e., those with a positive model of self) have more emotionally investing personalities. Recall that the Belsky et al. (1991) theory viewed the development of insecure attachment and low emotional investment levels as part of an adaptive reproductive strategy that included high fertility, early puberty, and short-term mating. The results from the ISDP did not support all aspects of this theory. Low levels of emotional investment among women were related to higher fertility levels. However, national levels of emotional investment were positively correlated with divorce, unrestricted sociosexuality, shortterm mating interests, and the tendency to engage in short-term matepoaching (i.e., stealing someone else’s partner for a short-term sexual affair).

n

46 46 48 48 48 48 48 18 46 24 43 43 42

Sociocultural Factors

Cultural development (UNDP, 2001) Human Development Index Gross Domestic Product

Romantic attachment (Schmitt et al., 2004) Secure attachment Dismissive attachment Preoccupied attachment Fearful attachment

Self-esteem RSES (Schmitt and Allik, in press) Self-worth (Deiner and Diener, 1995)

Reproductive factors Fertility rate (UNDP, 2001) Divorce rate (UNDP, 2001) Sociosexuality (Schmitt, in press) Short-term mating interests (Schmitt, 2005a) Mate-poaching (Schmitt et al., 2004) ⫺.23 .52** .49*** .44** .55***

.54*** .43*

.35** ⫺.09 ⫺.46*** ⫺.22

.31* .18

National

⫺.19 .46* .43** .36** .50***

.52*** .40*

.33** ⫺.04 ⫺.39** ⫺.17

.29* .12

Men

⫺.25* .54** .52*** .47*** .57***

.53*** .44*

.35** ⫺.12 ⫺.51*** ⫺.27*

.32* .22

Women

Emotional Investment

continued

.28* ⫺.29 ⫺.29* ⫺.33* ⫺.20

⫺.14 ⫺.19

⫺.13 .21 .35** .28*

⫺.21 ⫺.30*

Sex Difference (d)

Table 12-1 Levels of emotional investment related to sociocultural factors across nations of the international sexuality description project

45 33 42 42 42 42

Gender equality (UNDP, 2001) Gender Development Index Gender Empowerment Measure

Cultural values (Hofstede, 2001) Individualism (versus collectivism) Power distance Uncertainty avoidance Masculinity

Notes: * p ⬍ .05 ** p ⬍ .01 *** p ⬍ .001 UNDP: United Nations Development Programme RSES: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

n

Sociocultural Factors

Table 12-1 continued

.31* ⫺.18 .13 ⫺.14

.31* .35*

National

.25* ⫺.14 .14 ⫺.20

.29* .26

Men

.32* ⫺.19 .12 ⫺.11

.32* .37*

Women

Emotional Investment

⫺.23 .16 .04 ⫺.13

⫺.22 ⫺.31*

Sex Difference (d)

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It appears that when short-term mating is more common at the national level, emotional investment is more commonly reported as well. It is worth noting that all indexes of short-term mating were negatively correlated with the effect size (d) of sex differences in emotional investment. That is, as the d for sex differences in emotional investment went lower (i.e., became larger in magnitude or farther from zero), short-term mating became more common at the national level. This was mainly due to women’s levels of emotional investment increasing more than men’s as short-term mating increased across nations. One possible explanation for this trend lies with Strategic Pluralism Theory (SPT; Gangestad and Simpson, 2000). According to SPT, humans have evolved a menu of alternative mating strategies (see also Belsky, 1997; Chisholm, 1996; de Munck and Korotayev, 1999). Which strategy is followed depends in part on local environmental conditions. When environments are full of resources and investing sufficient levels of parenting effort in offspring is relatively easy, women generally have what they need to raise offspring and so feel free to seek short-term mates on the side. If the local ecology is one in which resources are scarce and emotional investments are relatively low from men, women try to maintain what little paternal investments they do receive, and so stay particularly faithful to their long-term mates. This theory helps to explain why emotional investment is more common in nations with high rates of short-term mating. In low resource nations, women are faithful to ensure paternal investment. In high resource nations, emotional investments are plentiful, and women feel sociosexually unrestricted and are able to capitalize on the benefits of female short-term mating (Gangestad and Simpson, 2000; Schmitt, in press). SEX DIFFERENCES IN LOVE ACROSS THE ISDP

Parental Investment Theory (Trivers, 1972) predicts that men will tend to experience lower levels of emotional investment than women. Sex differences in emotional investment were nearly universal across nations of the ISDP (for details, see Schmitt, 2005b). Across thirty-four of the forty-eight nations, sex differences were statistically significant. Some of the instances of the sex difference not reaching significance were due to relatively small sample sizes, yet the magnitude of the sex difference still reached the ⫺0.20 level of d. For example, with statistical power (beta) set at 0.80 and statistical significance (alpha) at 0.05, in order to ensure that a difference of d ⫽ ⫺0.20 would be statistically significant, a sample of over three hundred men and three hundred women would have been necessary. In terms of the magnitudes of effect (d), in eleven nations men were lower than women on emotional investment, with a sex difference “moderate to

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large” in magnitude (i.e., a d of ⫺0.50 or greater); in twenty-six nations men were lower than women on emotional investment with a sex difference “small to moderate” in size (d between ⫺0.20 and ⫺0.49), and in eight nations men were lower than women on emotional investment with a “minimal” sex difference (d between ⫺0.01 and ⫺0.19). However, in three nations it was clear that whether the evaluation was in terms of statistical significance or magnitude of effect, men were clearly not lower than women in emotional investment. In Bolivia, men and women were identical in their mean levels of emotional investment (d ⫽ 0.00). In Indonesia (d ⫽ 0.32) and Malaysia (d ⫽ 0.24), men scored notably higher than women (though not significantly so). It is interesting that these two neighboring countries would exhibit the same unexpected trend for men to have higher levels of emotional investment than women. In Indonesia, the reversed sex difference was due to Indonesian women scoring much lower than the worldwide average for women. Indonesian men were also below the worldwide average for men, but not as low as Indonesian women. In Malaysia, the reversed sex difference was due to a combination of Malaysian men scoring about average for men and Malaysian women scoring below average for women. These two nations were also the only two that failed to exhibit a significant correlation of emotional investment with either extraversion or agreeableness. It is possible that in the languages of these two countries (Indonesian and Malay, respectively) ratings of the translated love-related adjectives of the emotional investment scale were not equivalent to those of English. In trying to account for why some nations had greater sex differences than others, social structural theory suggests that national indicators of gender equality may be useful (see Eagly and Wood, 1999). It may be that when a nation moves toward greater gender equality, sex differences in variables such as emotional investment are eliminated, or at least attenuated (Wood and Eagly, 2002). It would be of particular interest to determine whether such shifts are due to a lowering of emotional investment among women, an increasing level of emotional investment among men, or both. The United Nations Statistics Division provides two key indicators of gender equality. The first is the Gender Development Index (GDI), which is similar to the HDI but reduces a nation’s score if human development indicators are not made equally available to men and women. The second is the Gender Empowerment Measure, which quantifies the degree of gender equality in three domains: economic participation and decision-making, political participation and decision-making, and power over economic resources. In both cases, indexes of greater gender equality were positively associated with na-

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263

tional levels of emotional investment. Thus, increases in gender equality seem to lead to increases in emotional investment at the national level. Contrary to expectations, however, sex differences in emotional investment were larger in nations with higher gender equality (e.g., Switzerland, Australia, Germany), and were smaller in nations with lower gender equality (e.g., Turkey, South Korea, Bolivia). Indeed, Switzerland is among the top ten nations in terms of the Gender Empowerment Measure, but had the largest sex difference in emotional investment across the nations of the ISDP (d ⫽ –0.86; see figure 12-1). What appears to be happening across nations is that greater gender equality is associated with higher emotional investment among both men and women, but the accentuating effect of gender equality on emotional investment is greater among women, leading to larger sex differences in emotional investment overall. These findings run counter to Social Structure Theory (Eagly and Wood, 1999; Wood and Eagly, 2002), which assumes that “when men and women occupy the same specific social role, sex differences would tend to erode” (Eagly and Wood, 1999, p. 413). Instead, according to the ISDP, more similar gender experiences are associated with larger sex differences in emotional investment. Other cross-cultural studies (e.g., Costa et al., 2001; Williams and Best, 1990) have shown that more gender equality is often associated with larger sex differences in self-perceptions. For instance, in a twenty-six-nation study of personality traits, it was noted that “the social role model would have hypothesized that gender differences would be attenuated in progressive countries, when in fact they were magnified” (Costa et al., 2001, p. 329). One speculation is that in cultures where men and women are more socially differentiated, they fail to compare themselves across sex when completing self-report surveys. In cultures where men and women are free to inhabit different social roles, people may be more likely to compare themselves with both genders, and sex differences are thereby more likely to surface. Nevertheless, these findings appear troubling for social structural perspectives.

Conclusions About Sex, Personality, Culture, and Love As part of the ISDP, convenience samples from forty-eight nations completed a self-report survey that included a simple adjectival measure of love called the emotional investment scale. This measure included seven items, and possessed moderate to extensive internal reliability across all nations. Within most nations, high levels of emotional investment were associated with high levels of extraversion and agreeableness, but were not

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Malaysia

National Sex Differences in Emotional Investment

0.25

Bolivia

0.00

South Korea Mexico

Turkey

Greece Japan Poland

Portugal Finland

Italy

–0.25

New Zealand Philippines Netherlands Belgium Austria Estonia Romania Bangladesh Canada USA Peru Lithuania Israel United Kingdom Germany Croatia Australia Latvia Czech Rep.

–0.50

Slovenia

–0.75

Slovakia Switzerland

–1.00 0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

National Level of Gender Equity Figure 12-1. The Gender Empowerment Measure related to sex differences in emotional investment across the nations of the International Sexuality Description Project, r(31) ⫽ –0.31, p ⬍ .05.

associated with neuroticism, providing some evidence of the conceptual equivalence of love across cultures. Cross-cultural variation in love was to some degree explained by the evolutionary theory that high levels of ecological stress—especially insensitive/ inconsistent parenting, harsh physical environments, and economic hardship—lead children to form insecure attachment styles that culminate in low levels of emotional investment in adulthood (Belsky et al., 1991). People from cultures with lower stress—such as those with ample health care, education, and resources—tend to develop secure attachment styles and high

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National Level of Emotional Investment

8.0

7.5

USA

Slovenia Bangladesh

7.0

Argentina Canada Brazil Malta Australia Portugal Philippines Austria New Zealand Croatia Slovakia Germany Zimbabwe Greece United Kingdom Israel Finland Romania Peru Lebanon Poland Serbia Netherlands Botswana Turkey Estonia Belgium Czech Rep. Italy

6.5

6.0

Malaysia Mexico

Switzerland Taiwan Morocco

Ethiopia Indonesia South Korea

Hong Kong

5.5 20

40

Japan

60

80

100

National Level of Individualism Figure 12-2. Individualism-collectivism related to emotional investment across the nations of the International Sexuality Description Project, r(40) ⫽ 0.31, p ⬍ .05.

self-esteem, and to have more emotionally investing romantic personalities. Emotional investment tendencies were also associated with fertility and promiscuous sexual attitudes and behaviors, though these links were not always consistent with Belsky et al.’s (1991) views on the evolution of love. Other factors are surely involved in the cross-cultural patterns of emotional investment observed across the nations of the ISDP. For example, national levels of emotional investment were positively correlated with national levels of individualism (see table 12-1). However, the direction of this relationship ran counter to the expectation that love in terms of emotional investment would be higher in more collectivist cultures (see figure 12-2; cf.

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K. K. Dion and Dion, 1996). Love as emotional investment was unrelated to Hofstede’s (2001) other dimensions of culture. The courtship-related socialization practices across different cultures also may have influenced the current findings (Medora et al., 2002). In South Korea, for example, it is only lately that young adults have had to work on their emotional investment skills in the context of dating relationships during the college years. Until recently, most marriages in several of the nations of the ISDP were arranged. On the other hand, in Western societies there is freedom of choice with regard to love. In more traditional societies, familial obligations and social and cultural expectations dictate a person’s love attitudes and expectations, and there is less freedom of choice in the domain of emotional investment and mating. Such influences may account for some of the national differences in emotional investment across the ISDP. Although these nation-level love findings seem informative, several additional limitations of the ISDP must be considered. First, the translations of the ISDP survey were not done by professional translators. This leaves open the question of translation quality. Second, even if the love items of the emotional investment scale have translation equivalence, that does not guarantee that the items have full metric equivalence across cultures (Van de Vijver and Leung, 2000). Third, increasing evidence suggests that people from different cultures possess varying degrees of response bias, including the acquiescence bias, the negative item bias, and socially desirable responding (Schmitt and Allik, in press). Thus, the current findings must be considered tentative until work is conducted that takes these issues more fully into account. The consistent intracultural reliability and correlations between love and personality do provide some reassurance that similar constructs are being measured across languages and cultures. Within this limited context, the current findings represent an advance in our understanding of sex, personality, culture, and love.

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13

Passionate Love: Cross-Cultural and Evolutionary Perspectives debra lieberman and elaine hatfield

“Hubb” is love, “ishq” is love that entwines two people together, “shaghaf” is love that nests in the chambers of the heart, “hayam” is love that wanders the earth, “teeh” is love in which you lose yourself, “walah” is love that carries sorrow within it, “sababah” is love that exudes from your pores, “hawa” is love that shares its name with “air” and with “falling,” “gharm” is love that is willing to pay the price. —Ahdaf Soueif (1999) Passionate love (sometimes termed “obsessive love,” “infatuation,” “lovesickness,” or “being-in-love”) is a powerful emotional state. Hatfield and Rapson (1993) defined it as “A state of intense longing for union with another. Passionate love is a complex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective feelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behaviors. Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy. Unrequited love (separation), with emptiness, anxiety, or despair” (p. 5). The Passionate Love Scale (PLS) was designed to assess the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral incidents of such love (Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986). The PLS has been found to be a useful measure of passionate love

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for young children, adolescents, and adults from a variety of cultures (see Doherty, Hatfield, Thompson, and Choo, 1994; Landis and O’Shea, 2000), and has been found to correlate well with neurocortical and fMRI measures of passionate love and sexual desire (see Bartels and Zeki, 2000; Fisher, 2003; Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Strong, Li, and Brown, 2004). In parallel with this research, neurobiologists have begun to explore the chemical and hormonal bases of passionate love, sexual desire, and sexual motivation (C. S. Carter, 1998; Fisher, et al., 2004; Komisaruk and Whipple, 1998; Marazziti, Akiskal, Rossi, and Cassano, 1999; Marazziti and Canale, 2004). In recent years, the topic of passionate love, sexual desire, and mate selection, once considered of only minor interest, has grown to become one of central concern to psychologists. Three things account for this dramatic change: (1) scientists have gained a new understanding of the critical importance of culture in shaping people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions; (2) technological advances, such as fMRI techniques, have made it possible for scientists to study phenomena (such as passionate love and darker emotions) once thought to be will-o’-the-wisps, too vague to study scientifically; and (3) recent advances in evolutionary psychology have made it clear that the challenges our ancestors faced may have a profound impact on the ways men and women behave today.

Cultural Factors Affecting Passionate Love and Sexual Desire CULTURE AND THE MEANING OF LOVE

In all societies, people find it easy to understand such emotional terms as love, joy, anger, fear, and sadness (see Jankowiak, 1995). Nevertheless, cultural values have been found to have a profound impact on the subtle shadings of meaning assigned to such constructs (see Nisbett, 2003). Shaver, Wu, and Schwartz (1991) interviewed young people in the United States, Italy, and the People’s Republic of China. As expected, in all three cultures, men and women identified the same five emotions as “basic,” or prototypic, emotions. These were joy/happiness, love/attraction, fear, anger/ hate, and sadness/depression. Men and women in these cultures also agreed on whether the various emotions should be labeled as positive experiences (such as joy) or negative ones (such as fear, anger, or sadness). They agreed, that is, with one exception—love. American and Italian subjects tended to equate passionate love with happiness; love was assumed to be an intensely positive experience. Students in Beijing, China, possessed a darker view of love. In Chinese there

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are few “happy love” words; love is associated with sadness. It is not surprising, then, that Chinese men and women associated passionate love with such ideographs (words) as infatuation, unrequited love, nostalgia, and “sorrow love.” More recently, social psychologists have explored folk conceptions of love in a variety of cultures—such as the People’s Republic of China and Indonesia. Researchers find that although in most cultures, people possess surprisingly similar views of love and other “feelings of the heart,” differences do in fact exist (see Shaver and Murdaya, 2001, and Jankowiak, 1995, for a review of this research). ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

At one time, scholars assumed that passionate love was “invented” by the troubadours in twelfth-century France. In fact, passionate love is as old as humankind. The Sumerian love fable of Inanna and Dumuzi, for example, was spun by tribal storytellers in 2000 b.c. Today, most anthropologists agree that passionate love is a cultural universal. Jankowiak and Fischer (1992) drew a sharp distinction between “romantic passion” and “simple lust.” They proposed that both passion and lust, although different, are universal feelings. To test this notion, they selected a sampling of tribal societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample in an effort to determine how prevalent romantic love was in those societies. They found that in almost all of these far-flung societies, young lovers talked about passionate love, recounted tales of love, sang love songs, and spoke of the longings and anguish of infatuation; when passionate affections clashed with parents’ or elders’ wishes, young couples often eloped. On this basis, the authors concluded that romantic love is a panhuman characteristic. There is considerable evidence that they are right (see Buss, 2003; Hatfield and Rapson, 1993; Jankowiak, 1995). Social anthropologists have explored folk conceptions of love in such diverse cultures as the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Trinidad, Morocco, and the Fulbe of North Cameroun. They have also studied the Mangrove (an aboriginal Australian community), the Mangaia in the Cook Islands, and Palau in Micronesia, and have worked among the Taita of Kenya. In all these studies, people’s views of passionate love appear to be surprisingly similar. One impact of globalization (and the ubiquitous MTV, Hollywood and Bollywood movies, chat rooms, and foreign travel) is to ensure that when people speak of “passionate love,” they are talking about much the same thing (see Jankowiak, 1995, for a review of this field research).

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In spite of the fact that passionate love is considered to be a cultural universal—an emotion thought to exist in all cultures and in all historical eras—cultural factors do seem to exert a profound impact on the commonness of such passionate feelings. They also appear to affect how intensely passion is experienced and how people attempt to deal with these tumultuous feelings. CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Americans are preoccupied with love—or so cross-cultural observers have claimed. Hsu (1985), an anthropologist, contrasted Western and Chinese values concerning passionate love and intimacy. American culture, he argued, is interested in personality. It attaches great importance to personal and emotional expression. Chinese culture is situation-centered. The Chinese are caught up in “a web of interpersonal relationships” (p. 33). Group members are required to conform to “the interpersonal standards of the society” (1971, p. 29). Chinese men and women tend to “underplay all matters of the heart” (1971, p. 12). Hsu (1953) maintained that such cultural differences have a critical impact on the ways in which people in these two societies view romantic love. The concept of romantic love fits in well with a North American cultural perspective but not with a Chinese cultural orientation, where one is expected to consider not just one’s personal feelings, but also obligations to others, especially one’s parents. Hsu wrote: “An American asks, ‘How does my heart feel?’ A Chinese asks, ‘What will other people say?’ ” (p. 50). He claimed that the Western idea of romantic love has virtually no appeal for young adults in China. He pointed out that the Chinese generally use the term love to describe not a respectable, socially sanctioned relationship, but an illicit liaison between a man and a woman. More recently, other cross-cultural researchers have noted that romantic love is less valued in traditional cultures with strong, extended family ties (Simmons, Vom Kolke, and Shimizu, 1986). On the basis of such testimony, early cross-cultural researchers (Goode, 1959; Rosenblatt, 1967) proposed that romantic love would be common only in modern, industrialized countries. The emerging evidence, however, suggests that men and women in a variety of cultures—individualist and collectivist, urban and rural, rich and poverty-stricken—are every bit as romantic as Americans. In one study, for example, Sprecher and her colleagues (1994) interviewed 1,667 men and women in the United States, Russia, and Japan. They found

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that in all three societies, the majority of young people were “currently in love.” They had expected American men and women to be most vulnerable to love; the Japanese, the least. In fact, 59 percent of American college students, 67 percent of Russian students, and 53 percent of Japanese students said they were in love at the time of the interview. In all three cultures, men were slightly less likely than women to be in love at the present time. There was no evidence that individualistic cultures bred young men and women who are more love-struck than do collectivist societies, however. Surveys of Mexican American, Chinese American, and European American students have found that in a variety of cross-national groups, young men and women show high rates of “being in love” at the present time (Aron and Rodriguez, 1992; Doherty et al., 1994). Culture and the intensity of passionate love What impact does culture have on how passionately men and women love? In one study, Hatfield and Rapson (1996) asked men and women of European, Filipino, and Japanese ancestry to complete the Passionate Love Scale. To their surprise, they found that men and women from the various ethnic groups seemed to love with equal passion. Doherty and his colleagues (1994), in a survey of European Americans, Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, and Pacific Islanders, secured similar results. What men and women desire in romantic partners Since Darwin’s (1871) classic treatise The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, evolutionary biologists have been interested in mate preferences. Many evolutionary psychologists contend that there are cultural universals in what men and women desire in a mate. In a landmark cross-cultural study, Buss (1989) asked over ten thousand men and women, from thirty-seven countries, to indicate what characteristics they valued in a potential mate. The survey interviewed people from a variety of geographic, cultural, political, ethnic, religious, racial, economic, and linguistic groups. Men and women were asked to consider eighteen traits and to rate how important each trait was in choosing a mate. Buss and his colleagues found that, overall, the single trait that men and women in all societies valued most was “mutual attraction-love.” After that, men and women cared next about finding someone who possessed a dependable character, emotional stability and maturity, and a pleasing disposition.

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Buss was interested in cultural universals; nonetheless, he could not help being struck by the powerful impact that culture had on preferences. In China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel (the Palestinian Arabs), and Taiwan, for example, young people were insistent that their mate should be “chaste.” In Finland, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and West Germany, on the other hand, most judged chastity to be relatively unimportant. (A few respondents even jotted notes in the margin of the questionnaire indicating that, for them, chastity would be a disadvantage.) In an alternative analysis of Buss’s (1989) data, Wallen (1989) attempted to determine which was more important—culture or gender—in shaping people’s mate preferences. He found that for some traits—such as good looks and financial prospects—gender had a great influence on preferences. (Gender accounted for 40–45 percent of the variance; geographical origin accounted for only 8–17 percent of the variance.) For other traits—such as chastity, ambition, and preferred age—on the other hand, culture mattered most. (Gender accounted for only 5–16 percent of the variance, whereas geographical origin accounted for 38–59 percent of the variance.) Wallen concluded that, in general, the cultural perspective may well be even more powerful than one’s evolutionary heritage in understanding mate selection. Cultural researchers provide additional evidence that in different cultural, national, and ethnic groups, people often desire very different things in romantic, sexual, or marital partners. Hatfield and Sprecher (1996) studied three powerful, modern, and industrial societies: the United States, Russia, and Japan. Men and women in Western, individualistic cultures (such as the United States and, to some extent, Russia) expected far more from their marriages than did couples in a collectivist culture (such as Japan). Cultural attitudes were also found to be critically important in determining what men and women desired in a mate. Culture and the willingness to marry someone you do not love In the West, romantic love is considered to be the sine qua non of marriage (Kelley, 1983; Sprecher, Aron, Hatfield, Cortese, Potapova, and Levitskaya, 1994). In the mid-1960s, Kephart (1967) asked more than a thousand college students: “If a boy (girl) had all the other qualities you desired, would you marry this person if you were not in love with him (her)?” In that era, men and women were found to possess very different ideas of how important romantic love was in a marriage. Men considered passion to be essential

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(only 35 percent of them said they would marry someone they did not love). Women were more practical. They claimed that the absence of love would not necessarily deter them from considering marriage. (A full 76 percent of them admitted they would be willing to marry someone they did not love.) Kephart suggested that while men might have the luxury of marrying for love, women did not. A woman’s status was dependent on her husband’s; thus, she had to be practical and take a potential mate’s family background, professional status, and income into account. Since the 1960s, sociologists have continued to ask young American men and women The Question. They have found that, year by year, young American men and women are coming to demand more and more of love. In the most recent research, 86 percent of American men and a full 91 percent of American women answered The Question (of whether they would wed without love) with a resounding “No!” (Allgeier and Wiederman, 1991). How do young men and women in other countries feel about this issue? Many social psychologists have pointed out that cultural values have a profound impact on how people feel about the wisdom of love matches versus arranged marriages. Throughout the world, arranged marriages are still relatively common. It seems reasonable to argue that in societies such as China, India, and Japan, where arranged marriages are fairly typical, they ought to be viewed more positively than in the West, where they are relatively rare. To test this notion, Sprecher and her colleagues (1994) asked American, Russian, and Japanese students: “If a person had all the other qualities you desired, would you marry him (her) if you were not in love?” The authors assumed that only Americans would demand love and marriage; they predicted that both the Russians and the Japanese would be more practical. They were wrong! Both the Americans and the Japanese were romantics. Few of them would consider marrying someone they did not love. The Russians were more practical. Russian men were only slightly more practical than men in other countries. It was the Russian women who were most likely to “settle.” In a landmark study, Levine and his colleagues (1995) asked college students in eleven nations if they would be willing to marry someone they did not love even if that person had all the other qualities they desired. In affluent Western nations, young people were insistent on love as a prerequisite for marriage. (In the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and England, few young people admitted they would say yes to a loveless marriage.) College students in affluent Eastern nations tended to vote for love as well. (In Japan and Hong Kong, couples insisted on love as a prerequisite for mar-

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riage.) Only in a very few traditional, collectivist, Third World nations were students willing to compromise. (In the Philippines, Thailand, India, and Pakistan, a fairly high percentage of college students said they would be willing to marry someone they did not love.) In these societies, of course, the extended family is still extremely important, and poverty is widespread. Research suggests that today, young men and women in many countries consider love to be a prerequisite for courtship and marriage. It is only in a few Eastern, collectivist, and poorer countries that passionate love remains a bit of a luxury. IN CONCLUSION

The preceding studies suggest that the large differences that once existed between Westernized, modern, urban, industrial societies and Eastern, modern, urban, industrial societies may be fast disappearing. Those interested in cross-cultural differences may be forced to search for large differences in only the most underdeveloped, developing, and collectivist societies—such as in Africa or Latin America, in China or the Arab countries (Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or the United Arab Emirates). However, it may well be that even there, the winds of Westernization, individualism, and social change are blowing. In spite of the censure of their elders, in a variety of traditional cultures young people are increasingly adopting “Western” patterns, placing a high value on “falling in love,” pressing for gender equality in love and sex, and insisting on marrying for love (as opposed to arranged marriages). Such changes have been documented in Finland, Estonia, and Russia (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula, 2003), as well as among an Australian aboriginal people of Mangrove and a Copper Inuit Alaskan tribe (see Jankowiak, 1995, for an extensive review of this research). Naturally, cultural differences still exert a profound influence on young people’s attitudes, emotions, and behavior, and such differences are not likely to disappear in our lifetime. In Morocco, for example, marriage was once an alliance between families (as it was in most of the world before the eighteenth century), in which children had little or no say. Today, although parents can no longer simply dictate whom their children will marry, parental approval remains critically important. Important though it is, however, young men and women are at least allowed to have their say (see Davis and Davis, 1995). Many have observed that today two powerful forces—globalization and nationalism—are contending for men’s and women’s souls. True, to some

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extent the world’s citizens may be becoming “one,” but in truth the delightful and divisive cultural variations that have made our world such an interesting, and simultaneously dangerous, place are likely to add spice to that heady brew of love and sexual practices for some time to come. The convergence of cultures around the world may be reducing the differences in the ways passionate love is experienced and expressed, but tradition can be tenacious, and the global future of passionate love cannot be predicted with any certainty.

The Development of Sexual Aversions: Kin Detection and the Emotion of Disgust According to social psychologists, factors that influence whom one will choose as a sexual partner include degrees of familiarity, similarity, and proximity (e.g., Berscheid and Walster, 1978). Yet, who best fits this description? Family members! They are familiar—you have known them your entire life. They are similar—you share the same religion, the same culture, and a strong physical resemblance, and have a greater than average chance of sharing the same genes. Last, they’re close by and easily accessible— perhaps even under the same roof and down the hall. Nevertheless, nuclear family members are, typically, the last group of individuals considered as appropriate sexual partners. Why is this? Intuitively, the answer to this question is that sex with family is disgusting and repugnant. But why do most people across diverse cultures feel this way rather than perceiving sexual behavior with a close family member as exciting and erotic? One answer to this question can be obtained by considering our species’ evolutionary history. In particular, throughout our evolutionary past, recurring selection pressures (e.g., pathogens and deleterious recessive genes) led to the evolution and maintenance of psychological mechanisms promoting the avoidance of sexual relations with close genetic relatives. Such an inbreeding avoidance system requires at least two main components: (1) systems designed to estimate of the probability that each individual in the surrounding social environment is a close genetic relative (i.e., systems for detecting kin), and (2) systems that take these computed estimates of kinship as input and regulate motivations to seek or avoid an individual as a sexual partner accordingly. The nature of the information humans use to detect kin remains largely unknown. In addition, the emotive systems entrained to regulate sexual avoidance have not been fully explored. In this section, the psychological

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mechanisms governing the development of a sexual aversion toward close genetic relatives are discussed. First, theoretical considerations regarding the selection pressures that led to the evolution of inbreeding avoidance mechanisms are reviewed. Then evidence from inbred humans and nonhuman animals is presented to show that sexual relations with close genetic relatives are in fact deleterious. This is followed by a discussion of the cognitive systems mediating kin detection. In particular, the cues governing the detection of a specific class of kin, siblings, is discussed along with ethnographic studies exploring whether these cues mediate the development of a sexual aversion between genetically unrelated individuals reared as siblings. Last, the emotion of disgust is proposed as the cognitive program entrained by kin detection systems to motivate sexual avoidance. At the opposite end of the spectrum from lust, sexual disgust is an important, though often neglected, aspect of human mating psychology. SELECTION PRESSURES AND THE EVOLUTION OF INBREEDING AVOIDANCE SYSTEMS

There are sound biological reasons why psychological mechanisms designed to avoid mating with a close genetic relative are expected to exist. Throughout our species’ evolutionary history, the selection pressures posed by deleterious recessive mutations (e.g., Bittles and Neel, 1994) and shortgeneration pathogens (e.g., Tooby, 1982) would have severely negatively impacted the health and viability of offspring of individuals who were close genetic relatives. As a result, individuals who avoided mating with close genetic relatives and instead mated with someone who did not share an immediate common ancestor would have enjoyed greater reproductive success. Consequently, the presence of these two selection pressures would have led to the evolution and maintenance of systems that decreased the probability of close kin matings in species where close genetic relatives regularly encountered one another over the life span. THE EFFECTS OF INBREEDING DEPRESSION

The negative fitness consequences associated with inbreeding have been acknowledged in a number of different nonhuman species (Charlesworth and Charlesworth, 1999; Husband and Schemske, 1996; Keller, Arcese, James, and Hochachka, 1994; Crnokrak and Roff, 1999). In general, parents who are close genetic relatives, such as siblings, tend to produce fewer and less viable offspring. These decrements in fitness can be manifested in a number of ways, such as an increased susceptibility to disease-causing

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organisms and, hence, increased rates of mortality (e.g., Jimenez, Hughes, Alaks, Graham, and Lact, 1994; Acevedo-Whitehouse, Gulland, Greig, and Amos, 2003), impaired cognitive functions (e.g., Deckard, Wilson, and Schlesinger, 1989), and inability to attract a mate (Hoglund, Piertney, Alatalo, Lindell, Lundberg, and Rintamaki, 2002). Studies from human populations have documented the negative fitness consequences associated with mating with a close genetic relative (Schull and Neel, 1965; Adams and Neel, 1967; C. O. Carter, 1967; Seemanova, 1971; Bittles and Neel, 1994). Inbreeding leads to an increased probability of the expression of recessive deleterious genes, leading in turn to a greater incidence of major congenital malformations and postnatal mortality (Bittles, Mason, Greene, and Rao, 1991). Many studies in humans have focused on offspring of first cousins since this form of marriage is quite common in many cultures (Bittles, 2005). Though the effects of inbreeding depression in offspring of first cousins are expected to be much less severe than in offspring of individuals related at an r ⫽ 0.5 (parents, offspring, and siblings), there have, nevertheless, been reports of various deformities and deficiencies across a variety of populations (Stoltenberg, Magnus, Lie, Daltveit, and Irgens, 1997; Demirel, Katlanoglu, Acar, Bodur, and Paydak, 1997; Jaber, Merlob, Bu, Rotter, and Shohat, 1992; Zlotogora, 2002). In addition to increased probabilities of mortality, congenital malformations, and diseases, children of first cousins have been shown to have cognitive impairments. In two early studies, Cohen, Bloc, Flum, Kadar, and Goldschmidt (1963) and Schull and Neel (1965) both found offspring of first-cousin marriages to have lower IQs than offspring of nonrelatives. However, these studies did not take into account important variables such as the socioeconomic status of the parents (Bashi, 1977). Controlling for this variable and other demographic factors, Bashi, focusing on an Arab population, found that children of nonrelatives performed better on intelligence (e.g., Raven’s Progressive Matrices; Raven, 1960) and achievement tests (e.g., subject tests in science, mathematics, and language) than children of first cousins. Studies focusing on the effects of inbreeding between siblings have found substantially greater risk of mortality and morbidity when compared with first-cousin matings (Bittles, 2005). Compared with inbreeding depression rates of 2–6 percent in offspring of first cousins (compared with population baseline), it has been estimated that sibling matings lead to an inbreeding depression of 45 percent (Seemanova, 1971; Ralls, Ballou, and Templeton, 1988; Aoki and Feldman, 1997). Moreover, since spontaneous abortions may go undetected, the effects of consanguineous marriages may be signif-

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icantly underestimated (Bittles et al., 1991). There have been a handful of studies documenting the fitness consequences of offspring born of two siblings. In all studies, there was an increased risk of mortality, mental deficiencies, congenital malformations, and disease (Schull and Neel, 1965; Adams and Neel, 1967; C. O. Carter, 1967; Seemanova, 1971).

Components of Incest Avoidance Mechanisms Given these negative fitness consequences of inbreeding, natural selection would have favored those individuals who preferred to not mate with close genetic relatives. However, to solve the adaptive problem of inbreeding avoidance, two distinct systems are required: (1) systems for identifying those individuals who have a high probability of being a close genetic relative (e.g., a sibling, parent, or offspring)—in short, kin detection—and (2) systems that regulate sexual attraction/avoidance in accordance with the computation of the likelihood that an individual is a close genetic relative. These two components are discussed in turn, with specific consideration of the cues our mind uses to detect a particular class of close relative: siblings. SYSTEMS FOR DETECTING KIN

Specifically, what is the nature of the information used to categorize an individual as a close genetic relative? There are a number of possible cues that kin detection systems may have been designed to take as input. One potential source of information regarding kinship is linguistic and cultural input (e.g., during development, you are told who counts as a close genetic relative and how to feel about him or her). However, this poses several problems. First, kin terms can be used across genetic boundaries, and blur the distinction between types of close genetic relatives and between kin and non-kin. For example, in the United States, “brother” might be used to refer to a full, half, step, or adopted sibling, and in some cultures might encompass cousins or coalitional allies. Second, due to asymmetries in relatedness, individuals may not share common “interests” regarding whom to help and when (Trivers, 1974). For example, a child would benefit (in terms of inclusive fitness) from helping a full sibling (with whom the degree of relatedness is .5) more than a half sibling (with whom the degree of relatedness is .25), all other things being equal. However, a female is equally related to all her children, regardless of their paternity, and might therefore urge each child to, for example, “help your sister,” not linguistically differentiating between full and half siblings. Thus, kin terms might disregard or obscure genetic distinctions, making them evolutionarily less reliable cues to kinship (but see

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Jones, 2004). Last, systems for detecting kin exist in many other animal species (Hepper, 1991; Hepper and Cleland, 1999), and predate the evolution of language and culture. There is no reason to suspect that either of these recent inventions has erased or replaced such phylogenetically ancient mechanisms. So if linguistic and cultural inputs alone do not provide a stable solution, what does? Because we cannot “see” another person’s genes directly, the best natural selection could do is to shape mechanisms that use cues that were reliably correlated with genetic relatedness in the ancestral past to compute an internal index of relatedness. To the extent that different cues reliably correlated with an individual being a particular type of close genetic relative (e.g., mother, father, offspring, or sibling), different detection mechanisms are expected to exist. For example, because a female always gave birth to her own offspring, she could have relied on the process of birth and/or the visual and olfactory cues derived from a newborn to reliably and accurately categorize that child as a close genetic relative (e.g., Porter, Matochik, and Makin, 1983, 1984). However, due to the fact that males of our species could not be 100 percent certain of their paternity, seeing one’s mate give birth to an offspring would not have solved the problem of assessing degree of relatedness to that offspring. Rather, for males, assessments of paternity may rely on cues signaling the sexual fidelity of their mate. Therefore, there may not be a general kin detection mechanism that relies on the same set of information for detecting all types of close genetic relatives. Instead, the advantages of kin selection would accrue most strongly to individuals who possessed specialized detection systems capable of narrowing in on the small subset of states that correlated with an individual being a particular kind of kin. The following discussion focuses on the cues used by the human cognitive architecture to detect a particular class of kin, siblings. Cues to siblinghood: The Westermarck Hypothesis Throughout our evolutionary history, the nutritional demands of breast-feeding, along with the need for protection, would have meant that children of the same mother were typically reared in close proximity during early childhood. Also, when hunter-gatherer bands split into smaller units (e.g., due to size or difficult times), nuclear families (including siblings) tend to stay together as a unit (Lee and DeVore, 1968; Chagnon, 1992). This means that in ancestral environments, early childhood would have offered valuable information regarding relatedness of individuals in prolonged close association. The notion that early childhood association plays an important

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role in the assessment of relatedness was first proposed by Edward Westermarck (1891), a Finnish social scientist. Noting the absence of sexual attraction between siblings, Westermarck hypothesized that early childhood propinquity leads to the development of a sexual aversion during adulthood. This has come to be known as the Westermarck Hypothesis (WH). A number of researchers have tested the WH (see e.g., Shepher, 1971, 1983; Wolf, 1995; Williams and Finkelhor, 1995; Bevc and Silverman, 1993, 2000; Lieberman, Tooby, and Cosmides, 2003; Fessler and Navarrete, 2004). For some, the focus of research has been testing the WH in populations where genetically unrelated individuals are reared as siblings. These have become well-known studies in the inbreeding avoidance literature and are reviewed in the next section. Empirically testing the Westermarck Hypothesis: Ethnographic measures Two well-known anthropological studies have taken advantage of cultural institutions that inadvertently created a “natural experiment” where children who were genetically unrelated were reared in close physical proximity throughout childhood. The first study focused on the peer groups of Israeli kibbutzim (Spiro, 1958; Talmon, 1964; Shepher, 1971, 1983). The second, far more comprehensive series of investigations was by Arthur Wolf and colleagues, who examined the adoption of baby girls into the households of their future husbands in Taiwan (sim-pua marriages; Wolf, 1995). Both of these “natural experiments” provide strong support for the Westermarck Hypothesis and shed light on the nature of the cues mediating the recognition of siblings. Israeli kibbutzim provided a unique natural laboratory allowing for the investigation of the role co-residence plays in the development of a sexual aversion. According to Shepher (1983), children born on a kibbutz were raised in peer groups consisting of six to eight individuals who were within two years of age of each other. Since there was a very low probability that biological siblings would occupy the same peer group (due to birth intervals greater than two years), individuals brought together in these groups tended to be unrelated. Most daily activities, such as attending school, eating, showering, using the toilet, playing, and sleeping, were done with other group members. A woman, who might or might not be the biological mother of anyone within the peer group, slept in the same house with its members. This rearing environment led to the close physical association of individuals who were not genetic relatives and allowed a series of researchers to explore the effects this arrangement had on sexual attraction. The Westermarck Hy-

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pothesis predicts that individuals reared in close physical association will develop a sexual aversion toward one another during adulthood. Three of the pioneering social scientists to explore the commonly noted lack of sexual attraction and absence of marriage between peer group members were Spiro (1958), Talmon (1964), and Shepher (1971, 1983). In his survey of marriages within one kibbutz, Spiro (1958) found that no members within a peer group married one another or engaged in sexual behaviors during adulthood. Talmon (1964) found a similar pattern in her study evaluating 125 married couples across three kibbutzim. She discovered that no marriages and no reported sexual behavior occurred between individuals within the same peer group who had been reared together from early childhood. Perhaps the most comprehensive survey was completed by Shepher (1971, 1983). Shepher investigated the sexual behavior and patterns of marriage in all of the second-generation adults living in one kibbutz (N ⫽ 65) and then surveyed all of the marriages occurring between second-generation kibbutz members in all 211 Israeli kibbutzim. In the former he found the complete absence of sexual behavior and marriage between individuals reared in the same peer group from early childhood. In the latter study, of the 2,769 marriages that occurred across all 211 Israeli kibbutzim surveyed, only fourteen were between people reported to have been reared in the same peer group. Upon closer inspection, Shepher found that none of these fourteen couples had been reared together continuously throughout the first six years of life. Shepher reasoned that continuous exposure throughout childhood, and especially the first six years of life, was critical for the development of a sexual aversion that became manifest at the age of fourteen or fifteen (Shepher, 1983). All of this occurred despite the lack of prohibitions or taboos against such relations. In fact, most parents were hopeful their children would marry within their respective peer group (Shepher, 1971). A second natural experiment that allowed for the testing of the Westermarck Hypothesis was the cultural institution of Taiwanese minor marriages. When the Japanese colonial government took control of Taiwan in the late 1800s, it compiled meticulous demographic records, including birth rates, death rates, marriages, divorces, and adoptions. Also recorded was the form of marriage that took place. In Taiwan during this period, there were three different forms of marriage: patrilocal (major), uxorilocal, and minor. In the major form of marriage, the bride went to live with the husband’s family, whereas in the uxorilocal form, the bridegroom went to live with the wife’s family. In both cases, the parents of the children arranged the marriage and the husband and wife did not meet until the day of their

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marriage. In the minor form of marriage, a sim-pua (little bride), usually between a few months and three years of age, was adopted into a family for the purpose of marrying one of the sons later in life. The anthropologist Arthur Wolf and colleagues spent forty years collecting and analyzing data to determine whether marriages in which the wife had resided with her husband throughout early childhood differed from those in which the wife first met and started to live with her husband at the time of marriage (see Wolf, 1995). Wolf reasoned that if co-residence duration influences sexual attraction, as the Westermarck Hypothesis predicts, then in those marriages where husband and wife co-resided from very early childhood, there should be a reduced sexual attraction as measured by rates of fertility, divorce, and extramarital affairs. Moreover, Wolf hypothesized that the earlier a sim-pua was adopted into her husband’s family, the more pronounced the effects would be. Wolf surveyed more than twenty thousand marriages and found that women in the minor form of marriage had twice as many extramarital affairs as women married in the major or uxorilocal form. In addition, women in minor marriages had three times the rate of divorce, and fertility rates 40 percent lower than women married in the major or uxorilocal pattern. When Wolf looked at the age at which the daughter was adopted into her husband’s family, he found an increased frequency of divorce and extramarital affairs and a lower fertility rate if the girl was adopted into a family with a son designated to be her future husband before her third birthday. If the girl was adopted after her third birthday, the rates of fertility, divorce, and extramarital affairs were similar to those found for women married in the major fashion. These data led Wolf to conclude that for an aversion to develop, individuals must be exposed to one another before the age of three. These cross-cultural studies have provided evidence in support of the Westermarck Hypothesis, showing that genetically unrelated individuals who are reared together from early childhood develop a sexual aversion toward one another. As informative as these studies are, many questions remain: Does co-residence duration mediate the development of sexual aversions between individuals who are in fact genetic relatives? Is there a specific time frame of co-residence necessary for the activation of a sexual aversion? Is coresidence duration the only cue used by the cognitive architecture to identify siblings, or are other cues used (e.g., facial similarity and cues derived from the catabolism of proteins associated with the major histocompatibility complex, a component of the immune system that may signal genetic relatedness; see Penn and Potts, 1999)? Does co-residence duration serve as a cue for identifying both older and younger siblings? After all, older siblings would

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have been exposed to a potent cue signaling relatedness, namely, seeing their biological mother pregnant and caring for (e.g., breast-feeding) a newborn (see Lieberman et al., 2003; Lieberman et al., under review). Last, does coresidence, or other cues mediating sibling detection, predict psychological measures assessing sexual aversions to siblings, as implied by the sociological measures used by Shepher and Wolf? This last question relies on the existence of cognitive programs regulating sexual aversions, the topic of the next section. COGNITIVE PROGRAMS GUIDING SEXUAL AVERSION: THE EMOTION OF DISGUST

In addition to systems designed to take in cues from the social environment and compute an estimate of kinship (i.e., kin detection), systems for regulating sexual attraction and avoidance are required to achieve inbreeding avoidance. The amplitude of a sexual avoidance mechanism should be a function of the computed estimate of kinship (Lieberman et al., 2003). For example, when the kinship estimate is high (i.e., when cues signaling that an individual is likely to be a close genetic relative are present), then systems motivating sexual attraction will be downregulated and systems motivating sexual avoidance will be upregulated. The greater the kinship estimate, the greater the activation of the program mediating sexual avoidance. The question remains, however, What program governs sexual aversions? There are various programs that could, in principle, solve this problem. One possibility is a system that causes an individual to withdraw from situations in which there is a high probability that sexual relations with a close relative might occur. A response that renders an individual merely disinterested in such a situation, for example, would not be as effective at avoiding sexual relations with close relatives as a response that enabled an individual to actively monitor others’ desires and withdraw from potentially incestuous (and, hence, reproductively costly) situations. This is particularly important given the possibility of inbreeding conflict, where males may actively seek sexual relations with female relatives (Tooby, 1977; Haig, 1999). Under ancestral conditions, close kin regularly encountered one another throughout their lifetime. In the absence of any sexual aversion, there would have been a substantial chance that two close genetic relatives would engage in sexual relations. The presence of this statistically recurrent situation would have selected for psychological programs that brought about an appropriate response when cues indicating a close relative’s desire to mate were present. A cognitive system already in place that could have caused an individual to withdraw from a potential inbreeding situation is the emotion

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of disgust (Lieberman, 2003). From an evolutionary perspective, an emotion is a coordinated response of a suite of specific cognitive and physiological mechanisms to an evolutionary recurring situation (Tooby and Cosmides, 1990, 2000; Rosenberg and Ekman, 1994). As a repeated situation, the statistical possibility of sexual relations occurring between close family members would make an emotion, such as disgust, a good solution to this adaptive problem. It has been widely hypothesized that the original function of disgust is to avoid the oral incorporation of various harmful substances (see, for example, Rozin and Fallon, 1987; Ekman and Davidson, 1994; Izard, 1993). More specifically, disgust evolved to inhibit the ingestion of toxic materials and contact with disease-causing agents (e.g., feces, dead organisms, and spoiled food; Curtis and Biran, 2001). Disgust, which causes one to avoid or withdraw from harmful substances, such as pathogens, could have been co-opted during human evolution to motivate withdrawal from sexual relations with a close genetic relative. The characteristic trait of disgust to motivate avoidance means that it can be mobilized to deter an unsolicited advance by a close family member. Moreover, it can also function to counteract any sexual desire that may arise due to the fact that one’s close genetic relative may be an attractive member of the opposite sex and possess traits (including accessibility) that feed into sexual attraction systems. There are several reasons why the emotion of disgust may have been coopted for this new function. For example, a link between disgust and sex may have already existed due the pathogen avoidance function of disgust. Disgust functions to prevent contact with others’ bodily fluids because these possess potentially harmful foreign pathogens. However, this system of avoidance must be suppressed for sexual contact to take place (Angyal, 1941). If, however, engineering refinements were made that decreased the threshold of activation of disgust in response to sexual contact with particular individuals (as opposed to increasing it), the system would well be on its way to serving as a sexual avoidance mechanism. IN CONCLUSION

The model of a human inbreeding avoidance system proposed here provides an empirical framework within which information hypothesized to serve as cues to relatedness can be tested. The magnitude of the sexual aversion (or attraction) associated with a particular individual should be a function of the cues present in the social environment that were correlated with relatedness in our ancestral past. It is therefore possible to reverse engineer the kinds of cues used to detect each type of close genetic relative by

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quantitatively matching individual variation in opposition to incest to individual variation in parameters that may have served as cues to relatedness. Recently a handful of researchers have employed this method to investigate the nature of the cues our mind uses to identify siblings (e.g., DeBruine, 2002; Lieberman, 2003; Lieberman et al., 2003; Fessler and Navarrete, 2004). Understanding how sexual aversions develop in addition to how sexual attraction operates will provide a more comprehensive picture of mate selection in humans. Evolutionary considerations of the kinds of systems likely to exist that govern mating psychology in tandem with cross-cultural analyses of mating preferences and behavior will assist in the mapping of the cognitive architecture of human mating psychology.

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14

Individualism, Collectivism, and the Psychology of Love karen k. dion and kenneth l. dion

What is love? Asking this question implies a search for clearly defining features of universal relevance. Theory and research on the psychology of love have often proceeded from the assumption that various “basic” processes, such as biological, cognitive, and/or evolutionary processes, underlie this complex human experience. From this perspective, the social context in which these processes unfold is relevant but not the central focus. An alternative view is that the psychology of love can be understood only by considering the social structure in which the patterns of personal relationships unfold. From this perspective, the social context is pivotal. Differences in the development and evolution of cultures contribute to the structuring of relationships in a manner that in turn is central for understanding the psychology of love (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1996b). Therefore, another way of asking about the nature of love is: How is love understood? This wording offers the possibility of multiple frames of reference, each of which may offer a different answer. It is this second question that has guided our thinking about love. When we first wrote about the relation between the social context and

Author Note: Ken Dion died on November 16, 2004. I dedicate this chapter to him.

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the nature of love in The Psychology of Love (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1988), relatively little research in social psychology had taken a cultural perspective on close relationships. Now the field of close relationships, along with many other areas of psychology, has seen considerable growth of interest in the impact of culture and culture-related factors on intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. In our 1988 chapter, we introduced several issues central for understanding the psychology of love in a cultural framework that have guided our subsequent thinking and research. We suggested that culture-related systems of belief about the relation between the individual and the group, especially important in-groups such as the family, were central to different understandings of love, and noted our intent to pursue this line of inquiry (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1988). We have been examining this hypothesized interrelation in our subsequent research, which we will discuss here. The constructs of individualism and collectivism have been the focus of much theoretical and empirical attention (e.g., Hofstede, 1980, 2001; Hui, 1988; Hui and Triandis, 1986; Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier, 2002). We have reviewed many of the key assumptions underlying these concepts elsewhere (see K. K. Dion and Dion, 1993; 1996a). The core point for the present discussion is that the system of beliefs underlying each construct addresses the issue of the hierarchy of priorities when balancing the goals, needs, and preferences of the individual members within a group (such as the family) with those of the entire in-group. Moreover, each of these constructs can be analyzed at either the level of the individual or at a societal level. We have used the terms psychological individualism and psychological collectivism for the personal level and societal individualism and societal collectivism at the macro or societal level.

Individualism and Love Based on evidence from diverse sources in the social sciences, we previously proposed that at the societal level, marriage based on romantic love was more likely to be endorsed in societies where individualism, as contrasted with collectivism, prevailed (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1993). Consistent with this hypothesis, Levine and his colleagues (Levine, Sato, Hashimoto, and Verma, 1995) found that the importance of being “in love” was stressed as a precondition for marriage among young adults (university students) from several Western societies (e.g., the United States, England, Australia). Across the eleven societies examined, Levine and his colleagues found that societal individualism as assessed by Hofstede’s (1980) measure of this construct was positively related to endorsing the importance of marriage based

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on love. Part of the reason for this relation can be seen in the perceived function and role of intimate relationships, such as marriage, in adult life. If romantic love is seen as an opportunity for self-discovery and selfexpression, as discussed by Bellah and his colleagues (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton, 1985) in their analysis of individualism in American life, the link between individualism and “being in love” as a basis for marriage follows from this view of love. Interestingly, one can predict that marked societal change in the nature and structure of key institutions, such as the family, will in turn be reflected in changing ideologies about the function of intimate relationships. For example, in the People’s Republic of China, the “one child per family” policy has markedly changed family structure. Children growing up in this context might be expected to develop a strong sense of self as highly unique. This changed family structure might therefore be expected to produce a cohort of young adults who view personal relationships as a means for selffulfillment and self-discovery (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1993). If so, they should be more likely to stress the importance of being “in love” as a basis for marriage. At the psychological level, the relation between individualism and love has been debated. There have been competing claims about the relation between individualism and relationship quality. In part, this debate reflects different conceptualizations about the meaning of the term individualism. Wachtel (1983) pointed out that this term has been used both to stress the uniqueness and dignity of each person and also to describe excessive preoccupation with one’s self-interest, such that the needs of the larger community were ignored. Waterman (1981, 1984) proposed that freedom of choice, respect for the integrity of others, and fulfilling one’s personal potential are central features of individualism; thus, one might expect a positive relation between individualism and relationship quality. If so, individualism should facilitate the development of love for one’s partner. However, others have conceptualized individualism, or at least one type of individualism, as an extreme belief in one’s personal autonomy and control, as seen in Sampson’s (1977) term self-contained individualism. With this self-construal, people try to be as self-sufficient as possible, regarding dependence on others and others’ dependence on them with ambivalence. A similar point has been made by Bellah and his colleagues (Bellah et al., 1985) in their discussion of the role of individualism in both the public and the private/personal domains of life, noting that the competing pulls of wanting one’s freedom and the needs of one’s partner can create problems for developing intimacy. Given this wariness concerning interdependence among

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those endorsing self-contained individualism, we predicted a negative relation between this form of psychological individualism and the quality of love for one’s partner. Paradoxically, when thinking about individualism at both the societal and the personal level, although in societies characterized as individualistic, marriage based on romantic love is a cultural ideal, the presence of some forms of individualism at the personal level can hinder the likelihood of realizing this ideal (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1993). Our research and that of others has found evidence supporting this hypothesis: namely, that psychological individualism can make it more difficult to develop and maintain the desired love-based marriage. Several studies have found that self-contained individualism is negatively related to relationship quality. In this section, the main points will be presented from research that we have conducted examining the relation between psychological individualism and the affective quality of love for one’s partner, as well as one’s beliefs about the nature of love and the nature of marriage. To assess beliefs about the relation between the individual and the group (individualism and collectivism), we have used items developed by Breer and Locke (1965), sampling both domain-specific content and more global items intended to be more general indicators of each construct. Participants in the research to be described were young adults (university students). In our first study (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1991), using a series of simultaneous regression analyses, we examined the contribution of different components of psychological individualism and collectivism, along with age and sex of participants. The most consistent pattern of findings occurred for one component of psychological individualism, which we characterized as reflecting selfcontained individualism. The items comprising this component stressed qualities such as the importance of personal freedom and autonomy, personal control over one’s life, and valuing self-sufficiency. Greater self-contained individualism was related to lesser likelihood of reporting that one had ever been in love. Individualists also endorsed a more “ludic” view of love as described by Lee’s (1973) typology of ideologies of love. The ludic style is characterized by a noncommittal, permissive view of love, as reflected in the idea of love as a type of game. Of particular interest, among those who did report ever having been in love, self-contained individualism also was negatively related to reported quality of the experience of love and love for one’s partner. The experience of love was less likely to be described by qualities such as tender, deep, and rewarding as self-contained individualism increased. To assess reported love for one’s partner, we used Rubin’s (1970) measure and analyzed its three

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subscales (caring, need, and trust) identified by Steck and colleagues (Steck, Levitan, McLane, and Kelley, 1982), along with Pam, Plutchik, and Conte’s (1975) measure of reported physical attraction to one’s partner. On all of these measures, we found the predicted negative relation between selfcontained individualism and the quality of love for one’s partner. This form of psychological individualism was associated with less reported caring, need, and trust of one’s partner as well as less reported attraction. In our second study (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1993b), we once again looked at the relationship quality correlates of psychological individualism and collectivism. In this study, we included some additional measures: attitudes toward marriage and toward divorce. Once again, using the Breer and Locke (1965) items, the “self-contained individualism “component emerged (see K. L. Dion and Dion, 2005, for description of the self-contained individualism index). Similar to the first study, greater individualism was related to less likelihood of ever having been in love. As predicted, self-contained individualism was related to more negative attitudes toward marriage and a greater wish to marry later. Other researchers (Agnew and Lee, 1997; Kemmelmeier, Sanchez-Burks, Cytron, and Coon, 1998, study 2) have similarly found evidence for a negative relation between psychological individualism and relationship commitment among samples of university students in the United States. They used scales constructed from the Breer and Locke (1965) items to assess individualism, and a measure developed by Rusbult and her colleagues (see Rusbult, Martz, and Agnew, 1998) to assess commitment in close relationships. There is thus converging evidence from diverse university samples that some aspects of individualism contribute negatively to love and relationship quality. Since these studies involved young adults, specifically, university students, it is relevant to ask about the nature of the relation between individualism and love among a more representative group of adults. We examined this issue (K. L. Dion and Dion, 2005) by analyzing previous survey data from the General Social Survey (GSS), which were collected in 1993. The General Social Survey, a probability survey of English-speaking adults in the United States, is conducted almost annually (Davis and Smith, 1992). In 1993, five questions were included about individualism. One of these items quite clearly captured the core of self-contained individualism with its strong focus on putting one’s own needs and goals before those of other people. Also included in the GSS were questions about satisfaction with different types of relationships, such as marriage and friendship, as well as items about subjective well-being and other items related to the quality of one’s life. The pattern of findings across a series of regression analyses

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found considerable evidence of a negative relation between “self-first” individualism and reported relationship quality, as well as other aspects of subjective well-being. For example, the greater the individualism, the less reported happiness in romantic relationships, less reported happiness in marriage, and lower satisfaction with family life and with friends. Reported relationship outcomes also emerged as negatively related to individualism; for example, a lower sense of perceived success in one’s family life and more likelihood of having been divorced in the past year or the previous five years. (For a more detailed description of these findings, see K. L. Dion and Dion, 2005.) The important point here is that the relationship quality correlates of self-contained individualism for university student samples in Canada and the United States and for a probability sample of adults in the United States were similar. Across these different studies, the pattern of results indicated that psychological individualism negatively contributed to the quality of close relationships and to the experience of love. Our and others’ work on individualism and love has focused for the most part on its role in the development, quality, and maintenance of heterosexual relationships in adulthood. Recent evidence also suggests, however, that the problematic aspects of individualism are evident in other important close relationships and the manifestation of love in those relationships. Although not undertaken to study the psychology of love, research on adult children’s attempts to care for their aging parents and their parents’ responses to this care, conducted by Pyke and her colleagues, identified several themes consistent with our hypothesis that some forms of psychological individualism have a negative relation to relationship quality. Using a qualitative research methodology based on interviews with members of three generations (aging parents, midlife adult children, and adult grandchildren), Pyke and Bengtson (1996) identified both individualistic and collectivistic systems of beliefs concerning the family. Families whose orientation was largely individualistic stressed the value of personal autonomy of family members, voluntary association, and looser kinship ties among family members. Interestingly, family relations were frequently described in more negative or ambivalent terms. Pyke and Bengston (1996) pointed out that among the families whose prevailing ideology was individualism, the adult children were more likely to delegate the physical caregiving to others (nonfamily hired help, nursing homes) and focused on help managing parents’ finances and arrangements for eldercare. The underlying motivation when caring for ailing parents seemed to be one of duty rather than affection; hence, caregiving was seen as a burden. From the individualist perspective, aging parents valued their

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own autonomy and neither expected nor wanted intervention in their lives by their adult daughters and sons. To ask for or need help might threaten the parent’s relation with the adult child since autonomy was so highly valued. The following statement poignantly reveals this dilemma. An eightynine-year-old mother said of her fifty-three-year-old daughter: “ I don’t want her to have to be burdened with me. Because I want her to keep on liking me, and if they have to take care of you, you never know if they are going to like you or not” (Pyke and Bengtson, 1996, p. 384). Older parents thus received relatively little direct help from their children who endorsed a view of the family as supporting the individual autonomy of each member. Pyke (1999) subsequently examined the implications of a individualistic family orientation for eldercare for the power dynamics in a family. By adhering to individualism, older adults could preserve their sense of independence and not yield any of their parental authority to their children. Although this system of beliefs and related behaviors was functional for older adults in good health, with the dependencies related to poor health Pyke (1999) found that endorsing an individualistic view of the family was related to problems for both aging parents and their adult children, who now had to provide a level of care-related behavior that conflicted with these beliefs and often was resented by their parents. Moreover, the previous stress on self-sufficiency meant that adult children would not always be able to provide the most sensitive caregiving since they were unaware of their parents’ preferences and wishes, and inexperienced in providing caregiving. In essence, adult children might be least able to be fully emotionally responsive to the needs of aging parents when their parents’ needs were the greatest. In some cases, Pyke pointed out, aging parents who were individualists might prefer to forgo closer relationships with their adult children if that meant acknowledging increasing dependency and deferring to their children’s wishes, resulting in less companionship and less instrumental assistance from their sons and daughters. The research conducted by Pyke and her colleagues looked at the relation between individualism and family functioning in a domain different from the one we have been studying. It was independently designed to address other issues than those which have guided our thinking, and used a different research approach. Nonetheless, their results provide striking converging evidence consistent with the pattern of findings in our own program of research on the challenges that individualism poses for the expression of love in close relationships.

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Collectivism and Love Previously we have suggested that there should be less emphasis on the cultural ideal of marriage based on love in societies characterized as collectivistic, and that affective involvement with one’s partner might be less intense, with affect diffused across a more complex pattern of family relationships (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1993). At the societal level, G. R. Lee and Stone (1980), examining the anthropological evidence for 117 nonindustrialized societies, found a relation between family structure (nuclear versus extended) and the importance of marriage based on love and choosing one’s spouse. Love-based marriage was stressed more in societies with a nuclear structure than with an extended family structure. More recent data, cited earlier, from Levine and his colleagues (1995) have shown that in some traditionally collectivistic societies, a substantial proportion of young adults say that they would marry a person with whom they were not in love as long as this person had the other qualities they wished. However, in other societies with collectivistic cultural traditions (e.g., Japan), almost none of the young adults were willing to marry without being in love, suggesting a move toward greater individualism in some domains. At the personal level, psychological individualism and its contribution to the experience of love have yielded a more consistent pattern of findings in our program of research on the psychology of love, compared with psychological collectivism. However, in one of our studies, an interesting pattern occurred. In our second study on individualism, collectivism, and love (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1993b, 2005, our findings for the more general component of psychological collectivism, which we labeled “belongingness,” were consistent with the second part of the hypothesis stated at the start of this section. Psychological collectivism was related to views of the nature of love and love for one’s partner that stressed different aspects of caring rather than intense affect or self-discovery. Specifically, endorsing the importance of group-related belongingness and communal goals was positively related to reported caring for one’s partner (Rubin’s measure). This type of psychological collectivism also was associated with viewing love as based on friendship, pragmatic concerns, and, of particular importance, altruistic or “agapic” goals. In another study (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1993a), we found that women (university undergraduates) from several Asian ethnocultural backgrounds were more likely to endorse an agapic view of love compared with AngloCeltic women. An agapic view of love stresses the importance of putting

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one’s partner’s needs and interests before one’s own. These findings suggest that psychological collectivism promotes the development of a caring network of close relationships. Previously we proposed that psychological collectivism increased the likelihood that affective ties would be diffused across a network of family relationships, with the bond between spouses being one among many family ties (K. K. Dion and Dion, 1993). If that is so, the relation between collectivism and love for one’s partner might be expected to be responsive not only to the quality of marital interaction but also to changes in the larger family system. In a qualitative study, Ingersoll-Dayton and her colleagues (Ingersoll-Dayton, Campbell, Kurokawa, and Saito, 1996) compared long-term marriages (on average, four decades) in Japan and the United States. These older adults from both cultural contexts reported intimacy with their spouse. What differed was how and at what phase of their marriage this intimacy developed. Among the couples from the United States, participants commented on the desire to keep a high level of psychological intimacy in their marriage and also “to negotiate a separate identity and space in which to develop autonomously” (p. 394). This desire to develop a separate sense of self was especially evident among the older women. The themes emerging from interviews with the Japanese participants were different. In the early years of their marriage, for both wife and husband their primary obligations and ties were to different aspects of the larger family system, such as attending to the needs of the extended family and duties to other members of the kinship group. However, the Japanese couples reported a greater sense of intimacy with their spouse later in their marriage, the time when the interviews were conducted. The reasons for this perceived change were both individual (e.g., the husband’s being more willing to express affection toward his wife) and structural (loss of members of the larger family group with whom close bonds had existed). Psychological collectivism may have implications not only for reported intimacy in family relationships but also for the concrete expression of love, as manifested in the quality of care given to family members. In the previous section, Pyke and Bengtson’s (1996) research on family belief systems and eldercare was discussed, focussing on individualism. Pyke and her colleagues also looked at collectivism as an orientation guiding family-related beliefs and behavior. Families following a more collectivistic/communal approach stressed the importance of family bonds, the need for mutual assistance, and the interdependency of family members. They often depicted other family members positively. From this view of the family, affection and attachment, rather than duty,

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were the main reasons underlying eldercare, which was not viewed as a burden. One daughter, commenting on her increased involvement in caring for her mother, commented: “So then, of course, we got even closer because I was doing more things for her than I had done before” (Pyke and Bengtson, 1996, p. 384). Pyke and Bengtson noted that when contrasted with members of more individualistic families, those who endorsed a more collective set of beliefs seemed to be characterized by “a nearly unlimited commitment to care giving” (p. 384). In this qualitative analysis, the more communal approach had clear benefits for aging parents in terms of the quality and amount of care received from their adult children. However, as Pyke (1999) noted in her subsequent analysis of family power relationships, the psychological cost of receiving this care was deference to the wishes of the children, in essence a lessening or loss of parental power or authority. If parents sought to assert their wishes and were not deferential, children were less likely to offer help or companionship. Pyke pointed out that this research was conducted in a more individualistic society (the United States), so that a more “bounded form” of collectivism might have developed, and speculated that comparative research in more collectivist societies would be of interest. In summary, findings from our own work and that of other researchers have shown that some aspects (forms of) psychological collectivism seem to be positively related to important markers of relationship quality in different types of close relationships. The implications of psychological collectivism for the psychology of love and its concrete expressions in close relationships is a promising direction meriting more research attention.

Cultural Contexts and the Psychology of Love Previously we noted that culture contributes to how the self is understood and defined (K. L. Dion and Dion, 1988). Although this statement now seems almost axiomatic given the current research literature in social/ personality psychology on culture and the self, at the time of our initial writing, the relation between cultural factors and the self was mostly discussed by scholars from cross-cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, and related areas. We drew on the writing of several Asian scholars, who noted that concepts of personhood in Western psychological theory focused on what could be described as an atomistic view of each person as a psychologically separate and bounded entity. By contrast, the psychology of personhood as illustrated by Asian concepts such as jen portrayed persons a part of a network of relationships. This different view of self in turn has

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implications for how love is understood. Here we present further implications of this perspective. If the self is conceptualized at core as distinct and separate from the other, then one function of love is to create bonds and ties with others and, ultimately, to break down the sense of isolation and disconnection inherent in this view of self. However, the process of developing this bond is complex and relies on active, ongoing negotiation as a relationship develops. In this context, verbal disclosure and a sense of self-validation—talking about oneself and one’s needs, feeling understood by the other, hearing the other’s verbal expression of love—are likely to be important aspects of this ongoing process. Verbal disclosure may be especially important for the development of love when forming close relationships must be negotiated on an ongoing basis, since interdependence cannot be assumed to be a basic property of the self. Love is the bridge connecting two otherwise isolated selves. It is formed by the constant attempt to build connections between self and other. At the same time, if self is viewed as a separate entity from the other, the connection between self and other is optional, maintained insofar as the needs and goals of each individual are met. This perspective applies not only to love in the context of peer relationships (close friendship; marriage) but also, other relationships such as parent-adult child, which might be assumed to have a more permanent quality. As presented earlier, if family belief systems reflect a view of family members as separate selves, then love itself is contingent on the more needy family member’s “not being a burden” to the less needy. If this condition is not met, love and support may be withdrawn from those with the greatest need, as suggested in the research conducted by Pyke and her colleagues discussed in an earlier section. By contrast, if the self emerges in the context of a network of relationships, this inherent interdependence between self and other would predict a different dynamic for understanding the nature of love. There should be less emphasis on mutual expression of personal needs and preferences as a basis for forming and maintaining a connection, and more emphasis on behaviors (helping, supporting, taking care of the other’s needs) that acknowledge and support the presence of a bond already assumed to exist. The presence of the relationship itself is evidence of deep and enduring connections—for example, between parent and adult daughter or son and between spouses. Accordingly, there is no need for verbal affirmation or reassurance about the nature of the bond. The question “Do you love me?” would seem superfluous. For example, writing about family relationships in Japanese society, Iwao (1993) noted that “the expectation of complete tacit understanding” in intimate relationships would make verbal expression of love both

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less likely and less desirable. Indeed, Iwao suggested that when confronted with a direct question about one’s depth of feelings for another, such as a wife asking her husband if he loved her, the individual queried might respond with frustration and annoyance since this explicit declaration was regarded as unnecessary. In social contexts where competing views of the nature of self and other occur, tensions may arise in close relationships over how love is understood and expressed. The nature of love and how it is manifested in close relationships differ as a function of core beliefs about self as having a distinct identity from others or as being interdependent, with identity emerging as a function of this relatedness. For example, K. K. Dion (2006) noted that the basis for tension concerning many close relationship issues (such as choice of one’s spouse, freedom to date, family responsibilities) between parents and their adult children in families from immigrant groups in the United States and Canada at core is due to different ideologies of optimal human development. Parents and their adult children may hold markedly different views of the nature of self and of identity, which in turn have implications for the expression of love and affection in one’s close relationships. From the immigrant parents’ perspective, “letting go” is not the hallmark of successful parenting, nor is it the ultimate expression of love for one’s adult children. Rather, as a parent, one expresses love by active involvement in the grown children’s lives, given the permanent interdependencies in the family. Thus, culture-related views of self and other may contribute to how love is understood among different generations in immigrant families. For example, Pyke’s (2000) interviews with adult children from Korean and Vietnamese immigrant families in the United States is consistent with this point. She commented that in Korean and Vietnamese cultural traditions, helping and offering forms of instrumental support were valued expressions of love for one’s family, rather than declarations of affection and personal feeling. By contrast, the adult children from these immigrant families wanted their parents to be more expressive. The following comment from one young man vividly shows the difference in these two views. Remembering a conversation with his father when the interviewee was a child, he said: “I tried saying ‘I love you’ one time and he looked at me and said, ‘Are you American now? You think this is The Brady Bunch? You don’t love me. You love me when you can support me’ ” (Pyke, 2000, p. 247). In closing, theories about the psychology of love are themselves cultural constructions. Many current theories seem to be guided by the assumption that self and other are distinct entities, so that the challenge for individuals

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in marital and family relationships is to develop and maintain intimacy, with love needing to be constantly affirmed to create a connection between two distinct selves. If, however, one begins with the assumption that a sense of self in marriage and other close family relationships is inherently interdependent, that is, self has no independent meaning except in relation to other(s), how love is understood and manifested reflects a very different set of assumptions. This conceptual framework has the potential to offer distinctive insights. Our own research and that of others have emphasized the importance of social/cultural contexts and related belief systems concerning the relation between self and other, such as individualism and collectivism, for understanding the psychology of love and its implications for both relationship processes and outcomes.

References Agnew, C. R., and Lee, B. (May 1997). Individualism in romantic relationships: Associations with commitment, satisfaction, and self-other inclusion. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, Washington, D.C. Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., and Tipton, S. M. (1985). Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Breer, P. E., and Locke, E. A. (1965). Task Experience as a Source of Attitudes. Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey. Davis, J. A., and Smith, T. W. (1992). The NORC General Social Survey. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Dion, K. K. (2006). On the development of identity: Perspectives from immigrant families. In R. Mahalingam (ed.), Cultural Psychology of Immigrants. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum. Dion, K. K., and Dion, K. L. (1991). Psychological individualism and romantic love. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 6, 17–33. ———. (1993). Individualistic and collectivistic perspectives on gender and the cultural context of love and intimacy. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 53–69. ———. (1996a). Cultural perspectives on romantic love. Personal Relationships, 3, 5– 17. ———. (1996b). Introduction: Toward understanding love. Personal Relationships, 3, 1–3. Dion, K. L., and Dion, K. K. (1988). Romantic love: Individual and cultural perspectives. In R. J. Sternberg and M. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love, pp. 264– 289. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ———. (1993a). Gender and ethnocultural comparisons in styles of love. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 17, 463–473. ———. (August 1993b). Individualism-collectivism and romantic love. Symposium pa-

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per presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada. ———. (2005). Culture and relationships: The downside of self-contained individualism. In R. M. Sorrentino, D. Cohen, J. M. Olson, and M. Zanna (eds.), Culture and Social Behavior: The Ontario Symposium, vol. 10, pp. 77–94. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum. Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in WorkRelated Values. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage. ———. (2001). Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Hui, C. H. (1988). Measurement of individualism-collectivism. Journal for Research in Personality, 22, 17–36. Hui, C. H., and Triandis, H. C. (1986). Individualism-collectivism: A study of crosscultural researchers. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 17, 222–248. Ingersoll-Dayton, B., Campbell, R., Kurokawa, Y., and Saito, M. (1996). Separateness and togetherness: Interdependence over the life course in Japanese and American marriages. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 13, 385–398. Iwao, S. (1993). The Japanese Woman: Traditional Image and Changing Reality. New York: Free Press. Kemmelmeier, M., Sanchez-Burks, J., Cytron, A., and Coon, H. M. (August 1988). Individualism and romantic love: A comparison of two hypotheses. Paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco. Lee, G. R., and Stone, L. H. (1980). Mate-selection systems and criteria: Variation according to family structure. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 42, 319–326. Lee, J. A. (1973). Colours of Love. Toronto: New Press. Levine, R., Sato, S., Hashimoto, T., and Verma, J. (1995). Love and marriage in eleven cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 26, 554–571. Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., and Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3–72. Pam, A., Plutchik, R., and Conte, H. R. (1975). Love: A psychometric approach. Psychological Reports, 37, 83–88. Pyke, K. (1999). The micropolitics of care in relationships between aging parents and adult children: Individualism, collectivism and power. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 661–672. ———. (2000). “The normal American family” as an interpretive structure of family life among grown children of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 240–255. Pyke, K., and Bengtson, V. L. (1996). Caring more or less: Individualistic and collectivist systems of family eldercare. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 379–392. Rubin, Z. (1970). Measurement of romantic love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 265–273. Rusbult, C. E., Martz, J. M., and Agnew, C. R. (1998). The investment model scale: Measuring commitment level, satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size. Personal Relationships, 5, 357–391.

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Sampson, E. E. (1977). Psychology and the American ideal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 767–782. Steck, L., Levitan, D., McLane, D., and Kelley, H. H. (1982). Care, need, and conceptions of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 481–491. Wachtel, P. L. (1983). The Poverty of Affluence: A Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life. New York: Free Press. Waterman, A. S. (1981). Individualism and interdependence. American Psychologist, 36, 762–773. ———. (1984). The Psychology of Individualism. New York: Praeger.

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Conclusion: The Nature and Interrelations of Theories of Love karin weis

The authors writing for this volume have presented a wide range of theories and research on the topic of love. They have used different methods and studied different aspects of the phenomenon. Having gotten some insights into all these areas, one can clearly say that things are on the move in the study of love. However, at times the variety of results and the different aspects of love that are studied can be quite overwhelming. Perhaps the ultimate goal is to have one all-encompassing theory of love that is able to explain all of its phenomena without contradictions. This goal is a distant prospect, however. It may be asked, therefore, what common ground the theories presented in this volume have. They cover different aspects of love, but there is still a considerable overlap among the theories and the results achieved. In this chapter, we will look at the different kinds of love and the mechanisms associated with them. In this way, it may be possible to see whether, and if so, to what degree, they overlap. Since many of the theories in this book deal with biology, we will first consider the biological theories, then the taxonomies, and finally the prototype approach. Afterward, we will consider the influences personality, context, and time have on love. Next, we will explore the cultural differences that are presented in several chapters. We will also consider what general strategies humans have developed to achieve the goals associated with love and mating, and what consequences

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failure in these domains may have. Last, we will explore some questions that are still unanswered and that may be addressed in future research.

Integration of the Different Love Styles VIEWS BASED ON BIOLOGICAL THEORIES

Some of the biological theories described in this volume propose the existence of a number of systems that drive the behaviors we associate with love. Comparison shows that most of the love styles and systems overlap to a certain degree, so that there seems to be at least some common ground. The biological theories all have in common an attempt to understand human cognitions, emotions, and behaviors in the light of human and primate evolutionary history. They state that the human brain and the psychological mechanisms evolved by natural selection exist in order to solve recurring problems of survival and to facilitate reproduction. These mechanisms are supposed to be universal, although some of them may be specific to one sex or a particular age. However, some of the biological theories presented here have more than that in common with each other, and also with other theories, in that they suggest systems regulating cognition, emotions, and behavior, which have some degree of overlap with other kinds of love. In chapter 3, “A Behavioral Systems Approach to Romantic Love Relationships,” Phillip R. Shaver and Mario Mikulincer suggest that there are three innate motivational systems: attachment, caregiving, and sex. They developed this idea in part as a result of Bowlby’s (1969/1982) ethological theory of attachment. According to this theory, certain motivational systems have evolved over the course of human development because they increase the likelihood that infants will survive and reproduce successfully. The attachment system is activated when a person encounters a threat and wants to draw back to an attachment figure that can provide shelter. The caregiving system’s function is to provide protection and support to significant others when they are in need. The sexual system works to bring sexual partners together to achieve reproduction. Each of these systems comprises specific goals and strategies to achieve these goals. In chapter 5, “The Drive to Love,” Helen Fisher takes a neurological approach, but also proposes three different brain-based systems for love— the sex drive, attraction, and attachment—that are similar to Shaver and Mikulincer’s three motivational systems. The sex drive is responsible for sexual desire. Attraction equals romantic love and is characterized by attention focused on one particular mate and on mate-guarding, for example.

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Attachment is associated with mutual grooming, nest-building, and the desire to maintain proximity to the partner. Fisher’s attachment shares some features with Shaver and Mikulincer’s attachment system, the goal of which is to provide shelter and possibilities of retreat in situations of threat. The sex systems of both theories work to achieve successful reproduction. However, whereas Fisher’s system essentially equates attraction with romantic love, its caregiving counterpart in Shaver and Mikulincer’s theory refers to an altruistic form of compassionate love, in that it is squarely focused on the welfare of another person. Shaver and Mikulincer, and Fisher, are not the only ones to establish a connection between love and attachment. Attachment is also the main topic of chapter 6, “A Biobehavioral Model of Attachment and Bonding,” by James F. Leckman, Sarah B. Hrdy, Eric B. Keverne, and C. Sue Carter. They distinguish between bonding, which puts an emphasis on biological processes mediating parental behaviors and infant responsiveness, and attachment, which has a stronger psychological connotation. In their biobehavioral model, besides observing affiliative behaviors and bonding in a number of species, they explore the biosocial mechanisms that form the basis of attachment behavior both in humans and in mammals. Peptides, such as oxytocin, and opioids are associated with bonding between infants and their parents. Oxytocin seems to be involved, for example, in sexual arousal, pairbonding, and maternal behavior. Opioids act in the brain much like drugs such as heroin. When they are released, for example, during parturition and suckling, they evoke positive affects, therefore reinforcing maternal care. Fisher also agrees that oxytocin plays a role in attachment. Her attraction system also shares some behavioral features with Leckman and colleagues romantic love, which is characterized mainly by time-consuming, intrusive thoughts and obsession. The necessity and sense of different kinds of love is also recognized in chapter 2, “A Dynamical Evolutionary View of Love,” by Douglas T. Kenrick. He states that during their evolution, humans have encountered specific problems again and again. Different kinds of love are relevant to these problems. For example, humans need to attract potential mates and, if they have found a mate, to try to maintain this relationship. They also need to take care of their offspring in the best way possible. As every generation of humans has encountered these problems, they have developed decision biases that help them solve problems associated with particular goals. For example, males generally tend to ascribe more importance to attractiveness in females than females do to attractiveness in men. The reason is that attractiveness serves as a cue for the fertility of the woman. Females, on the contrary,

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attend to the status of the potential mate to assure he will be able to provide for offspring. Since problems such as parental care, on the one hand, and mate-seeking, on the other, need different solutions, different kinds of love are relevant for the different domains. TAXONOMIES OF LOVE

The intent of the chapters in the taxonomy section is to describe certain kinds of love and, in some cases, to establish lists of kinds of love based on certain theoretical assumptions. The different kinds of love proposed in the taxonomies can be partly assigned to the three brain systems and motivational systems described above. At times, they comprise a mixture of more than one of these components. This overlap becomes clearest in chapter 8, “Searching for the Meaning of ‘Love,’ ” in which Ellen Berscheid suggests that there are four kinds of love: attachment, compassionate, companionate, and romantic. Attachment love is characterized by the seeking of proximity to a protector, usually in a threatening situation. Compassionate love is an altruistic love that has at its center the welfare of the other, without necessarily expecting that person to reciprocate. Companionate love or liking refers to friendship between people and is based on rewardpunishment principles: if someone is treated well by another person, he or she tends to like that person, whereas if someone is treated badly, he or she tends to dislike that person. The fourth kind of love that Berscheid proposes, romantic love, is a passionate type of love that involves sexual desire. Berscheid’s love styles show some overlap with the biologically based systems of Shaver and Mikulincer and of Fisher. Attachment love clearly finds its counterpart in the attachment systems of Shaver and Fisher. Compassionate love seems to correspond best with Shaver and Mikulincer’s caregiving system. Berscheid’s romantic love may be a mixture of the sex systems of Shaver and Mikulincer and of Fisher, and may comprise parts of Fisher’s attraction system as well as Shaver and Mikulincer’s caregiving system. Companionate love may be related to the attachment systems and caregiving. The six love styles of Clyde Hendrick and Susan S. Hendrick (see chapter 7, “Styles of Romantic Love”) also can be assigned to one or more kinds of love or kinds of systems mentioned above. However, the three primary love styles—eros, ludus, and storge—cannot be assigned primarily to one kind of love in the other taxonomies. As the three secondary styles, they are in general more adequately mapped onto more than one style of the other taxonomies. Eros, for example, is characterized as a passionate and erotic kind of love as well as involving intense emotions.Therefore, it matches well with the romantic love of Berscheid and the sex drives of both Fisher and

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of Shaver and Mikulincer because of its erotic content. In addition, some of the elements of eros may be present in Fisher’s attraction system, which is similar to romantic love in humans. Ludus is rather hard to assign to any of the styles and systems mentioned above. It is a kind of game-playing, uncommitted love that is characterized by deception. One could argue that any kind of love could be uncommitted. However, because of the deception component, it cannot really be assigned to most of the other love styles. The attachment of Fisher, of Shaver and Mikulincer, and of Berscheid does not include an uncommitted component because the very core of attachment is to seek to be attached to and to be sheltered by a person across a longer time span. Shaver and Mikulincer’s caregiving and Berscheid’s compassionate love do not fit the characteristics of ludus, because altruistic acts do not have much in common with a game-playing uncommittedness. Ludus maps best onto the romantic love of Berscheid and the attraction of Fisher, as well as the sex drives of Fisher and of Shaver and Mikulincer. The game-playing, uncommitted elements seem to fit best the kind of passionate relationship that develops between two lovers but is not necessarily meant to be serious and can vanish within a short time. Storge as a kind of companionate friendship is easier to match with other love styles. It matches best with Berscheid’s companionate love, and also comprises elements of the attachment love of Berscheid, Fisher, and Shaver and Mikulincer, as well as Shaver and Mikulincer’s caregiving system. Turning to the three secondary “colors” of love, agape, the altruistic and sacrificial kind of love, is closely related to Berscheid’s compassionate love and Shaver and Mikulincer’s caregiving. It may also contain some elements of companionate love. For the last two styles, it is a bit more complicated. Pragma, the practical kind of love, might be best seen as related to Berscheid’s companionate love, which is ruled by reward and punishment. Berscheid suggests that in this kind of love, we love those people best who reward us—who attend to our needs. That is much of what pragma is about—attaining what one desires. Facilitation of the achievement of one’s goals is one reason to engage in a pragmatic relationship, and so pragma and companionate love seem definitely to be related. The last of the six love styles is mania, a kind of obsessional love oscillating between ecstasy and agony. Obsessional love most often happens in the domain of romantic relationships. Therefore, mania seems to be related to Berscheid’s romantic love and Fisher’s attraction system, as well as to the sex drives of Shaver and Mikulincer and of Fisher. In his duplex theory of love (see chapter 9, “A Duplex Theory of Love”), Robert J. Sternberg suggests eight kinds of love comprising various combinations of intimacy, passion, and commitment. The easiest kind of love to

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assign to other love styles or systems is surely non-love, in which none of the three components are present. Since no love is experienced, it may be assumed that this state is not related to any other kinds of love mentioned above. Friendship is characterized as a kind of love in which intimacy is present, but neither passion nor commitment. Therefore, friendship best can be mapped onto the storge of the Hendricks and the companionate love of Berscheid. Although (short-term) friendship may also comprise some elements of attachment, it does not really overlap with it because it does not comprise serious elements of commitment, according to Sternberg’s definition. Some kind of commitment or continuity is necessary, however, to build up attachment, as defined in the theories of Fisher, of Shaver and Mikulincer, and of Berscheid. Friendship shares the feature of lacking serious commitment with the Hendricks’ ludus style of love. Infatuated love is characterized by the presence of the passion component, but the absence of both intimacy and commitment. It contains the intense emotions of the Hendricks’ eros and the obsession of their mania. It may also be associated with the sex drive components of Fisher and of Shaver and Mikulincer, in that the passion component is so salient in infatuated love. Empty love is a kind of love in which neither intimacy nor passion is present, but in which a person is nevertheless committed to loving someone. Although certainly different, empty love may share some features with attachment, since attachment is associated with maintenance of proximity and separation anxiety. Separation anxiety may be a reason for couples deciding to stay together even though intimacy and passion have long left their relationship. But there is still some comfort in the habits of their relationship that makes them stay together. Romantic love is characterized by the presence of both intimacy and passion and the absence of commitment. Sternberg’s romantic love can relatively easily be assigned to the romantic love of Berscheid and Fisher (attraction). Furthermore, romantic love also has common features with the Hendricks’ eros, in that intense emotions and physical attraction are associated with it. Since passion is involved, the sex drive components of Shaver and Mikulincer and of Fisher may also play a role in romantic love. Companionate love is characterized by intimacy and commitment; in this case, however, passion is not involved. Sternberg’s companionate love shares its name with Berscheid’s companionate love, indicating a substantial overlap. It is also related to the Hendricks’ storge in its companionate aspect, and in that passion is missing. Because commitment is present in compa-

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nionate love, it shares this characteristic with the attachment love of Berscheid, of Shaver and Mikulincer, and of Fisher. Fatuous love is characterized by feelings of both commitment and passion, but no stabilizing intimacy. The passion element of fatuous love bears some semblance to the intense feelings in the Hendricks’ eros, and the romantic love of Berscheid and Fisher. However, the element that is missing in these kinds of love, but that is present in fatuous love, is commitment. The sex drive posited by Shaver and Mikulincer and by Fisher also has some commonalities with the passion component of fatuous love. Consummate love unites all three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment. It therefore encompasses several of the styles of love mentioned above. The romantic love of Berscheid and the eros of the Hendricks are part of consummate love, as well as of Fisher’s attraction and the sex drive component of both Fisher and of Shaver and Mikulincer. Furthermore, consummate love also means that the couple has a high level of intimacy, therefore making it more similar to companionate forms of love, such as the ones suggested by Berscheid and the Hendricks (storge). It is also related to the attachment system posited by Fisher, by Shaver and Mikulincer, and by Berscheid, in that both partners try to maintain proximity and exhibit affiliative behaviors. As far as the partners are also concerned about one another’s welfare and try to attend to one another’s needs, Shaver and Mikulincer’s caregiving system is involved in consummate love as well as in compassionate love (Berscheid) and agape (Hendrick and Hendrick). There is another connection between Shaver and Mikulincer’s theory and Sternberg’s love triangle, in that the area of the love triangle can be enlarged by an optimal functioning of the three systems of attachment, caregiving, and sex. Sternberg’s taxonomy generally differs from the others outlined in this book in that it does not primarily seek differences between the kinds of love in content or associated behaviors. Rather, Sternberg suggests three basic components of love whose combination results in eight different kinds of love. His view of love as a story, part of his duplex theory, deals with content. Another kind of love, communal responsiveness, is introduced by Margaret S. Clark and Joan K. Monin in chapter 10 (“Giving and Receiving Communal Repsonsiveness as Love”). Communal responsiveness includes the response to the needs that a person has exposed. The response focuses on the person’s welfare and his or her needs without any conditions attached, which means that the responding person does not help because he or she expects to be helped in return. This kind of love is similiar to Berscheid’s compassionate love and the Hendricks’ agape in that it is concerned

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with the other’s welfare. It also shares common features with Shaver and Mikulincer’s caregiving system, which represents a kind of altruistic love. Communal love differs from the kinds of love described in the other chapters, however, in that it is a prominent feature in a variety of kinds of relationships. People probably see the particularities of their relationship as best characterized by one of the love styles described above, such as romantic love or friendship, because there are important qualitative differences in these types of love. However, communal love encompasses a number of different relationships without necessarily defining their nature. It may be present in friendships as well as in love between relatives or married couples. PROTOTYPE ANALYSIS AND THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF LOVE

Prototype analyses ask which features of love are the typical ones that incorporate people’s concepts of love most clearly. They can help to develop categorizations and to examine existing categorizations for similarities, in that they can elucidate whether the different kinds of love that have been identified have any core concepts in common. In her prototype analysis of love (see chapter 11, “A Prototype Approach to Studying Love”), Beverley Fehr found that companionate rather than passionate conceptions of love are considered to be central parts of the concept of love, and that most theories of love can be conceptualized on the basis of a distinction between passionate and companionate love. A factor analysis of sixty-eight features that, for laypersons, are associated with the concept of love was done to identify to which subcategories the various features can be assigned. It revealed three factors that corresponded to Sternberg’s intimacy, passion, and commitment factors (Aron and Westbay, 1996). WHAT’S THE USE OF ALL THESE DIFFERENT KINDS OF LOVE?

The purpose of taxonomies and prototypes in the field of love is to catalog the different forms of love according to a predetermined system, so that the resulting conceptual framework may serve as a basis for further analysis and discussion. Therefore, taxonomies are of use, regardless of which method is used to study love. The analysis above demonstrates that although a large number of love styles and systems have been suggested, they overlap to a considerable degree. So there seems to be at least a minimum amount of agreement as to what different kinds of love exist and how they may consist of other components of love. However, there are still no specific definitions, and there is a lack of a common conceptual vocabulary of love to allow for unambiguous discourse about love. When engaging in such a scientific discourse, it is important to make sure that everybody talks

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about the same thing and has the same understanding when talking about a certain concept. When people talk about romantic love or attachment love, do they really have the same concept in mind? At this point in the development of the field of love, such clarity of terms does not necessarily exist. It presents one area where more research is needed to reach a convergence among conceptions of the different kinds of love.

Influence of Context, Personality, and Time Now that we have learned about the kinds of love that exist, the question is whether there are differences between people in how they experience love—whether the situation they are in influences the love experienced, and whether their experiences and the types of love they endorse are the same throughout life or are subject to change. In chapter 4, “The Evolution of Love,” David M. Buss suggests that love is an adaptation to solve problems of reproduction that have recurrently arisen over the generations. Since all people have faced these problems and have needed to find solutions for them, these psychological adaptations are considered to be universal. However, their being universal does not necessarily mean that the associated experiences are similar. They can differ from person to person. For example, all persons have the predisposition to feel jealousy. But there may be some people who never are jealous, because their partners do not exhibit any signs of infidelity and do not give them any reason to feel jealous. The extent to which people feel jealous also depends on their personality. As Buss, and Shaver and Mikulincer, acknowledge, there are individual differences in the attachment, caregiving, and sex systems, and they emphasize the importance of both context and personality. But what about an individual in the course of his or her life? Hendrick and Hendrick state that love styles vary across individuals and time. At any moment in his or her life, a love profile can be generated for a person according to the salience of each of the six love styles. This profile, however, can change over time. The profile of a girl in her early twenties can differ considerably from her profile fifteen or twenty years later; for example, the main focus may shift from eros to companionate love. This point also appears in Sternberg’s theory of love as a story, according to which individuals have different love stories over their lifetime, or even more than one love story at a given time. The love stories are the expressions of the different conceptions people have about love. Whereas some people may see love as a game, others may see it in terms of gardening, for example, whereby the relationship continually needs to be cared for and nurtured.

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Conclusion THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE ON LOVE

No one will deny that culture has an effect on many, if not all, parts of human life. Therefore, it is not surprising that the study of love across cultures is part of what psychologists examine in the area of love. The cultural theories in this volume differ in that they stress either the differences or the similarities between cultures. The chapter by Karen K. Dion and Kenneth L. Dion (chapter 14, “Individualism, Collectivism, and the Psychology of Love”) focuses on the differences in the experience of love and associated behaviors depending on the identification of a culture as either individualistic or collectivistic. Individualistic and collectivistic cultures differ in the extent to which, in decision-making, the interests of the individual or the in-group (for example, the family) are weighed as more important. Love in collectivist cultures emphasizes altruistic goals and is based on friendship, whereas love in individualistic countries tends to be more game-playing and permissive. In this view, culture plays an important role in the explanation of differences between different peoples. David P. Schmitt (in chapter 12, “Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love”), on the contrary, tries to explain differences from an evolutionary perspective. He points out that despite all the differences, there are commonalities encompassing more or less all cultures. In his research on love, he uses a construct labeled “emotional investment.” Emotional investment encompasses many of the features considered central to love, including the intimacy, passion, and commitment of Sternberg’s duplex theory of love. Emotional investment is related across cultures to high levels of extraversion and agreeableness, but not related to neuroticism. Variables such as ecological stress have similar consequences in most cultures. Children who grow up in physically harsh environments, for example, tend to exhibit less emotional investment than children who grow up in more moderate environments. Debra Lieberman and Elaine Hatfield emphasize in chapter 13 (“Passionate Love: Cross-Cultural and Evolutionary Perspectives”) that love is a cultural universal. Similarities across cultures include the development of systems to avoid inbreeding, such as kin detection and the emotion of disgust connected with situations in which sexual contact could develop with a close relative. However, there are cultural differences in the meanings that are assigned to love. Whereas in the United States passionate love is associated with feelings of happiness, in China it is associated with sadness (Shaver, Wu, and Schwartz, 1991). Furthermore, the concept of romantic love does not fit in well in cultures other than the Western ones. In China, for example,

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where love is associated with the consideration of one’s obligations to others, romantic love does not have so much appeal to young people (Hsu, 1981). However, in some areas, gender can be of more importance than cultural differences. For traits such as good looks, gender has a greater influence on preferences than culture does (Wallen, 1989). So although most theories state that love is a universal phenomenon, culture and other factors such as gender do influence the experience of love and the behaviors that are associated with it. Most theories acknowledge that love in its different aspects is dependent on both context and personality. The taxonomies of love overlap to some extent, but also cover different regions of the “love space.” Thus there is still no common understanding of how many different kinds of love there are or of what distinguishes them. However, it is acknowledged that different kinds of love exist and need to exist, because they serve different purposes.

Mechanisms to Achieve One’s Goals In the domain of love, just as in any other domain of life, people have a number of wishes and goals they would like to achieve. They are looking for potential mates. Once they have found a mate, they usually try to keep him or her, they want to reproduce, and so on. Both Kenrick and Shaver and Mikulincer posit that humans have particular goals they want to achieve, and their theories are complementary in the ways they propose that humans try to achieve their goals. Kenrick stresses the role of decision biases and, therefore, of cognition. Different kinds of relationships (for example, with friends or one’s romantic partner) are associated with different decision biases. Shaver and Mikulincer’s main focus, on the contrary, is on the three behavioral systems of attachment, caregiving, and sex, and the strategies associated with each system, which include behaviors serving to attain the goal, for example, of finding a suitable mate. But what happens if these strategies are not successful? If people do not achieve their goals, the consequences can be quite different. Shaver suggests that a failure of goal achievement results in either hyperactivation strategies, where the person “fights” for his or her goal, or deactivation strategies, where the goal is more or less “denied” in order to avoid frustration. The fight for one’s goal is particularly explicit in Buss’s exploration of the “dark” side of love. When people fall out of love and are in danger of losing, or have already lost, their partner to someone else, these traumatic experiences can result in crimes against the (former) mate. Men, especially, seem at times to be prone to committing murder in these situations. Buss points out that

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as counterproductive as it may seem to kill one’s mate, there may be some reason behind doing so—for example, to make sure that one’s own loss of sexual access to a person does not result in a gain for an immediate rival.

Future Research Although many questions have been answered concerning the topic of love, a number of questions remain open and subject to further research. One of the most basic issues, that of finding a consensually accepted vocabulary, has not yet been resolved. Furthermore, there are still many constructs for which no adequate measure yet has been developed—for example, in the the domain of caregiving. More needs to be known about how and in what time span adult attachments develop, and about who feels attracted to whom, and why. It would also be interesting to know more about the progression of love over time, and how it changes. Eventually, the goal will be to integrate the different theories that exist at present, and thereby ultimately to come to a more complete understanding of love, the force that has the potential to cause so much happiness and so much sorrow in every human being.

References Aron, A., and Westbay, L. (1996). Dimensions of the prototype of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 535–551. Berscheid, E. (1988). Some comments on love’s anatomy. In R. J. Sternberg and M. L. Barnes (eds.), The Psychology of Love. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and Loss, vol. 1, Attachment, 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books. Hendrick, S. S., and Hendrick, C. (2002). Linking romantic love with sex: Development of the Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 19, 361–378. Hsu, F. L. K. (1981). Americans and Chinese: Passage to Difference, 3rd ed. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Iverson, P. (1992). Taking care of the earth and sky. In A. M. Josephy, Jr. (ed.), America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus. New York: Vintage Books. Lee, J. A. (1973). The Colours of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving. Toronto: New Press. Schmitt, D. P., Alcalay, L., Allik, J., Ault, L., Austers, I., Bennett, K. L., et al. (2003). Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: Tests from 52 nations, 6 continents, and 13 islands. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 85– 104.

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Shaver, P. R., Wu, S., and Schwartz, J. C. (1991). Cross-cultural similarities and differences in emotion and its representation: A prototype approach. In M. S. Clark (ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 175–212. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Sternberg, R. J., Hojjat, M., and Barnes, M. L. (2001). Empirical tests of aspects of a theory of love as a story. European Journal of Personality, 15(3): 199–218. Wallen, K. (1989). Mate selection: Economics and affection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 37–38.

Contributors

Ellen Berscheid, University of Minnesota David M. Buss, University of Texas, Austin C. Sue Carter, University of Illinois at Chicago Margaret S. Clark, Yale University Karen K. Dion, University of Toronto Kenneth L. Dion, University of Toronto Beverley Fehr, University of Winnipeg Helen Fisher, Rutgers University Elaine Hatfield, University of Hawaii Clyde Hendrick, Texas Tech University Susan S. Hendrick, Texas Tech University Sarah B. Hrdy, University of California, Davis Douglas T. Kenrick, Arizona State University

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Contributors

Eric B. Keverne, University of Cambridge James F. Leckman, Yale University Debra Lieberman, University of Hawaii Mario Mikulincer, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel Joan K. Monin, Carnegie Mellon University David P. Schmitt, Bradley University Phillip R. Shaver, University of California, Davis Robert J. Sternberg, Yale University Karin Weis, University of Heidelberg, Germany

Index

The letters f, n, or t following a page number refer to a figure, note, or table on that page. “abandonment rage,” 97 activating and deactivating strategies, 5, 42–43, 46–47, 49, 99, 323–24 adaptive functions of love, 66 adultery, 104–6 “affectional bonding,” 127 agape, 7, 46, 158, 305–6, 317, 319–20; love styles, 153; love styles and, 150– 51 age: cultural variations and, 29–30; love styles and, 159 Ainsworth, M. D. S., 37, 53 Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure, 136 Amini, F., 96 androgens, 89 antidepressants, romantic love and, 103– 4, 106 Aron, Arthur, 91, 92, 158, 229, 232, 235, 237, 239

Aron, E. N., 239 attachment, 5–7, 36–40, 176, 314–15, 316; definitions, 162; interventions and, 136–39; relationship stability and, 50–51; research, 50–51; romantic love and, 162; security and caregiving and, 53–54, 136–38; sex and, 54–55 Attachment and Loss (Bowlby), 37 attachment behavioral system, 162, 226– 27; anxiety, 48; avoidance, 48; dysfunction, 51; goals and functions, 43–44; hyperactivating and deactivating strategies, 44–45; negative interactions and, 44–45; styles, 38–39, 43–45 attachment security, emotional investment and, 258, 261 attraction, 5–6, 314–15; characteristics, 90

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330

Index

Aujard, Y., 123 avoidance systems, 283 Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., 136–37 Barnes, Michael: The Psychology of Love, 3 Bartels, A., 92, 101 Bashi, J., 284 behavioral systems, 4–6, 35–37, 40–43; context and personality and, 56–58; measurement issues, 48–49; relational interdependence and, 55–58; romantic love and, 49–52. See also specific systems Bellah, R. N., 300 Belsky, J., 253, 257–58 Bengston, V. L., 303–4, 306–7 Berman, W. H., 162 Berscheid, E., 36, 163, 225, 226, 242 “big five” personality scales (Big Five Inventory), 57–58, 156–57, 251, 257; “facets” and, 57 biological theories, 4–6 biparental caretaking, 120–22 Blehar, M. C., 53 Bleske, A. L., 81 Block, N., 284 Bohning, D. E., 130 Bolivia, International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP) and, 262 bonding and attachment, 6; brain circuits and hormonal influences, 130– 33; definitions, 116–17; early parental love and, 121t; mammalian species and, 119–20; maternal behavior and, 118–19; parental care and, 117; romantic love and, 124–28; species variation, 124; vicissitudes of, 129 Boris, T. S., 235–36, 237–39 Bowlby, J., 35, 45, 135, 176–77; Attachment and Loss, 37; behavioral systems, 53; ontogenetically learned adjustments, 42; operating parameters, 40–43; system programming, 42

Bradshaw, D., 181 brain, human: bonding and attachment and, 130–33; dopaminergic and serotonergic circuitry, 251; evolution of, 116–17 Breer, P. E., 301 Brock, K. F., 160 Broughton, R., 231–32, 235, 238, 251– 52 Brown, Lucy L., 91 Buss, D. M., 234, 251, 254, 278–79 Button, C. M., 229 caregiver-infant dyad, resiliency and, 135–36 caregiving behavioral system, 45–46; dysfunction, 51–52; empathy and, 46; goals and functions, 45–46; hyperactivating and deactivating strategies, 46; measurement issues, 48–49 Carey, C., 156 caudate nucleus, 91–92, 93 children: emotional investment of, 10–11; male investment in, 70–72. See also maternal behavior; parental care China, 230, 275–76, 300; romantic love and, 277 Cho, W., 158 Clark, E. M., 160 Clark, M. S., 200, 207, 215 Cohen, T., 284 collectivism, 10–11. See also psychological collectivism; societal collectivism Collier, D. R., 229 Colours of Love (Lee), 149 commitment, 70–72, 83 common denominators, 11 communal relationships, 210 communal responsiveness, 8–9, 200– 203, 319–20; acceptance of, noncontingent, 206; certainty and, 208; contingency and, 205–6, 215; eliciting, 206–7; hierarchies, 207–8; importance, 205; individual differences

Index and, 210–11; love and, 200, 216–17; measurement issues, 203–4; personality traits and, 211; positive and negative attributes and, 216; recipient of, 203; satisfaction and, 203–4; self and, 209; sense of love and, 207–8; trust and, 212–16, 217; types, 204–5 companionate love, 5–6, 316, 318–19 companionate love/liking, 7, 177–78 companionate versus passionate love, 226, 228 compassionate love, 7, 176–77, 180, 316; prototype analyses, 240–41 conceptions of love, 229–33; analyses, cross-cultural, 230; cultural variables and, 229–30; feature ratings, 230; individual differences, 230–33; men versus women and, 232f; personality traits and, 232–33; satisfaction and, 237–38 conceptualization of love, 171 consummate love, 319 content versus processes, 151 Contreras, R., 158–59 Cortse, A., 158 Crivello, F., 123 Cross, S. E., 158 cultural variables, 4; disappearance of, 281–82; love and, 322–23; love and marriage and, 279–81; theories, 9–11 Daly, M., 82 D’Amato, F. R., 134 D’Andrade, Roy, 172 Darwin, Charles, 93; Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 278 Da Silva, T., 156 Davis, M. H., 49 deactivating and activating strategies, 5, 42–43, 46–47, 49, 99, 323–24 deception, 72–73 decision biases, 4, 16–17, 22–25 decision/commitment, 185–86 definitions of love, 21–22, 249–50 definitions of love, experts, 226–27

331

definitions of love, ordinary people, 227– 29 demographics, love styles and, 158–60 Demographic Yearbook of the United Nations, 105 Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (Darwin), 278 De Schonen, S., 123 descriptive and atheoretical approaches, 35–36 detecting kin, systems for, 285–86 Dion, K. K., 309 disgust, 10, 290–91 distance-from-the-prototype measures, 235–36 divorce, 105 domains of social life, 19–21; affiliation, 19; love and, 19–21; mate retention, 20; mate-seeking, 20; parental care, 20; phenomenological components, 21; physiological components, 21; self-protection, 20; status, 19 dopamine, 6, 90, 91, 92, 94, 99, 250; in seminal fluid, 103 Draper, P., 253, 257–58 drives, 93, 99; generalized arousal systems and, 96; particular biological needs and, 96; psychobiological interactions, 102–4; romantic love and, 93 drug use: maternal bonding and, 132; “reward system” and, 101 Dubno, J. R., 130 duplex theory of love, 317–18 dynamical evolutionary model: assumptions, 16–17; domains, 19–21; functionality, 30 early parental love: bonding and attachment and, 121t; romantic love similarities, 128–29 East Asia, 257 eldercare, 10–11 Ellis, B. J., 97

332

Index

emotion, two-factor theory, 36 emotional investment: attachment security and, 258; collectivist versus individualist cultures, 252–53; cultural variables and, 252–53; dimension, 251; early socialization and, 253; ecological stress and, 264–65; evolution and, 250; extraversion, agreeableness and, 251–52; gender and, 253–56, 261–63; individualism and, 265–66, 265f; parenting and, 255; personality and, 250–52; short-term mating and, 261; sociocultural factors and, 259t–60t; U.S. ethnic groups and, 252 emotional investment scale, 263 emotions versus motivations, 92–93 empty love, 318 environmental influences, 6, 17–18, 21– 22, 28–30, 101–2; biological theories and, 134–35; emotional investment and, 10, 253; love stories and, 190; maternal behavior and, 134–36; shortterm mating and, 261, 264 eros, 7, 150–51, 153, 316–17 estrogens, 89 ethnicity/culture, love scales and, 158– 59 evolution: adaptive functions of love, 65–66; decision biases and, 16; human brain and, 116–17; kinds of love and, 315–16; long-term mating and, 70–72; psychology of love, 68–70; reproduction problems and, 321 evolutionary adaptations, 5 evolutionary psychology of love, 36 evolved decision biases, 20–21 excitement, love and, 239 experiences of love, 5, 233–34 “facets,” “big five” personality scales and, 57 facial recognition, 123 falling in love, 38, 69, 93, 250, 281; love styles and, 7, 154–55; sex and, 103, 127

fatuous love, 319 Feeney, J. A., 161 Fehr, Beverley, 164, 230–32, 235–38, 240–41, 251–52 Fischer, E. F., 124–25, 160, 276 Fisher, H., 250 Fitness, J., 233 Fletcher, G. J. O., 233 Flum, Y., 284 forms of love, 2–3 Frank, Robert, 71 friendship, 318; love styles and, 155–56 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, 95, 97, 106–7, 275; pair-bonding and, 130–33; romantic love and, 89–90, 91–92 further research. See research needed gender: deception and, 72–73; equality indicators, 262–63; meaning of love and, 10; as status variable, 158–60. See also men versus women; women versus men Gender Development Index (GDI), 262– 63 Gender Empowerment Measure, 262– 63, 264f General Social Survey (GSS), 302–3 gene-targeting experiments, 133–35 George, M. S., 130 globalization versus nationalism, 282 Goldschmidt, E., 284 great apes, 118–19 Griffin, G. W., 214 group activation, 91–92 Hamner, M. B., 130 Harlow, H. F., 176–77 Harris, David and Clara, 76–78 Hassebrauck, M., 235 Hatfield [Walster], E., 154, 158, 163, 225, 226, 227, 279 Hazan, C., 36–40, 48, 128, 162, 181, 226–27 Heaven, P. C. L., 156 Heider, F., 240

Index Hemingway, Ernest, 172 Hendrick, Clyde, 156–59, 161, 172, 226, 227, 254 Hendrick, Susan, 156–57, 160–61, 172, 226, 227, 254 heroin, maternal bonding and, 132 Heyman, R., 239 Hofstede, G., 266, 299–300 Holen, J., 156 Holmes, J. G., 200, 214 homocides, 76–82 Horton, D., 125–26 Horwitz, A. R., 130 Hsu, F. L. K., 277 Human Development Index (HDI), ISDP scores and, 258 human nature, romantic love and, 4 hyperactivating and deactivating strategies, 5, 42–43, 323–24 implicit theories, 9 inbreeding avoidance systems, components, 282, 285, 291–92 inbreeding depression, 283–85 individualism, 10; love and, 299–304; relationship quality and, 300–301. See also psychological individualism; societal individualism Indonesia, 230; International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP) and, 262 infant responsiveness, 122–24; features, 121t; genes and, 134 infatuated love, 318 Ingersoll-Dayton, B., 306 “in love” versus love, 3, 7, 38, 67–69, 91–93, 171–72, 178–81; love styles and, 153–55 instincts, human, 17–19; environmental inputs and, 18; sequences, 18–19 interdependence theories, 55 International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP), 256–63; Bolivia and, 262; cultural variables and, 257–61; gender differences and, 261–63; Indonesia and, 262; limitations of, 266; Malaysia and, 262; personality and, 256–

333

57. See also Human Development Index (HDI), ISDP scores and interpersonal affect systems, 181 interpersonal dynamics, 25–28 Interpersonal Reactivity Index, 49; Empathetic Concern subscale, 49; Personal Distress subscale, 49 interventions, attachment and, 136–39 intimacy, 185; ten clusters, 185 “intrusive thinking,” 125–26 ISDP. See International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP) Iwao, S., 308–9 “Jade Goddess, The,” 87 James, William, 17–18, 19 Jankowiak, W. R., 124–25, 160, 276 Japan, 10–11, 252, 254; long-term marriages and, 306 jealousy, 22, 73–75, 83 Johnson, M. P., 152 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36 Juffer, F., 137 Kadar, M., 284 Kelley, Harold, 174–75, 187, 236 Kephart, W. M., 279–80 Kieffer, B. L., 134 kin detection, 282–83 kinds of love, 186, 187t; evolution and, 315–16 kin relationships, 21, 24 Kirkpatrick, L. A., 162 Lamm, H., 233–34 language acquisition, 123 Lannon, R., 96 Lasswell, M. E., 152 Lasswell, T. E., 152 Lee, G. R., 305 Lee, John Alan, 226, 301; The Colours of Love, 149–50 Levine, R., 280–81, 299–300, 305 Levinger, G., 185 Levitskaya, A., 158

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Index

Lewin, 165 Lewis, T., 96 Locke, E. A., 301 long-term mating, evolution of, 70–72 Lorberbaum, J. P., 130 love and marriage, culture and, 279–81 love as a story subtheory, 190–96; aspects of stories, 191–94; data, 194– 96; kinds of stories, 191, 192t; other constructs and, 194; prototypes and, 194; satisfaction and, 196 “love at first sight,” 5, 69, 82–83, 94 Love Attitudes Scale (LAS), 150, 152, 157, 158, 165–66; constructs, 153 Love Comes Before Sex dimension, 157– 58 Love Is Most Important dimension, 157– 58 love measures, 164–65 love scales: ethnicity/culture and, 158– 59; men versus women and, 158 Love Stories Scale, 3 love stories theory, 164, 321 Love Story Card Sort, 149 love styles, 316–17; agape, 150, 226; age and, 159; biological theories and, 314–16; criticisms of, 162–63; definition, 150–51; demographics and, 158–60; dimensions, 151; eros, 150, 226; “falling in love” and, 154– 55; friendship and, 155–56; integration of, 309–21; ludus, 150, 226; mania, 150, 226; other theories and, 163–65; other variables and, 151; personality and, 156–57; personality traits and, 151–52; pragma, 150, 226; quantification, 152–53; research, 153– 63; respect and, 161–62; sexuality and, 157–58; sexual orientation and, 159–60; storge, 150, 226; as theory, 151–53 love ways theory, 164 Luby, V., 229 ludus, 7, 301, 316–17; love styles, 150– 51, 153

lust, romantic love and, 178–81 Lydiard, R. B., 130 Malamuth, N. M., 97 Malaysia, International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP) and, 262 mania, 7, 317; love styles, 150–51, 153 marmosets, 118–19 Mashek, Debra, 91 Maslow, Abraham, 176–77 maternal behavior: bonding and attachment, 117; brain size and, 133; environmental influences and, 134–36; heroin and, 132; opioids and, 131; oxytocin and, 131 mate selection, 93–95; factors, 101–2; gender differences, 68–70, 101; men versus women, 255 Mathes, E. W., 74 Mazoyer, B., 123 McDougall, William, 18, 19 McKenna, C., 239 medications, romantic love and, 104 Meeks, B. S., 161 men versus women, 5; conception of love and, 231, 232f; deception and, 72–73; decision biases, 16; emotional investment and, 253–56; love scales and, 158; mate selection, 68–70; mate selection and, 255; meaning of love and, 10; passionate love and, 278–79; potential mates and, 24–25, 82–83; rejection and, 98 Merighi, J. R., 158 Meyers, Sally, 178–80 Mills, J., 207, 215 mind modularity, 16, 19–20 Moles, A., 134 Montgomery, M. J., 159 Morgan, H. J., 154 Mormons, 67 Morrow, G. D., 160 Moszkiewicz, A, 237 mother-infant dyad, interruptions of, 123–24

Index motivational systems, 5–6, 314 motivations versus emotions, 92–93 Murray, S. L., 214 Murstein, B. I., 158, 172 Myers, S. A., 242 Najib, A., 96 Neel, J. V., 284 NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEOPI-R), 156 neotenous features, 129 neural activity systems, 88 neuroimaging. See functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies Newman, J. D., 130 Noller, P., 161 norepinephrine, 6, 90, 91, 92, 99 Norman, C. C., 239 North America, 257. See also United States obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 92, 122 Oneida Society, 67 “open marriage,” 74–75 opioids, 6, 315; definition, 131; maternal behavior and, 131, 132–33; monkeys and, 131–32 ovulation, concealment of, 70 oxytocin, 6, 21, 90, 103, 250, 315; definition, 131; maternal behavior and, 131; pair-bonding and, 131 pain, emotional, 98 Palau, 230 parental care, bonding and attachment and, 117 Parental Investment Theory, 254–55, 261 passionate love: anthropology and, 276– 77; compassionate love and, 163; culture and intensity, 278; definition, 185; definitions and cultural variables, 275–81; increasing research interest, 275; men versus women, 278–79

335

Passionate Love Scale (PLS), 99, 227, 274–75 Peplau, L. A., 159–60 Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale, 3, 157 personality traits: conceptions of love and, 232–33; love styles and, 156–57 Pfaff, Donald, 93, 99 phenomenology of love, 15–16 polyandry, 29 polygyny, 29–30, 67 Potapova, E., 158 potential mates, men versus women and, 24–25, 82–83 pragma, 7, 317; love styles, 150–51, 153 prisoner’s dilemma, 26–27 prototype structure, 227, 320; individual differences and, 231–33; limitations of, 241–42; measurement issues, 234–36; relationship implications of, 236–39; strengths and weaknesses of, 239–42; studies of, 233–34; study methodologies, 228–29; theory of, 164 psychological collectivism, 299; aging parent care and, 306–7; relationship quality and, 306–7; view of love and, 305–6 psychological individualism, 299; aging parent care and, 303–4; loved-based marriage and, 301; relationship commitment and, 302–3 Psychology of Love (Sternberg, Barnes), 3, 35, 48, 149, 178, 181, 299 Pyke, K., 303–4, 306–7, 308, 309 Rands, M., 185 Raven’s Progressive Matrices, 284 Regan, P. C., 241 Reis, H. T., 200, 203, 210 rejection, 94; activations and deactivations, 99; group effects of, 95; men versus women and, 98; protest phase, 96–97; resignation/despair phase, 97– 98

336

Index

relational interdependence, behavioral systems and, 55–58 relationship satisfaction, 160–61 reproduction, 5 research needed, 58, 230, 240–41, 289– 90, 324 resiliency, caregiver-infant dyad and, 135–36 respect, love styles and, 161–62 Reutter, B., 123 “reward system,” 91–92, 95–96; drug use and, 101 romantic love, 7, 90–91, 178, 180, 316, 318; addiction and, 100–101; age and, 89; antidepressants and, 103–4; attachment and, 162; bonding and, 124–28; casual sex and, 103; characteristics, 88; cross-cultural studies, 277–78; early parental love similarities, 128–29; ethnicity and, 89; features, 121t; fMRI studies and, 89– 90, 91–92, 96; individual variations and, 101–2; infidelity and, 75–82; “intrusive thinking” and, 88; medications and, 104; sexual orientation and, 89; trajectory of, 100; universality, 36; universality of, 89, 124–25 Rosch, E. H., 227, 240 Rousar, E. E., III, 232 Rubin, Zick, 171, 225, 226, 301–2 Rubin Liking Scale, 188, 189 Rubin Love Scale, 188, 189 Russell, J. A., 228–29, 240–41 Russia, 252, 254 Sampson, E. E., 300 satisfaction, love as a story subtheory and, 196 Schachter, S., 36 Schmitt, D. P., 251, 254 Schull, W. J., 284 Schwartz, J. C., 275 self, the, 205, 208, 209, 213, 215; culture and, 307–8

self-contained individualism, 300–301 seminal fluid, 103 serial monogamy, 104–6 serotonin, 6, 90, 91, 92, 99, 250 Sex Demonstrates Love dimension, 157– 58 sex drive, 5–6, 89–90, 314–15 Sex Is Declining dimension, 157–58 Sexual Attitudes Scale, 157–58 sexual aversion, 282–85; co-residence and, 287–88 sexual behavioral system, 46–48; dysfunction, 52; goals and functions, 46– 47; hyperactivating and deactivating strategies, 46–47, 49; measurement issues, 48–49 sexuality, love styles and, 157–58 sexual orientation: love styles and, 157, 159–60; prototype structure and, 232 Sexy Seven Measure, 3, 256–57 Shackelford, T. K., 81 Shakers, 67 Shaver, P. R., 53–54, 58, 226–27, 230, 233, 275; attachment, 48–49, 128, 162; behavioral systems, 35–40; nature of love, 154, 181 Shepher, J., 287–88, 290 siblinghood, detecting, 286–87 similarity theory, 196 Simpson, O. J., 73 social bonds, functions of, 23t “social categorical method,” 178–79 social dynamics, cultural norms and, 28– 30 social engagement, 122 social structures, personal relationships and, 298 Social Structure Theory, 255–56, 263 societal collectivism, 299 societal individualism, 299 societal institutions and relationship ideologies, 300 Sokolski, D. M., 160–61 Sorell, G. T., 159

Index Soueif, Ahdaf, 274 Spaulding, L. R., 159–60 Sperling, M. B., 162 Spiro, M. E., 288 Sprecher, Susan, 67–68, 158, 227, 252, 278, 279, 280 Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, 276 Steck, L., 302 Steinberg, L., 253, 257–58 Stendahl [Beyle, M. H.], 126–27 Sternberg, Robert J., 50, 164, 187–96, 226, 229; The Psychology of Love, 3 Sternberg Triangular Love Scale, 189– 90, 195–96 Stone, L. H., 305 storge, 7, 316–17; love styles, 150–51, 153 story, love as. See love as a story subtheory Strategic Pluralism Theory, 261 strategies. See activating and deactivating strategies Strong, Greg, 91 Switzerland, 262–63 Taiwan, 288–89 Talaber, R., 185 Talmon, G. Y., 288 taxonomies of love, 6–9, 173–74; behaviors and causes, 175; process, 173, 175 ten clusters in intimacy, 185 Tennov, D., 125, 126–27 testosterone, 6, 89, 103, 250 theories of love, 174–75 Thibaut, J. W., 187 Thomson, J. Anderson, 103 Tiwi people, 29 Triangular Love Scale, 188 triangular subtheory, 8, 50, 164, 184– 90, 197, 226, 319; data, 188–90; external validation, 189; factor analyses, 189; geometry, 186–87; intercorrelational analyses, 189; multiple triangles, 187–88

337

Trivers, R., 254 Turkey, 230 two-factor theory of emotion, 36 tyrosine, 103 Tzourio-Mazoyer, N., 123 United Nations Statistical Division, 258, 262–63 United States, 10–11; conceptions of love, 229–30, 309, 322; emotional investment, 256–57; ethnic groups, emotional investment and, 252; ethnic groups, love experiences of, 252; homocides in, 78–81; long-term marriages and, 10, 306; romantic love in, 278–80 universality of love, 36, 65–68, 82, 160, 250, 276–77 unmitigated communion, 209n2 Van IJzendoorn, M. H., 137 vasopressin, 6, 90, 103 ventral tegmental area (VTA), 91, 93 violence, 83 Viorst, Judith, 75 Vyse, S. A., 158 Wachtel, P. L., 300 Wall, S., 53 Wallen, K., 279 Walster, [Hatfield] E., 36, 163, 165, 178–81, 185 Walster, G. W., 36, 165, 185, 225 Ward, C., 161 Waterman, A. S., 300 Waters, E., 53 Westbay, L., 232, 235, 237 Westermarck, Edward, 287 Westermarck Hypothesis (WH), 286–90; empirical testing of, 287–90 White, J. K., 156–57 Wiesmann, U., 233–34 Wilson, M., 82 Wolf, Arthur, 287, 289, 290

338

Index

women versus men, 5, 78–81; deception and, 72–73; decision biases, 16; emotional investment and, 253–56; love scales and, 158; mate selection, 68– 70; mate selection and, 255; meaning of love and, 10; passionate love and,

278–79; potential mates and, 24–25, 82–83; rejection and, 98 Wu, S., 154, 275 Zeifman, D., 162 Zeki, S., 92, 101