Written by Connor Zahler:
Love. To most, it seems like the ultimate qualitative experience. It can make people act irrationally and is almost impossible to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. That hasn’t stopped social scientists from trying, however. Today, we’ll look at some theories of love, the possible backing behind it, and what this might mean for you, dear reader.
5 Love Languages
The five love languages are perhaps the most ubiquitous modern theory of love. First proposed and described by Gary Chapman in his 1992 book The Five Love Languages, it states that there are five major ways people give and receive love: quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. While the theory has massive popularity, there hasn’t been much research as of yet (although there has been more activity in recent years). Studies that have been conducted, though, have lent a small degree of support to the theory. For example, one study combined it with established theories of relational maintenance to create a “close to fitting” measurement instrument and found that it may have “some psychometric validity.” Readers should know that studies regarding love languages often use different scales, ranging from one of several developed by Chapman to their own created for the study. Whatever the case, love languages are an interesting line of research that most people already have some familiarity with.
Triangular Theory
If five is too big a number for you, a triangular theory of love proposes an easy three factors that track love. These three factors are put at different corners on a triangle, and someone’s experience of love would exist as a point within it. While multiple triangular scales exist, the most popular is that of Robert Sternberg, a psychologist from Yale. Its components are passion, commitment, and intimacy, and they are “separable, but interactive with each other.” For example, an increase in commitment may lead to a decrease in intimacy (or perhaps, less commonly, an increase). The triangular theory suffers from the same lack of research as a theory of love languages, but existing studies are promising, including one massive one across 25 countries. In the authors’ words: “We tested configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance, all of which confirmed the cultural universality of the theoretical construct of love analyzed in our study.” Further research is needed, especially comparing it to other theories.
Color Wheel Theory
On the other hand, if five is too few factors, the color wheel theory will surely satisfy, with fifteen types: three primary, three secondary, and nine tertiary. The primary are eros (romantic/passionate), ludus (fun, love as collaborative game), and storge (familial). Secondary types include mania (possessive), agape (altruistic love), and pragma (practical, convenient). The remaining tertiary types are combinations of the primary and secondary types. Many people are familiar with at least some of these terms, and the theory has proven resilient since its introduction in 1973 by University of Toronto psychologist John Alan Lee. It was popularized as the Love Attitudes Scale, which has seen use in relationships and further research for almost forty years. The creators of the scale caution that it is only “one theoretical/empirical/practical” view, not the whole story.
Love is Patient, Love is Quantitative
It’s clear that research around love is not extensive nor conclusive. While some of the theories are decades old, a lot of the recent research is from the last fifteen years or so. There’s still a lot to be done, and interested parties may simply have to wait (or do the research themselves!). Interested readers, though, may be interested in The New Psychology of Love, a 2009 Yale University Press monograph. It compiles essays from basically every expert in the field and was invaluable to writing this post. You could say that I loved it, perhaps in a pragma sort of way.