Love. The subject of study particularly close to a researcher’s heart
It penetrates nearly all aspects of our lives. It accompanies us from early childhood to very late adulthood. It has a range of colours and forms. We can distinguish, for instance, parental love, brotherly love, platonic love, and finally romantic love. In the 20th century, the general belief was that love was an ‘invention’ of Western culture. Nowadays, however, scientists agree that love can be observed in almost all communities around the world.
The latter type of love became the subject of your doctoral dissertation „Kulturowe i środowiskowe predyktory odczuwania miłości” (“Cultural and environmental predictors of feeling love”) under the supervision of prof. Piotr Sorokowski. How did the idea come about? What inspired you?
Dr Marta Kowal of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Wrocław – There is a well-established belief that researchers often engage with topics that are particularly close to their hearts. In this case, it is both literally, and metaphorically true. Being happily in love can transform life, make it meaningful, and make every day special. I believe in this very strongly. That is why I have wanted to pursue this topic to explore it better, to find out what factors can positively influence our love experience, how these factors vary according to different factors (age, gender, culture), and, ultimately, what leads to us having satisfying relationships. I will frankly admit that I started my doctoral studies by studying a different (albeit thematically related) topic, concerning the motives and reasons why people improve their appearance. However, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was not able to carry out the planned overseas field research. For this research, I received funding from National Science Centre (PRELUDIUM-17). With no clear prospect of a safe deadline for this research and with uncertainty about the end of my doctoral studies, I mutually decided with my supervisor, prof. Piotr Sorokowski, that it would be more safe to change the subject. This change was the best decision possible, which I am extremely happy about.
How to put love into a theoretical framework? What tools did you use to achieve this? Is it even possible?
– Love is reluctant to submit to any theoretical framework. This is one of those topics on which most people could speak, with first-hand expertise. In a 1967 Kephart study of more than 1000 American students, only 3% admitted that they did not know what love was. However, when asked about the characteristics of love, people are nowhere near having a uniform definition. Interestingly, there is no consistency among scientists either. Many theories attempt to provide an explanation of what love is, where it comes from, what it serves, how to recognise it, whether there are common characteristics of love, e.g., certain characteristic thoughts, physiological changes in the body, emotions experienced, behaviour, etc. With so many different theoretical views, it is difficult to come up with a single, universally accepted definition of love.
Nevertheless, some sort of compromise has to be reached…
– Yes, which is why I rely on one of the most popular concepts of love in my research. This is the Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love.
What is the Concept about?
– It hypothesizes that love consists of three components: intimacy, passion, and commitment.
Intimacy is the ‘warm’ component of love, the mutual bond between partners, trust, concern for the other person’s well-being, and the desire to share one’s inner world with the other person. Passion is the ‘hot’ component of love. It signifies physical excitement, usually sexual, and the desire to merge into one with another person. Commitment, on the other hand, is the most ‘cool’ component of love and it defines a conscious decision to continue a relationship with the other person.
You carried out research as part of your doctoral dissertation. What was the research concerned?
– My doctoral dissertation consists of a series of four studies and a meta-analysis. Firstly, I validated, i.e. created and examined the psychometric values of an abbreviated scale to measure love (more specifically, the three components of love mentioned earlier: intimacy, passion and commitment) in 37 languages and tested which indicators predict intense love feelings in people from different countries.
Finally, largest study, which I conducted in collaboration with 405 researchers from around the world, resulted in gathering data from 118 715 respondents, of whom 61 065 people from 82 countries were in relationships and completed our validated questionnaire for measuring love (TLS-15).
Did you find that feelings of love can differ between countries, for example?
– Absolutely! We observed significant differences in the intensity of perceived love between people from different countries but we observed even greater differences within countries.
For example, the highest average scores on the love scale (when considering the three components: intimacy, passion and commitment), were obtained by participants from Ghana, followed by Montenegro and the Philippines. In contrast, the lowest averages were scored by participants from Tunisia, Japan and Morocco. Of course, we are talking about group averages that are not representative of the studied countries, so in each of the countries mentioned there could have been people who loved their partners with both high and low intensity.
Furthermore, we also noted differences in how certain factors were related to feelings of love between people from different countries.
Could you provide an example?
– In the above-mentioned Tunisia, the differences in perceived passion between men and women were significant, while in Belgium there was little difference. To put differently, women and men scored similarly on the passion scale in Belgium, but significantly different in Tunisia.
Interestingly, out of our entire research sample, only 2% of the study participants scored the lowest score possible on the love scale, which may indicate that they did not feel love for their partners at all.
Differences also depend on the duration of the relationship and many other factors, which ones?
– Exactly. In my research, I mainly focused on factors such as relationship duration, gender, socio-economic status, level of individualism-collectivism, gender equality, and prevalence of pathogens. We observed a number of fascinating results.
I will mention a couple of results that anyone can relate to their relationships. For example, I don’t think I’ll surprise anyone by saying that the intensity of passion decreases dramatically as the relationship goes on. Nevertheless, in relationships that lasted longer than 35 years, we observed an increase in perceived desire. We observed a similar pattern of results for the sense of intimacy. The level of commitment increased year to year, up to approximately 18-year relationships, where perceived commitment was highest, before slowly declining with each passing year.
Did anything in particular surprise you?
– That the passion felt is related to views on gender equality. The results revealed that those preferring a traditional gender role division had the highest level of passion, while those recognising an equal gender role division had the lowest level of passion. We observed the opposite pattern of results for intimacy. It was highest in those who believed in gender equality, although it was not at the lowest among those who committed to the traditional division of gender roles.
The results are not conclusive, and while they provide a great deal of knowledge, they also raise many further questions.
– Indeed. I encourage you to follow the results of our research. You will soon be able to read about them in a forthcoming academic article. To keep up to date, visit my profile on X, where I share a lot of interesting information https://twitter.com/Marta7Kowal
I also encourage you to have a look at the website: https://martakowal.com/tls, where everyone can take a quiz and find out their love level and compare it to the average level of people from their country (whether it be Poland or one of the other 80 countries we have sourced data from).
Compiled by Katarzyna Górowicz-Maćkiewicz
Translated by Wiktoria Łapka (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
