I was curious to find out whether the items on the concept version of The Love Test would fall out into three dimensions: passion, intimacy, and commitment as Sternberg's theory predicts. In his 1988 The Psychology of Love book chapter entitled Triangulating Love, Sternberg defines intimacy as: Friendship type feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness that create the experience of warmth in a loving relationship. These include:

1. desiring to promote the welfare of the loved one;
2. experiencing happiness with the loved one;
3. having high regard for the loved on;
4. being able to count on the loved one in times of need;
5. mutual understanding with the loved one;
6. sharing one's self and one's possessions with the loved one;
7. receiving emotional support from the loved one;
8. giving emotional support to the loved one;
9. having intimate communication with the loved one; and
10. valuing the loved one in one's life.

He defined Passion as: The drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation in a loving relationship that includes obsessing about the person, infatuation and high levels of mental and physical arousal. He indicates that sexual needs "form the main part" of passion, but that other needs such as self esteem, affiliation, dominance/submission, and self-actualization may also contribute to the experience of passion.

He defined commitment in terms of two aspects:

1. Short term - the decision that one loves someone; and
2. Long term - the commitment to maintain that love.

To find out whether the concept of love items would hang together into these three dimensions, I did some statistical transformations to make the data conform better to the assumptions required for exploratory factor analysis. I then entered the data into a Principal Components factor analysis using Varimax rotation. I specified a 3 factor solution. Note that this attempts to align the items along three uncorrelated dimensions(factors). The KMO measure of sampling adequacy was .77 and Bartlett's test of Sphericity was 178,246.02, p < .001 which indicates that there are adequate intercorrelations between the items to use factor analysis.

The first factor appears to be defined by a mix of items related to caregiving, interdependency and feeling secure in one's relationship.. Factor 1 accounts for 26.2% of the variability of the individual items and is defined by the following items with factor loadings of .4 or higher:

Supportiveness, Caring, Sharing, Compassion, Kindness, Helping, Concern for each other's well being, Patience, Understanding, Wanting the best for each other, Comforting each other, Respect, Forgiveness, Responsibility, Commitment, Trust, Giving, Openness, Loyalty, Honesty, Devotion, Unconditional caring, Friendship, Willingness to sacrifice, Closeness, Interest in each other, A positive outlook, Security, Doing things for each other, Empathy, Being able to talk about anything, Contentment, Liking, Confidence that it will be long-lasting, Accepting each other as is, and Affection.

The second factor appears to be defined by a mix of items that reflect attachment, and generalized arousal. Factor 2 accounts for 6.3% of the variability of the individual items and is defined by the following items with factor loadings of .4 or higher:

Thinking about each other all the time, Needing each other, Missing each other when apart, Gazing at each other, Increased heart rate, Butterflies in my stomach, Euphoria, Having wonderful feelings, Seeing only my partner's good qualities, Protectiveness, Putting the other person first, Scary feelings, Feeling attachment, Uncertainty, Excitement, Willingness to sacrifice, Wanting to be with each other, and Interdependency.

The third factor appears to be defined by items that reflect Sexual Attraction and arousal. Factor 2 accounts for 3.8% of the variability of the individual items and is defined by the following items with factor loadings of .4 or higher:

Sexual passion, Feelings of Sex appeal, Physical attraction, Touching, Intimacy, Excitement, and Energy.

Data from The Love Test doesn't seem to fit Sternberg's model very well and is not consistent with Aron and Westlake's findings that supported the three dimensional model of passion, intimacy and commitment. You should note however, the methodologies were different. Aron and Westlake had people rate each descriptor in terms of how good of an example of love it was, whereas we asked "How important is item(i) in your view of love?". Perhaps the Aron and Westlake version captures an idealized version of love where our methodology taps into the importance of the various descriptors in people's working concepts of love. It should also be noted the Aron, Westlake study used college students whereas this study uses a self selected cross-cultural sample that includes broader age representation of people who have access to the net.

These data appear to be consistent with a model proposed by Bowlby who felt that attachment promoting behavior is innate and has the biological function of protecting the child from danger by increasing parental interest and proximity. He called these parental responses the caregiving system. This system includes behavior intended to keep the infant safe from harm. Later, after puberty another biological system kicks in and results in the urge to mate and procreate.

Note that I'm not well read on Bowlby, but data from the concept version of The Love Test seems to support the notion of a caregiving system as evidenced by the items that define factor 1 from the exploratory factor analysis. Caregiving should involve things like trust, supportiveness and compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and concern for the loved one's well being, along with commitment and devotion. Those pretty much describe caring parents and also pretty much describe the caring and nurturing behaviors necessary for sustaining a romantic relationship. This dimension also includes the warm emotions such as liking and affection. However, this factor does not contain the "hotter" emotions that would characterize the infant/caregiver type attachment system such as need for emotional/physical proximity, distress and autonomic arousal at separation, or euphoria and wonderful feelings in response to the caregiver. These "hotter" emotions, autonomic responses and preoccupation with maintaining emotional and/or physical proximity with partner loaded onto a separate factor. The third factor reflects sexual arousal and attraction along with autonomic arousal. This factor differentiates adult romantic love from child/caregiver love and is geared toward increasing the likelihood of mating and procreation.

After puberty our instincts spur us to go find a mate and procreate. It seems to me that the in the typical in-person courtship sequence, where two people meet and are attracted to each other, the first thing that is salient is the perceived attractiveness of the partner. At this point two systems kick in and produce sexual arousal and attraction along with the infatuation type of intense euphoric feelings which are very similar to those involved in infant/caregiver attachment. Our society generally labels this array of things as falling "in love" or being "in love" rather than calling it what it is-- an instinctual reaction to a potential mate that promotes the formation of a pair bond and encourages mating.

It should be noted that if our goal is to have a long term relationship, these initial mechanisms probably won't be adequate for achieving that goal as their primary purpose is to promote pair bonding long enough to get the offspring out of the stage of extreme dependency on the caregiver. After that initial "buzz" wears off, the other less hot emotions and caregiving type behaviors that generate warm feelings must be in place if the relationship is to sustain over time.

Other Analyses:

The three scales have adequate internal consistancy reliability

The scales are highly intercorrelated

The Love Test scales were strongly and consistently related to self reports of:

• How much people say they love their partner;
• How much people say they like their partner;
• How much people say they lust after their partner;
• How likely they think it is that they will still be together in 5 years; and
• How satisfied they are with their relationship.

Descrepancies between what people think love should be and what they are experiencing were strongly and consistently related to self reports of:

• How much people say they love their partner;
• How much people say they like their partner;
• How much people say they lust after their partner;
• How likely they think it is that they will still be together in 5 years; and
• How satisfied they are with their relationship.

Concept and Experience Scores by Length of time in the relationship

Return to the Love Test Findings Page.