LOVE TYPES AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

Social Behavior and Personality, 2004 by Kim, Jungsik, Hatfield, Elaine

This cross-cultural research explored the relationship between Hatfield & Rapson's (1993) love types and subjective well-being. College students from an individualistic culture (USA) and a collectivist culture (Korea) completed the Passionate Love Scale (PLS; Hatfield & Rapson), the Companionate Love Scale (CLS; Sternberg, 1986), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Pivot & Diener, 1993), and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; Watson, Clarke, & Tellegen, 1988). It was found that two love types are related to subjective well-being in a different way: life satisfaction was more strongly predicted by companionate love than by passionate love, whereas positive and negative emotions were more accounted for by passionate love than by companionate love. No culture and gender difference was found in this overall relationship, but gender difference was found in the extent of the association between companionate love and satisfaction with life, and between passionate love and emotional experiences, respectively.

Among many typologies of love (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1996; Lee, 1973; Sternberg, 1986), Hatfield and Rapson's (1993) love types - passionate love and companionate love - have been accepted as a valid conceptualization of love regardless of age, gender, and culture in a wide array of research (Hatfield, & Rapson, 1996; Wang, & Nguyen, 1995).

In many studies it has been revealed that love is an important predictor of happiness, satisfaction, and positive emotions (Anderson, 1977; Diener & Lucas, 2000; Freeman, 1978; Myers, 1992). It is believed that various acts, such as kissing, sex, emotional contacts, and companionship exchanged in love relationships contribute to happiness (Glenn & Weaver, 1978; Ross, Mirowsky, & Goldesteen, 1990).

Despite wide use of Hatfield's concept of love types in psychological research, which type of love enhances happiness more effectively is not well known. The study reported here investigated the relationships between Hatfield's love types (passionate love and companionate love) and happiness through cross-cultural research conducted in the USA and Korea.

As a difficult concept to define, happiness has been conceptualized and measured in many different ways by different scholars (for review see Diener & Lucas, 2000) and subjective well-being has been the most popularly used concept to understand happiness in recent studies. Subjective well-being consists of two components: life satisfaction (a cognitive evaluation of one's overall life) and emotions (the presence of positive emotions, and the absence of negative emotions) (Diener & Rahtz, 2000). Thus in this study happiness was operationally defined as subjective well-being.

We predicted that passionate love and companionate love would be differently associated with satisfaction with life and with positive/negative emotions. Specifically, we predicted that companionate love would be more strongly associated with life satisfaction than would passionate love, whereas passionate love would be more strongly associated with the emotional aspect of subjective well-being; positive and negative affect.

Often labeled "obsessive love," "crush lovesickness," "infatuation," or "beingin-love," passionate love is a hot intense emotion that is characterized as a state of intense longing for union with another (Hatfield & Rapson, 1996). It is known that the reciprocation of passionate love is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy but unrequited passionate love is associated with emptiness, anxiety, or despair. Passionate love is a strong emotional state in which people experience continuous interplay between elation and despair, thrills and terror (Hatfield & Rapson, 1996). As a result, passionate love is not only positively related to positive emotions but also often related to emotional distress. Supporting this idea, it was reported that passionate love is neuroanatomically and chemically related with anxiety (Carlson & Hatfield, 1992; Freud, 1935; Kaplan, 1979; Liebowiz, 1983). One study showed that children and adolescents in a high state of anxiety received the highest scores on the Passionate Love Scale (Hatfield, Brinton, & Cornelius, 1989). These findings imply that although passionate love certainly brings people intense emotional experiences such as joy, ecstasy, and delight, it also activates strong despair and produces great emotional turmoil as well (Hatfield & Rapson, 1996; Tennov, 1999). Thus, passionate love would be more strongly associated with the emotional component of subjective well-being.

In contrast, we predicted that companionate love would be more strongly and positively related to life satisfaction than would passionate love. Compared with passionate love, companionate love is less intense, but is a warm feeling of affection and tenderness that people feel for those with whom their lives are deeply connected. Thus, companionate love is often described as friendship love and involves shared values, deep attachment, long-term commitment, and intimacy (Hatfield & Rapson, 1996; Hendrick & Hendrick, 1996; Hendrick, Hendrick, & Adler, 1988). People develop this type of love during a long time span and there is more emotional trust. Companionate love involves mild but comfortable emotional states between partners. Companionate love is typically more reciprocal liking and respect. Therefore, it is expected that in companionate love people feel more satisfaction than in passionate love when other variables are equal.