Measuring passionate love in intimate relationships

Abstract

Theorists such as Farber argue that in adolescence passionate love first appears in all its intensity. Both adolescence and passion are “intense, overwhelming, passionate, consuming, exciting, and confusing”. As yet, however, clinicians have been given little guidance as to how to deal with adolescents caught up in their passionate feelings. Nor has there been much research into the nature of passionate love. In Section 1 of this paper, we define passionate love, explain the necessity of developing a scale to measure this concept, and review evidence as to the nature of passionate love. In Section 2, we report a series of studies conducted in developing the Passionate Love Scale (the PLS). We present evidence as to the PLS's reliability, validity, and relationship to other factors involved in close relationships. We end by describing how we have used this scale in family therapy to open conversations about the nature of passionate love/companionate love/and intimacy … and discussing profitable directions for subsequent research.

Is prospective memory related to depression and anxiety? A hierarchical MPT modelling approach

“…These questionnaires included, in order, a questionnaire on caffeine consumption, the short version of a questionnaire investigating achievement motivation (Leistungsmotivationsinventar-kurz; Schuler & Prochaska, 2001), and German versions of the following tests: Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (Bleich, Havemann-Reinecke, & Kornhuber, 2002), the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (Bloch, Schoch, Zhang, & Russi, 1999), the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (Åkerstedt & Gillberg, 1990), the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (Crawford, Henry, Ward, & Blake, 2006; German translation by Kaschel, 2002), the HADS-D (Herrmann et al, 1995), the BDI-II (Hautzinger et al, 2006), the STAI (Laux et al, 1981) and a translation of the passionate love scale (Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986). For the present study, we will report the results of the BDI-II, HADS-D and STAI only.…”

Correlation between insula activation and self-reported quality of orgasm in women

“…The measure of the subjective feelings of love was assessed with the standard Passionate Love Scale (PLS), a 9-point Likert scale self-report questionnaire (Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986). All participants were in love with their partner as assessed by the PLS (score = 7.6 ± 1.28 (SD)).…”

“…In order to better understand the implicit link between selfreported orgasm quality ratings and love intensity/emotional intimacy within this population, individual scores about love intensity (standard passionate love scale; Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986) and satisfaction of emotional closeness with the partner during sexual activity were also considered (Rosen et al, 2000). In this framework of a partner-related network, we thus assessed the potential overlapping substrates for subliminal partner-related neural responses, women's representation of orgasm quality ratings (as assessed by self-report questionnaires about satisfaction, frequency and ease), intensity of love and satisfaction of emotional closeness with their partner.…”

“I love you forever (more or less)” – stability and change in adolescents’ romantic love status and associations with mood states

“…We also note that obsessive-compulsive disorder was classified as an anxiety disorder in the DSM-IV. In this regard, Hatfield & Sprecher 25 emphasized the obsessive dimension of romantic love. Similarly, Leckman & Mayes 26 and Fisher et al 27,28 stressed both the behavioral and neurophysiological similarities between intense early-state romantic love and traits of obsessivecompulsive disorders.…”