Romantic Love in Courtship: Divergent Paths of Male and Female Students

This investigation examined the perceived benefits and costs of romantic (i.e., reciprocal dating) relationships. In Study 1, subjects provided open‐ended reports regarding the benefits and costs associated with romantic involvement. Different groups of subjects ranked (Study 2) and rated (Study 3) these benefits and costs for importance. Companionship, happiness, and feeling loved or loving another were among the most important benefits accompanying romantic involvement. The most serious costs included stress and worry about the relationship, social and nonsocial sacrifices, and increased dependence on the partner. Compared to males, females regarded intimacy, self‐growth, self‐understanding, and positive self‐esteem as more important benefits, and regarded loss of identity and innocence about relationships and love as more important costs Alternatively, males regarded sexual gratification as a more important benefit, and monetary losses as a more serious cost than did females Implications for exchange theory are highlighted.

Section: Gender Differences In Perceived Benefits and Costsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Perceived benefits and costs of romantic relationships for women and men: Implications for exchange theory

Sedikides

Oliver

Campbell

1994

“…Early studies found that men were more likely to express romantic beliefs than were women (Fengler, 1974;Kephart, 1967;Knox & Sporakowski, 1968). Recently, however, gender differences in romantic beliefs have been diminishing, possibly due to the changing economic status of women (Cunningham & Antill, 1981).…”

Section: Gender and Ethnicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit theories of relationships: Implications for relationship satisfaction and longevity

Franiuk

Cohen

Pomerantz

2002

133

The role of implicit theories in romantic relationships was investigated in two studies. People holding a soulmate theory, who believed that finding the right person is most important for a satisfying relationship, were compared to people holding a work-it-out theory, who believed that effort is most important for building a successful relationship. In Study 1, college students (N = 527) completed a set of questionnaires, including measures of relationship theories and functioning within romantic relationships. Approximately 8 months later, a subset of these students (N = 176) completed a second set of questionnaires for Study 1. The implicit theories were highly stable over time (r = .74). For soulmate theorists, feelings that one's specific partner is ideal predicted relationship satisfaction and relationship longevity to a greater extent than for work-it-out theorists. Whereas Study 1 investigated people's theories of relationships as ends of a bipolar continuum, a separate study explored people's theories of relationships as two unipolar dimensions. Findings from Study 2 (N = 266) supported a representation of the theories as two negatively correlated factors, and supported findings from Study 1 highlighting the role of the interaction between the relationship theories and partner fit in predicting relationship satisfaction.

“…This is a 12-item measure of the extent to which one endorses romantic beliefs such as "To be truly in love is to be in love forever." Fengler's (1974) Romantic Idealist Factor. This 6-item scale contains items such as "A deep love for one another can compensate for differences in religious and economic background."…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Prototype‐based assessment of laypeople's views of love

Fehr

1994

Empirical work on love has focused mainly on romantic/passionate love. Recent research suggests that other kinds of love, such as friendship love and familial love, may be more salient to laypeople (Fehr & Russell, 1991). One purpose of this research was to offer a more complete picture of how laypeople conceptualize love by exploring a broad range of types of love. The other major purpose was to develop a methodology for studying laypeople's conceptions of different kinds of love. Four studies were conducted. In Study 1, dating couples were presented with prototypes of 15 different types of love. They were asked to rate how similar the conception of love depicted in each prototype was to their own view of love. Study 2 was a replication of Study 1 with subjects who were not dating one another. In Study 3, the validity of the prototype measures was explored by asking subjects to determine the kind of love depicted in each prototype. Study 4 investigated the relation between the prototypes of love and existing love scales and therefore addressed issues of convergent and discriminant validity. These prototype‐based measures showed considerable promise as valid, reliable instruments for assessing people's views of love. They revealed that laypeople regard friendship love and familial kinds of love as closest to their own view. Passionate kinds of love (e.g., passionate, infatuation, puppy love) received the lowest ratings. The measures also proved useful in elucidating the relation between laypeople's and experts' conceptions of romantic and passionate love.