Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of Rosenblatt’s Study on the Function of Romantic Love

Munck, Victor C. de; Korotayev, Andrey

doi:10.1177/106939719903300303

Cited by 31 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…"Sex" and "passion" fit with most of the definitions of romantic love that acknowledge the erotic/passionate aspect of romantic love (Sternberg, 1988(Sternberg, , 1996(Sternberg, , 2006, in his triangular theory of love posits passion as one vertex; Berscheid & Meyers, 1996;Berscheid & Regan, 2005, posit that love is a synthesis of companionate and passionate feelings). "Mutual" and "equality" fit with Lindholm's (1998aLindholm's ( , 1998b) discussion on the importance of equal status as a precipitating condition and attribute of romantic love, as well as de Korotayev's (1999) andde Munck et al's (2010) findings that romantic love, as a criterion for marriage, is causally related to an increase in female status and intimacy. While Sternberg views intimacy as a second vertex, he does not reflect on an assessment of mutuality as a necessary condition for intimacy.…”

Section: Examining Freelist Datasupporting

confidence: 59%

Romantic Love in the United States

Munck

Kronenfeld

2016

Sage Open

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We seek to advance cultural models theory by contributing to issues related to theory, methods, and testing the external validity of a cultural model. We propose that cultural models are learned as if they were truly properties of collectivities but have no primary existence except in individual representations of them. The shared aspect of cultural models also implies collective awareness of the if-then entailments of cultural models. We use inductive ethnographic methods of freelisting (n = 80) and pile sorting (n = 39) to derive a cultural model of romantic love in the United States. From these tasks, we developed a cultural model of successful romantic love consisting of normative scenarios. For successful romantic love relations, a person would feel excited about meeting their beloved; make passionate and intimate love as opposed to only physical love; feel comfortable with the beloved, behaving in a companionable, friendly way with one's partner; listen to the other's concerns, offering to help out in various ways if necessary; and, all the while, keeping a mental ledger of the degree to which altruism and passion are mutual. Our model is supported through an examination of two extended case studies. Further research is required, of course, but we believe we have a rather novel and dynamic cultural model that is falsifiable and predictive of successful love relationships. The model is unique in that it combines passion with comfort and friendship as properties of romantic love.

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Section: Examining Freelist Datasupporting

confidence: 59%

Romantic Love in the United States

Munck

Kronenfeld

2016

Sage Open

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“…The concept of passion is certainly not new. Psychologists and philosophers alike have been interested in the concept of passion for quite some time (Adler, 1937(Adler, /1995Darwin, 1872Darwin, /1998Derek, 1998;Freud, 1881Freud, /1992Hillman, 1960Hillman, /1992Levin, 1982;Olkowski, 1982), mainly investigating it as a component of healthy romantic relationships (deMunck & Korotayev, 1999;Fletcher, Simpson, Thomas, & Giles, 1999;Hatfield & Walster, 1978;Marston, Hecht, Manke, McDaniel, & Reeder, 1998;Peven & Shulman, 1999;Sternberg, 1986Sternberg, , 1988Sternberg, , 1997Sternberg & Hojjat, 1997;Whitley, 1993). Only recently has the concept of passion gained some popularity in the educational and managerial domains as a significant determinant of students', teachers', and managers' interest, enjoyment, satisfaction toward their work, and work quality (Maddock & Fulton, 1998;Schank & Joseph, 1998;Talley, 1996;Talley, Kubiszyn, Brassard, & Short, 1996).…”

Section: Passion For Interesting Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harmonious and Obsessive Passion for the Internet: Their Associations With the Couple's Relationship¹

Seguin-Levesque

Lalibertea

Pelletier

et al. 2003

J Applied Social Pyschol

170

150

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Based on a motivational perspective of passion, we investigated the associations between passion for the Internet and level of self‐determined motivation toward the couple's relationship. Our results show that an obsessive passion toward the Internet was associated with lower self‐determination in the couple, greater conflict in the relationship, and low levels of dyadic adjustment. In contrast, harmonious passion toward the Internet was associated with greater self‐determination in the couple, less conflict, and greater dyadic adjustment. Results suggest that use of the Internet is not necessarily associated with negative interpersonal outcomes. Rather, it appears that the way the activity has been internalized is associated with how individuals internalize their reasons for behaving in other domains.

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“…Long-term mating strategies do not require romantic love under the condition of the extended family and thus romantic love will be suppressed in nonmatrilocal societies that practice arranged marriage. The qualification of nonmatrilocality as a postmarital residence practice is important because as has been shown previously (de Munck & Korotayev, 1999, 2007, romantic love becomes a more important criterion for marriage as female status increases; and in the subsequent paper, we show that intimacy between husband and wife (a necessary feature of romantic love according to Sternberg 1984Sternberg , 1988) is positively correlated with high female status. In matrilocal situations, female status is already, ceturis paribus, high and so in order to control for the effect of matrilocality we do not include these societies in our analysis.…”

Section: Evolutionary Arguments For the Existence Of Romantic Lovementioning

confidence: 78%

“…For the first study (de Munck & Korotayev, 1999), we relied on Rosenblatt's cross-cultural sample in which societies were scored as having high to low levels of romantic love based on 11 criteria coded by two independent researchers so that each society could be rated along a 0-22 point scale (by combining the ratings of the two coders). We dichotomized Rosenblatt's ratings because we had our doubts that the ratings could be so fine grained as to rank societies along a 22-point scale.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Romantic Love and Family Organization

2016

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We propose that romantic love is a biosocial phenomenon that may well be a universal and that its cultural aspects are a product of social conditions. This position is unique because romantic love is promoted as a cultural rather than social universal. We argue that culture, social, and psychological phenomena are too frequently conflated and their core definitional features underdefined by researchers. Culture refers to learned practices that have collectively shared meanings to the members of a society. Under social conditions in which romantic love does not confer reproductive and health advantages to a mother and child, it will often be suppressed, undeveloped, and rejected as a cultural component. Through a cross-cultural study, we show that female status and family organization are important features that help in regulating the sociocultural importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage. The authors propose that romantic love is more likely to be a biosocial universal than a biocultural universal. We understand that there is a great deal of overlap between social and cultural, but we intend to make clear the distinctions, as we see them, between these two concepts. Richerson (1985, 2005) and Boehm (1999Boehm ( , 2012 have been proponents of a biocultural approach to the study of ''the origin and evolution of cultures.'' These researchers have developed a biocultural approach that remains true to the ethnographic cross-cultural approach of anthropology first advocated by Tylor (1889). Our work fits into this model for cross-cultural research, with the notable addition that the focus is on social conditions and practices from which cultural configurations emerge. In this study, we hope to accomplish the following tasks: First, we intend to demonstrate that the social aspect of romantic love has been neglected in cross-cultural research on love and is just as important as culture, if not more so, for the study of romantic love; second, we intend to show that female status and family organization are important features in regulating the sociocultural importance of romantic love, particularly (but not exclusively) as a basis for marriage; third, in our discussion, we present an argument for attending more carefully to definitions of core concepts (e.g., culture, romantic love) and the explanatory limits and strengths (or parameters) of those definitions; and fourth, we seek to stimulate interest in developing better (i.e., more reliable and valid) codings of the concept of romantic love (and other expressive/subjective concepts) in the cross-cultural databases. We began such studies over 15 years ago (de Munck &

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Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of Rosenblatt’s Study on the Function of Romantic Love

Cited by 31 publications

References 5 publications

Romantic Love in the United States

Romantic Love in the United States

Harmonious and Obsessive Passion for the Internet: Their Associations With the Couple's Relationship¹

Romantic Love and Family Organization

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Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of Rosenblatt’s Study on the Function of Romantic Love

Cited by 31 publications

References 5 publications

Romantic Love in the United States

Romantic Love in the United States

Harmonious and Obsessive Passion for the Internet: Their Associations With the Couple's Relationship1

Romantic Love and Family Organization

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Harmonious and Obsessive Passion for the Internet: Their Associations With the Couple's Relationship¹