The Language of Love: The Difference a Preposition Makes

Abstract

The terms love and in love are often used in common discourse. A social categorical approach, whereby the actual members of an individual's social categories are examined, was used to investigate the differential meaning of these terms. It was hypothesized that (a) the membership of the love category would be larger than that of the in love category; (b) the membership of the in love category would be encapsulated within the love category membership, indicating that love is the higher order generic term; (c) that the membership of the in love category, but not the love category, would be encapsulated within a sexual attraction/desire category membership; (d) although these effects would be observed for both men and women, certain gender differences would be observed. All hypotheses were confirmed. The implications of these findings for a taxonomy of love as well as for understanding and predicting love phenomena are discussed.

Passion, Intimacy, and Time: Passionate Love as a Function of Change in Intimacy

“…Sternberg (1986) defined passion in terms of drives leading to "romance, physical attraction, sexual consummation, and the like in loving relationships" (p. 120). Meyers and Berscheid (1997) cautioned that sexual attraction and desire are not synonymous with romantic love and are not sufficient conditions for experiencing romantic love, with which we agree, for indeed sexual desire in particular may be felt in relatively anonymous contexts (even toward movie characters) where there is no question of love. Still, Meyers and Berscheid found that people were reluctant to label their feelings in a romantic relationship as being "love" unless they felt sexual attraction toward the person.…”

How love and lust change people’s perception of relationship partners

“…Overall, however, they seem to agree that all of the brain systems for passionate love, sexual desire, and attachment do in fact communicate and coordinate with one another or, in other words, conclude that love and lust are tightly related but not identical (see Meyers & Berscheid, 1997;Berscheid and Hatfield, 1969). Our question is more as to when love and lust produce different psychological effects.…”

Communal Responsiveness in Relationships with Female versus Male Family Members

“…There is some research suggesting this is the case, most notably the finding by Meyers and Berscheid (1997) that females are mentioned more as recipients of love than are males. Research has also shown that women are more likely to receive help than men (Eagly and Crowley 1986).…”