Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Love: The Quadruple Theory

Abstract

Scholars across an array of disciplines including social psychologists have been trying to explain the meaning of love for over a century but its polysemous nature has made it difficult to fully understand. In this paper, a quadruple framework of attraction, resonance or connection, trust, and respect are proposed to explain the meaning of love. The framework is used to explain how love grows and dies and to describe brand love, romantic love, and parental love. The synergistic relationship between the factors and how their variations modulate the intensity or levels of love are discussed.

The current state of relationship science: A cross-disciplines review of key themes, theories, researchers and journals

“…General systems and biopsychosocial theories Burman and Margolin (1992); Engel (1977); Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton ( 2001 (Tobore, 2020); Culturally based romantic relationship (CBR2) model (Fonseca et al, 2020); Love as caring maturity model (Hedayati, 2020); Microbial effects on social behavior (Sarkar et al, 2020); Model of the social-safety system (S. Murray, Lamarche et al, 2020); and A gene-environment model (Paris, 2020).…”

“…Emerging theories and models include: Hierarchical model for interpersonal verbal communication (Jiang et al, 2021); The emotional bookkeeping hypothesis (Schino & Aureli, 2021); Reciprocal impact of relational conflict on physiological resilience (Kiecolt-Glaser et al, 2021); Happy, healthy, safe relationships (HHSR) continuum (C. Murray, Ross et al, 2020); The quadruple theory (Tobore, 2020); Culturally based romantic relationship (CBR2) model (Fonseca et al, 2020); Love as caring maturity model (Hedayati, 2020); Microbial effects on social behavior (Sarkar et al, 2020); Model of the social-safety system (S. Murray, Lamarche et al, 2020); and A gene-environment model (Paris, 2020).…”

The Relationships between Character Strengths and Subjective Wellbeing: Evidence from Greece under Lockdown during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…During this lockdown period, the population was required to learn different ways of working, examining, relaxing, and being at the side their nearest and dearest among other day by day propensities, allowing them to adapt better and resulting in higher wellbeing levels [46]. Commitment is a crucial component of love, as it promotes familiarity and similarity, which can increase engagement among people, a very important element of people relationships because it is in this way that relationships are more unfading over the course of many years [49], and during quarantine, relationships were tested [45]. Love of learning is about mastering abilities, which is the key component of engagement [20,27], and for a lot of people, quarantine was a period that was exploited to gain new knowledge and skills as well as to set new goals [45].…”

“…Positive relationships create feelings of belonging, security [26], and connection, which are the core factors of love. Connecting is about familiarity and caregiving [49]. It has been suggested that the higher levels of love that people demonstrate, the higher levels of the loving interactions with others someone will receive, and this relationship positively predicts positive relationships [27].…”

On the theory of mental representation block. a novel perspective on learning and behavior

“…MRB can be used to understand certain emotions and behavior associated with love and hate. Love is associated with emotional dependence, aggrandizement, or magnification of a partner’s traits and worth, trivializing of his or her faults, and obsessive thinking [ 74 , 75 ]. Hate, on the other hand, is associated with the inability to see good in the person or object of hate, repulsion, disgust, distancing, and a lack of concern or compassion for the welfare or wellbeing of the person [ 76 ].…”