Cultural and ethnic influences on love and attachment

Abstract

Recently, theorists have begun to speculate about the nature of passionate and companionate love. Evolutionary psychologists have tended to emphasize the pan‐cultural nature of passionate love. Historians have stressed the fact that, in different historical eras, people's attitudes toward love, sex, and intimacy have varied widely. Cross‐cultural researchers contend that, even today, societies differ greatly in their attitudes toward love. In this study, 124 men and 184 women from four ethnic backgrounds were asked if they were currently in love and how passionately and companionately in love they were. The four groups differed, as predicted, in their general orientations toward life. European‐Americans were the most individualistic, Japanese‐Americans and Pacific Islanders were intermediate in individualism/collectivism, and Chinese‐Americans were the most collectivist. Nonetheless, in the specific area of love, the various American ethnic groups did not differ significantly in the likelihood of being in love, nor in the intensity of the passionate love (PL) or companionate love (CL) they felt. In all ethnic groups, men's and women's adult attachment styles predicted romantic feelings and experiences. The anxious were the most likely to be in a love relationship, and they scored the highest on the PL scale; avoidants scored lowest. The secure scored the highest on the CL scale; avoidants scored the lowest.