527 Relationship Essay Topics

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  • The Relationship Between the Environment and Humans
  • Social Media: The Negative Impact on Relationships
  • Literature: Relationships With Society
  • The Relationship Between Theory and Research
  • Shakespearean Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s Relationship
  • Hamlet and Gertrude Relationship Analysis – Research Paper
  • The Relationship Between the Environment and Development
  • The Relationship between Religion and Politics The paper will look at how various civilizations have regarded religion and the extent to which religion has been allowed to influence the direction of politics.
  • How Cell Phones Affect Family Relationships: Essay Sample This essay will give recommendations on how to handle technological devices to improve the social structures in a family.
  • Relationship Problems and Disagreements All relationships have problems and disagreements. Lack of communication can be the start of a couple’s problems or the other way round.
  • Confucius: The Five Great Relationships Confucius was the founder of an ethical and moral system based on the family, as well as the five grand relationships.
  • Relationships in “The Merchant of Venice” by Shakespeare “The Merchant of Venice” is a play written by William Shakespeare during the 16th century. The characters in the play demonstrate virtues of friendship, love, and hate.
  • Law and Medicine: Relationship Analysis Medicine like most other professionals is governed by laws that are meant to protect patients’ rights and prevent fraudulent practice.
  • “Night” by Elie Wiesel: Eliezer’s and His Father Relationship Eliezer the main character in Night encounters change on several occasions. This essay describes how the relationship between Eliezer and his father changes throughout the novel.
  • Relationship Between Entrepreneurship and Innovation Entrepreneurship and innovation are complementary of each other. Having an updated entrepreneurial perspective in business is critical for reaching the aim of innovation.
  • How Happy Relationships Affect a Person: Cause and Effect The paper states that happy relationships are affective. They impact a person’s physical and emotional health and can change an individual’s attitude in life.
  • The Relationship Between Identity and Language Native language is often taken for granted as something that people use intuitively but it has a critical role in building one’s identity.
  • Boeing Company’s Customer Relationships Management The focus of the paper is to give the definition of the notion of “being customer-led” and to analyze different customer-led programs on the example of Boeing Company.
  • Arm Span vs. Height: The Relationship Analysis This study will demonstrate whether the men’s spread arms are equal to their height using the dimensions provided in the Vitruvian man illustration.
  • Social Media: Impact on Interpersonal Communication and Relationships Social media has surpassed email as the primary method of communication with individuals from all around the globe. It has proved beneficial to some and harmful to others.
  • Social Media and Interpersonal Relationships Social media has undeniably impacted the nature of interpersonal relationships, and the result is rather ambiguous, although more negative changes can be identified.
  • The Glass Menagerie: Analysis of Relationships This essay will analyze the complicated relationship between the antagonists of the Glass Menagerie play Amanda–the mother and Laura—the daughter.
  • Importance of Relationships and Family in Frankenstein Frankenstein’s novel talks about different thematic outlooks relying on what the reader identifies as the thematic impact of their modern culture.
  • Aristotle’s View on the Relationship Between Soul and Body Aristotle’s work called “De Anima” represents a study of the question of the soul and is phenomenal for the time of the thinker.
  • Counseling and the Characteristics of Helping Relationships Counseling is a multifaceted process that involves the creation of friendship, active listening and elevation of an individual to make a wise decision concord to current challenges.
  • Relationship Between Morality and Happiness The role of morality in relation to happiness is essential. It defines the core principles and values of a person.
  • Relationship Between Korean Culture and Language This paper considers the English language peculiarities among Korean migrants to demonstrate the impact of national culture on forming the Korean language by using their contracts.
  • Intercultural Relationships and Communication An intercultural relationship is vital because it can help to learn new skills and gain diversified cultural knowledge.
  • Business Relationship With Its Stakeholders This paper briefly looks at theories that explain a business relationship with its stakeholders. It then discusses stakeholders in the banking industry.
  • My Relationships With the English Language and English Skills One day, I realized that the development of literacy skills did not mean merely the ability to string several words together in a coherent sentence.
  • Relationship Between Poverty and Crime The paper makes the case and discusses inequality rather than poverty being the prime reason for people committing crimes.
  • Relationship between Gods and Humans in The Odyssey The relationships between Gods and Humans in The Odyssey are layered and vital for the story. Find out how they affect the plot and Odysseus’s journey.
  • Joyce Travelbee’s Human to Human Relationship Model Joyce Travelbee’s human-to-human relationship model argues that every patient is a unique human being who deserves to be provided with hope, motivation, and meaning while experiencing the illness.
  • Relationship Between Concepts, Constructs, and Variables To develop the conceptual framework, it is crucial to define the concepts, constructs, and variables and understand their application in healthcare research.
  • Single African American Mothers’ Relationships With Sons The research topic for this study dealt with the experiences of single African American mothers’ relationships with their sons.
  • Music and Mathematics Relationship This paper seeks to show the usage of mathematics in music and avail information on the effects of listening to music on mathematics.
  • Marriage and Family Relationships’ Role in Society In this paper, attention will be paid to such factors as social class, age, and other determinants of marriage in order to comprehend the worth of a family in society.
  • Parent-Child Relationship and Its Effect on Adolescents The importance of parent-child relationships stems from an incredible level of interdependence that many families display when it comes to addressing family needs.
  • Analysis of the Relationship between Strategy and Implementation of Change The development of internet technology has resulted into global interconnection amongst various organizations.
  • Pluralism Approach to Employment Relationship The paper discusses whether pluralism is the most viable approach to the modern employment relationship by comparing it with other structures and exploring neo-pluralism.
  • The Relationship Between Education and Recidivism Inmates who enrolled to earn a diploma in General Educational Development did not engage in crimes again as compared to those who did not enroll for such programs.
  • The Relationship Between Land and People A case on study was the December 26th, 2004 tsunami that killed over 230,000 people in 14 different countries.
  • Virtual and In-Person Relationships: Comparative Analysis The lower rate of marriages compared to romantic partnerships among online daters may be due to the lack of exclusivity, commitment, and trust.
  • Gadgets’ Impact on Parent-Child Relationships This paper considers studies that analyze gadgets’ impact on relations between parents and children and factors that affect the time children spend using their devices.
  • Odysseus and Athena Relationship in Homer’s The Odyssey Odyssey is one of the major poems written by Homer. It has been translated to a number of modern languages and originally it was expected to be sung, rather than read.
  • The Processes of Building Connection and Relationships A situation in which someone reveals his or her feelings is always saturated with emotions and requires understanding and empathic accuracy.
  • Wal-Mart: Managing Relationships with Stakeholders From an ethical and legal point of view, Wal-Mart needed to change some policies and continue to improve on some of its most basic strategies.
  • The Work and Identity Formation Relationship Work is one of the vast parts of human lives because contributes to the moral development of people and is closely connected with the process of personality forming.
  • The Impacts of Divorce on Family Relationships The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of divorce and separation on family relationships. The researcher will apply qualitative research approach to analyze data.
  • Employee Burnout and Vacation Length Relationship There is a problem with the workplace burnout rates in the organization. It needs to be addressed in a manner as efficient and expeditious as possible.
  • Marriage and Romantic Relationships: US vs. Trinidad & Tobago This paper aims to discuss the courtship and marriage customs in the United States and compare them with those from Trinidad and Tobago.
  • How to End a Relationship? In the instance when both parties are not comfortable with the relationship and they are ready to come out and share their feelings, ending a relationship is rather easy.
  • Business and Human Resource Strategies Relationship This paper discusses the reasons why it is necessary to have a close relationship between business strategy and an organization’s human resource strategy.
  • The Relationship Between Science and Philosophy The article discusses science and philosophy are the same things, but science is a modified version of philosophy.
  • Money Issues in Romantic and Marital Relationships Money often causes issues in relationships because of changing roles in the household, increasing expenses, financial infidelity, and lack of financial goals.
  • Ghosting in Communication and Relationships Ghosting is the act of abruptly ending all communication with someone, especially with another person well-known to someone.
  • “Sonny’s Blues”: Relationships Between the Brothers One of the main themes in the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is family support, essential for uniting the characters and allowing them to solve their problems.
  • Attachment Theory and Romantic Relationships Attachment is a crucial personal characteristic that significantly influences an individual’s social life and romantic relations.
  • Relationship with Father in the Book Night by Elie Wiesel In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, Eliezer experiences starvation, mental and physical abuse; the experience resulted to a change in relationship with his father.
  • Father-Son Relationship in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” Play The paper states that Hamlet’s struggle emanates from the death of his father. Although he becomes a villain at some point, he remained steadfast.
  • Father-Son Relationships in Homer’s “The Odyssey” By focusing on the father-son relationship, Homer reveals what was important to the ancient Greeks and what should still be important to us today.
  • The Impact of Divorce and Separation on Family Relationships Divorce and separation has become a tradition in the contemporary world. Spouses barely finish 10 years in marriage before they start having misunderstandings.
  • Responsible Relationships and Abstinence Developing responsible relationships and remaining abstinent is crucial for adolescents and young adults, especially for their mental well-being.
  • Boyle’s Law: Pressure-Volume Relationship in Gases The purpose of this paper is to use an established mathematical relationship to determine pressure or volume gas when one variable changes at a constant temperature.
  • Cheating or Infidelity in Relationships Infidelity in romantic relationships, both at the stage of dating and marrying, usually leads to the partnership’s destruction.
  • Rita F. Pierson and The TED Talk on Education and the Teacher’s Relationship With the Children Rita F. Pierson: the TED talk on education and the teacher’s relationship with the children they teach and discuss its traits as well as those of the speaker.
  • The Relationship Between Youth, Lifestyle and Consumption The idea of youth in the modern world has not been explicitly attached to a certain age group, and became the focus of the global consumer culture as a whole.
  • Hedda Gabler’s Relationships with the Men in Her Life The play “Hedda Gabler” reveals the lifestyle and thoughts of a desperate housewife who is limited by Victorian values.
  • Science and Religion: Historical Relationship This paper will discuss the historical relationship between science and religion including the areas of contention and agreement between the two.
  • Cathay Pacific Airlines’ Customer Relationship Management This paper investigates the impact of customer relationship management in the airline industry and its contribution to the success of Cathay Pacific Airlines.
  • Worker-Employer Relationship According to Bible Job is an influential part of a person’s life, and employees and employers must build good relationships. The Bible refers to them as interactions between a slave and a master.
  • The Relationships Between Church and States in Europe This paper has explored the development of relationships between church and state in Europe in the period from 800 to 1122.
  • Relationship Between Urbanization, Globalization, and People The relationship between urbanization, globalization, and people is one of the most interesting and provocative topics in many discussions.
  • Symbiotic Relationship Between Cleaner Gobies and Fish Symbiotic relationship occurs only when different species are involved in intra-specific relationships (relationships within the same species).
  • Freedom in Life and Relationship There are numerous benefits accrued from freedom in a relationship. Setting a partner free in a relationship leads to one becoming responsible and committed to the relationship.
  • Enculturation and Family Relationships This paper will be devoted to the experience of enculturation affected by parents and their relationships and what impact it had on the family relationships.
  • Computer Communication and Its Influence on People’s Relationships The essay states that computer communication has excellent development opportunities currently, still it has some negative effects.
  • Nursing Theoretical Frameworks: Joyce Travelbee’s Human-To-Human Relationship Model In contemporary nursing science, there are numerous theoretical frameworks of various types, each describing a unique approach to caregiving.
  • Education and Income Inequality Relationship Income inequality is a great problem of every society since it widens the chasm between the richest and the most deprived people and negatively affects economic growth.
  • Developing Relationships in the Workplace Stakeholders are individuals and groups that the firm impacts directly or indirectly. Businesses must identify and prioritize the needs and expectations via surveys and feedback.
  • Explaining the Impact of Birth Order on Siblings’ Relationships Relationships between children can vary and be analyzed on the basis of a number of factors, primarily the position of the siblings, more popularly termed as ‘birth-order’.
  • Globalization and Democratization Relationship This paper explores the existing relationship between democracy and globalization. It focuses on democratization, globalization and their imperativeness.
  • Romantic Relationship: Failures and Lessons Self-development is the final step before meeting the one who can make you happy and the final stride before developing successful relationships with this Mr. or Ms. Right.
  • Building Meaningful Relationships The relationships that people create with their contacts are critical in mobilizing resources to promote change in the community.
  • The Relationship Between Human Sinfulness and the Doctrine of Salvation The theme of the salvation of the human soul is central throughout the Bible. This paper examines one aspect of the Doctrine of Salvation, concerning human sinfulness.
  • Family Relationships and Dominant Culture Personal preferences, values, and attitudes are largely conditioned by the social and cultural environment in which people live.
  • Healthy Marriage and Family Relationships This essay examines the significance of scientifically based knowledge on marriages and family relationships with a view of establishing how good choices increase longevity.
  • Parent-Child Relationships in the Novels “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov and “Sula” by Toni Morrison The problem of parent-child relationships is one of the most examined and actual eternal questions. This question concerns the problems of love and hatred.
  • The Relationship Between Task Duration and Direct Resource Cost During the implementation of the project, the speed of task duration is directly related to direct resource costs; that is, the more time is needed, the more resources are spent.
  • The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini: Relationships That Change The Kite Runner is an interpretation of changes people experience before and after bombs destroyed their lives, political controversies, and human relationships.
  • The Main Theses of Healthy Relationship A healthy relationship refers to a good relation with the people around you whereby there are no instances of quarrel or disagreements over given issues.
  • GE Energy and GE Healthcare: Strategic Customer Relationships This article seeks to discuss the benefits of building strategic customer relationships for GE Energy and GE healthcare and their customers.
  • Interpersonal Qualities for Good Relationships Interpersonal skills like respect, friendliness, sympathetic joy and equanimity are essential for the growth of quality relations that foster individual and collective development.
  • Body-Mind Relationship in Psychobiology The very division into “the body” and “the mind” is artificial, but it is convenient due to our perception of the world and the huge qualitative difference between them.
  • Family Relationship in “Night” by Elie Wiesel In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, the relationship between Eliezar and his father appears to be complex. In this essay, the author analyzes how this relationship changes throughout the novel.
  • Organizational Structure’s and Culture Relationship The paper considers the questions about creating and managing organizational culture, and organizational design and strategy in a changing global environment.
  • The Theme of Relationships in “Hills Like White Elephants” and “Indian Camp” by Hemingway Ernest Hemingway’s stories “Hills Like White Elephants” and “Indian Camp” depict the struggles of the characters to highlight the issues in human relationships.
  • The Yoga Ethics in a Student-Teacher Relationship The yoga ethics in the student/teacher relationship arises from an idea of various boundaries ranging from an array of personal upbringing and regular life experiences.
  • Environment and Health Relationship This paper aims to explain the relationship between health and the environment through a succinct analysis and identification of five objectives of epidemiology.
  • Customer Relationship Marketing in Business Marketing The purpose of this article is to look at relationship marketing, the goals it pursues, and the methods by which these goals are achieved.
  • The Relationship between Race and Sexuality Sexuality is a complex issue that affects everyone. People of different communities have a different understanding of sexuality.
  • Parasocial Relationships and Purchasing Habits The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze the connection between parasocial relationships, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intentions, and the followers’ intent to purchase.
  • Peer Relationships Impact on Adulthood Development The article by Marion, Laursen, Zettergren, and Bergman reflects the impact of past peer relationships on adulthood, focusing on buffered-effects and direct-effects models.
  • Romantic Relationships Built With Dating Apps Modern technologies are actively developing and improving and helping people in all areas of their lives. The sphere of personal relationships and love is no exception.
  • Why Doctor-Patient Relationships Matter Mutual understanding between doctor and patient influences the effectiveness of treatment just as much as correctly diagnosed and fully delivered medical care.
  • Money Issues in a Relationship In the contemporary world, both men and women contribute equally to the economy of the household. This has changed the household role of men from being the sole breadwinners.
  • The Relationship of Leadership to the Politics of the Organization The advice given by Dr. Kennedy is practical to some extent. Many workers prefer to be led rather than be managed.
  • The Relationship Between Understaffing of Nurses and Patient Safety This paper aims to investigate aspects related to the problem of nurse understaffing by referencing the scholarly literature on the topic.
  • Extramarital Relationships and Their Causes It is crucial to consider the factors that influence the formation of extramarital affairs and find a way to eliminate the causes of such relationship issue emergence.
  • Analysis TED Talk Outline: Broken Relationship Sometimes, relationships get broken for seemingly no reason; you just abruptly drift away from each other: even the closest of people can grow apart without a reason.
  • How to Maintain a Long-Term Relationship The answer to how to maintain a long-term relationship can be simplified into one word – balance. The sense lies in the lack of balance between high expectations and reality.
  • Peplau’s Theory of Nurse-Patient Relationship Peplau theorized the main goal of care is to create an interpersonal, therapeutic relationship to allow nurses to assist their clients in identifying their felt problems.
  • The Causes and Effects of Social Media on Relationships and Communication Communication has become easier and more complicated at the same time. The Internet has blended interpersonal and mass communication, making public and private lines less pronounced.
  • Date Rape and Victim-Offender Relationships Analysis The victim/offender relationship is one of the most significant factors, which help to determine offender’s behavior at different stages of committing a crime.
  • Cognitive Dissonance in Abusive Relationships The concept of cognitive dissonance can help explain a victim of an abusive relationship’s emotional state and psychological motivation.
  • Marketing: Good Relationship With Customers The paper aims to develop a good relationship in a company with the customer by employing different strategies.
  • Impact of Relationships and Social Connection The concept of social connection is essential since it describes the experience of being close, linked, or connected to different members of a given society.
  • Standard 2: Building Family and Community Relationships The paper discusses NAEYC Standard Two for Initial Early Childhood Professional Preparation aimed to improve skills in developing family and community relationships.
  • The Impact Paternal Absence on Females Relationships This study will examine the impact paternal absence has on the way females (who were abandoned by their fathers in their childhood or adolescence) develop their intimate relationships.
  • Descartes and the Mind-Body Relationship Driven by Descartes’s explanation of his mind-body relationship theory, specialists tend to ensure to distinguish between the brain and the mind.
  • Mother-Daughter Relationship in “Flowers in the Attic” by Andrews, Virginia C. Flowers in the Attic by Andrews, Virginia C. deeply explores various topics related to child neglect, abuse, unhealthy parental dynamics, and family patterns.
  • Social Relationships and Work Social relations are an integral part of people’s lives and are a necessity at duty. Working interactions have an individual specificity, but friendship leads to many advantages
  • Football in Ghana and Its Relationship with the Rest of the World (Player Transfers) Football is one of the most popular sports not only in Ghana but in the region of Africa and the global society.
  • Birth Order and Siblings Relationships This paper would highlight how relationships of siblings differ from one another and under what circumstances.
  • Domestic Violence in Same-Sex Relationships The article “A Same-Sex Domestic Violence Epidemic Is Silent” by Shwayder addresses the issue of domestic abuse as one of the key concerns of contemporary societal concerns.
  • Law and Morality Relationship: Kant vs. Fuller This paper reviews the works of two philosophers, Immanuel Kant and Lon L. Fuller, to describe the relationship between law and morality.
  • Persuasion and Relationships in Negotiating and Disputes Effective persuasion is stipulated by a wide range of factors. Thus, a person who is willing to master the major persuasion skills must take certain steps so that to achieve success.
  • The Contractor-Customer Relationship Factors
  • Communication Technology: Impact on Personal Relationships
  • The Mediating Effect of Job Happiness on the Relationship Between Job Satisfaction
  • Social Media and Mental Health Relationship
  • Hamlet’s Relationship With Gertrude
  • Relationship Development Application Paper
  • Breaking Free From an Abusive Relationship
  • Collaborative Relationships within Child Protection Work
  • Adult – Child Relationships in American Movies
  • Father-Son Relationships in William Faulkner’s Novels
  • McClelland’s Theory: Organizational Relationships
  • Education & Interpersonal Relationships in Family
  • Marketing and Revenue Management Relationship
  • African-American Mothers’ and Their Sons Relationship
  • Therapy and Culture in the Nurse-Patient Relationship
  • Building Family and Community Relationships
  • Social Media Hindrance on Interpersonal Relationships
  • Broken Relationships Aspects Discussion
  • Trends in Relationships in the Board of Directors and the CEOs
  • The Relationship Between the Range and Time of Flight of a Cannonball
  • Benefits of Good Parent-Child Relationships
  • Competence in Relationships, Interaction, and Guidance
  • Professional Relationships in Healthcare
  • Public Health and Private Medicine Relationship
  • Relationship Between Strategy and Operations in an Organization
  • Relationship Between Low Self-Esteem and Body Weight Among Adolescents
  • Ethics: Dual Relationships
  • Interpersonal Relationships in the Movie Crash
  • Doctor-Nurse Relationships
  • Identities within Relationships
  • Coach and Athlete Relationship
  • Technology and Dating: Social Media and Committed Relationships
  • The Relationship Between Air Temperature and Relative Humidity
  • Human Behavior and Social Environment Relationship
  • Explaining Relationships: Types of Relationships
  • Muslim Faith and Healthcare Relationship
  • Social Roles and Functions in Relationships
  • Family Relationships and Response to Health Issues
  • Attraction, Love, Relationship Schemas and Stages
  • Primary Nursing Care vs. Relationship-Based Care
  • Employee Relationships From a Biblical Perspective
  • The Reverse Logistics and Sustainability Relationship
  • Doctor-Patient Relationships in Medical Anthropology
  • Door-to-Door Sales and Personal Relationships
  • Exploring Patterns and Relationships in Mathematics
  • The Relationship Between My Laptop and Me
  • Relationship Between Sports and Religion
  • Relativism and Its Relationship With Ethics
  • Industry vs. Inferiority Relationships
  • Leadership Followership Relationship
  • Analyzing the Relationship Between Gender and Victimization
  • The Relationship With Colleagues
  • Culture and Its Relationship to Fundamentalism of Modern Iran
  • Nurse-Family Relationship and Barriers to It
  • Son-Father Relationship in Elie Wiesel’s “Night”
  • “Night”: A Reflection on Elie’s Relationship with His Father
  • Healthy Relationships in the Healthcare Workplace
  • Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc.’s Supply Chain Relationships
  • Singapore and Malaysia Economic Relationships
  • The Parent-Child Relationships Theories
  • The Role of Scientifically Based Knowledge on Marriage and Family Relationships
  • Supply Chain Processes and Relationship Management
  • The Relationship Between Internal and External Customers
  • Polyandrous Relationships and Their Key Features
  • Diversity Dimensions and Their Impact on Relationships
  • The Broken Relationship Interview Analysis
  • Understanding the Relationship Between Discount Rate and Risks
  • Classifications: Cell-Phone Users, Relationship, Class Items and Drivers
  • The Relationships Among Tests and Scales, Populations, Reliability and Validity
  • Interpersonal Relationships and Risk Perception
  • Explaining Attachment Theory and Romantic Relationships
  • Industrialization Impact on Men and Women Relationship
  • Introduction to Sociology: Building Proper Relationships
  • “Children’s Emotional Development: Challenges in Their Relationships to Parents, Peers, and Friends”: Article Review
  • Empirically Supported Relationships and Therapist Factors
  • Childhood Relationships & Adolescent Mental Health
  • The Relationship Between Understaffing of Nurses and Patient Safety in Hospitals
  • Integrity in Relationships and Leadership
  • The Experimental Approach: The Causal Relationship Between Independent Variables and Dependent Variables
  • Nursing: Human-to-Human Relationship Model
  • Interpersonal Relationship: African-American Families
  • Behavior and Relationships in the Workplace
  • Social Media’ and Business’ Relationships in Indonesia
  • Building Family and Community Relationships Standard
  • Values’ Influence on a Romantic Relationship
  • Communication Theories in Workplace Relationships
  • The Relationship of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son
  • The Booking Firm’s Customer Relationship Management
  • How the Concept of Brahman-Atman Can Benefit Human-Environment Relationship
  • Relationship Between Brilliance and Mental Illness
  • Ethics of Infidelity and Cheating in Relationships
  • Developing the Coach-Athlete Relationships
  • Christ’s Relationships with Wealth and Poverty
  • Christianity and Sports: The Relationship Analysis
  • Social Networks’ Impact on Relationships
  • The Relationship Between Economic and Political Freedom
  • The Relationship Between Parenting Styles
  • Entrepreneurship: Relationship Marketing
  • Study of a Parent-Child Relationship
  • The Relationship Between Race and Crime in the United States
  • Relationships Between Reproduction, Heredity, and DNA
  • Atopic Dermatitis and Eczema Relationship
  • Relationship Among the Religions
  • Sex Ed and Power in Relationships
  • “The Worth of Love and Human Relationships” by Oscar Wilde
  • Behaving in a Loving Relationship
  • The Theme of Jealousy in Relationships Reflected in Art
  • Bullying and School Drop Out Rate Relationship Analysis
  • Problems Which Ruin Relationships
  • Relationship between Religion and Government
  • The Analysis of the Structure of Human Relationships
  • Group Dynamics and Relationships in Teams
  • Single Mothers and Sons Relationships
  • Father and Son Relationship: “Night” by Elie Wiesel
  • Dating Stereotypes and Relationships Development
  • Building Family and Community Relationships: Guide
  • Relationship between Asthma and Smoking
  • Perceptions about Relationships around Schooling
  • The Autism-Gender Relationship Analysis
  • The Nature of Leadership as an Organizational Relationship
  • The Myth and History Relationship in Homer’s Iliad
  • The Ethical Principle of Dual Relationships
  • Communication Milestones in Relationships
  • Doctor-Nurse Relationships: Lessons Learnt
  • The Fourth Amendment and Technology Relationship
  • Father & Son Relationship in Night by Elie Wiesel
  • The US-Israel Relationship and Foreign Challenges
  • Money and Relationship in King Lear by Shakespeare
  • Relationships and Christian Morality
  • The Therapeutic Couple: Non-Working Relationships
  • The Relationship Between Sustainable Development and a High Standard of Living
  • A Care Ethics Position: Doctor-Patient Relationships
  • Collaboration: Impact on Employee Relationships
  • The Relationship Between Native Americans and White Settlers
  • The Brain Structure and Cognition Relationship
  • Critical Racial Theory and Interracial Relationships
  • Unveiling the Relationship Between CSR and Employee Turnover
  • Economic Inequality and Its Relationship to Poverty
  • Database Diagrams and Relationships
  • The Relationship Between Gender and GPA
  • The Media and Print Relationship
  • The Employee Salary and Market Rate Relationship
  • The Theology and Science Roles and Relationships
  • Father-Son Relationships in “Night” by Elie Wiesel
  • Causal Relationships Between Variables
  • The Similarity in Reasons to Start and End a Romantic Relationship
  • Therapy for Building Meaningful Relationships
  • Effective Communication Tips for Better Relationships
  • Comparison of Current Relationships Between US and Russia to Cold War
  • Ideologies and Their Relationship Between Violence and Popularity
  • Sexual Abuse and Its Impact on Relationships
  • Organization and Employee Relationships
  • The Global Industry and Nature Relationships
  • Nonverbal Communication in Relationships
  • The Parent-Child Relationship in Sports
  • Human Relationships and Happiness
  • The Impact of Alzheimer’s Disease on Relationships
  • Becoming an Adult and Forming Relationships
  • The US Dollar Value and Demand Relationship
  • Japan-US International Trade Relationship
  • Identifying Employer-Employee Relationship
  • “Relationship Between Logistical Support Factors…” by Akanmu
  • Successful and Unsuccessful Strategies in Relationships
  • Cohabitation: A Free Relationship
  • A Relationship Between the Individual and Society
  • Relationship Between the Medieval Music and Culture
  • Elderly Health and Substance Abuse Relationship
  • A Feedback in the Manager-Employee Relationship
  • Performance Management and Working Relationships
  • The History of Relationships Between Police and African Americans
  • Relationships in the “Night” Novel by Elie Wiesel
  • Technology and Employment Relationship Management
  • Strategies for Relationships, Groups, and Organizations
  • Wealth, Opportunity, and Teen Pregnancy Relationship
  • Relationship of the History of the Western Civilization II Timeline to Historiography
  • The Relationship Between Grassroots Movements and Activists
  • Social Capital and COVID-19 Relationship
  • Entrepreneurial Networking and Relationship Capital
  • Customer Relationship Management Software Implementation
  • Sports and Religion: The Relationship Analysis
  • The Federal Reserve and the Bible Relationship
  • Relationships in the “For Colored Girls” Film
  • Government Regulations of Employment Relationship
  • Relationship Between the Past and the Present in “Kindred” Novel
  • The Relationship Between the Use of Electronics and Consumer Behaviors
  • Coaching: Responsibility, Strategies, and Relationships With Client
  • Building Strong Relationships at Work
  • Hagia Sophia and Related Spiritual Relationships
  • Religious Beliefs and Ecology Relationship
  • The Intimate Relationships Development
  • Philosophy of Religion: The Topic of the Relationship Between God
  • Communication Inhibitors’ Effect on Relationships
  • Lobbying and Civil Disobedience Relationship
  • Halloween Culture and Influenza Infection Relationship
  • Relationship Between Poverty and Health People in 2020
  • Human Psychology and Physiology Relationship
  • Corporate Governance and Voluntary Disclosure Relationship
  • Direct Marketing and Relationship With Customers
  • Successful and Unsuccessful Relationships
  • Investing in Stocks and Risk-Return Relationship
  • The Doctor-Patient Relationship: Legal Duties
  • Morality Policy Making: The Relationship between Politics and Morality
  • Distancing Influence on Economic Relationships
  • Healthcare Quality and Leadership Relationship
  • Double Standard in Sexual Relationships
  • The Impact of My Emotional Intelligence on Personal Relationships
  • Trust and Relationships in Contemporary American Cinema
  • Relationship Between Gender and Death Anxiety
  • HIV Disease’s and Kaposi Sarcoma’s Relationship
  • Barriers to Leaving Abusive Relationships
  • Psychology of Relationships: Case Analysis
  • Christianity: Afterlife and Relationship With Jesus
  • Relationship Between Monetary Policy and House Price in USA
  • Standard Employment Relationship in Canada
  • Relationships Between the European Settlers and the Native Americans
  • Exercise and Heart Attacks: The Relationship Among Women
  • Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship Analysis to the Mutagenicity of Nitroaromatics Compounds
  • IW Customer Relationship Management Plan
  • The Relationship Between HIV and Kaposi Sarcoma
  • Research Critique: The Importance of Relationships in Mental Care
  • The Relationship Between Spirituality and Organ Donation
  • The Relationship Between Breast Cancer and Genes
  • Healthcare Research and Social Change Relationship
  • Sexual Satisfaction Importance in the Romantic Relationships
  • The Relationship Cafe: Cultural Analysis
  • Human Systems and Relationships Observations
  • Healthcare Practices Problems: Relationships With Physicians
  • Beta-Agonist Use and Death From Asthma Relationship
  • The Intergovernmental Relationship Among Public Health Care Agencies
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A decade of love: mapping the landscape of romantic love research through bibliometric analysis

  • Yixue Han 1 ,
  • Yulin Luo 1 ,
  • Zhuohong Chen 1 ,
  • Nan Gao 1 ,
  • Yangyang Song 1 &
  • Shen Liu 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  187 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Given the limited availability of bibliometric and visual analysis on the topic of romantic love, the primary objective of the current study is to fill this gap by conducting a comprehensive visual analysis of relevant literature. Through this analysis, the current study aimed to uncover current research trends and identify potential future directions in the field of romantic love. The current study’s search criteria were met by an impressive 6858 publications found in the Web of Science database for the period between 2013 and 2022. A thorough analysis was conducted on the bibliographic visualization of the authors, organizations, countries, references, and keywords. Over time, there has been a remarkable surge in the number of significant publications. Among the authors in the field of romantic love, Emily A. Impett has emerged as the most prolific. The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships is indeed one of the top journals that has published a significant number of articles on the topic of romantic love. During the preceding decade, the University of California System emerged as a prominent producer of publications centered around romantic love, solidifying the United States’ position as a dominant player in this field. In recent times, there has been a significant surge in the popularity of keywords such as “same-sex,” “conflict resolution,” and “social relationships” within academic literature. These topics have experienced a burst of attention, as evidenced by a substantial increase in references and citations. Through the use of visualization maps and analysis of key publications, the current study offers a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and potential avenues for future research in the field of romantic love. Gaining a deep understanding of the complex dynamics and societal implications of romantic love has been instrumental in formulating policies that embody increased compassion and support. As a result, these policies have played a pivotal role in fostering resilient familial ties and contributing to the enduring stability and prosperity of our social fabric.

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Introduction

The development course of romantic love.

Romantic love, as defined by Hatfield and Rapson ( 1987 ) as an intense longing for union with another, has long been recognized as a driving force behind some of humanity’s most remarkable achievements. Studies by Bartels and Zeki ( 2000 ) and the work of Fehr ( 2013 , 2015 ) have further emphasized its profound impact. Previous research has suggested that romantic love has a crucial role in the development and maintenance of romantic relationships. It involves a transition from the significant investment of time and attention in the initial stages to enhanced communication and satisfaction in committed partnerships (Mizrahi et al. 2022 ). However, recent research has shown that in the United States, the divorce rate has consistently remained at historically high levels. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( 2017 ), ~40–50% of first marriages end in divorce. In recent times, there has been a trend toward shorter and more prevalent romantic relationships. Alirezanejad ( 2022 ) found that different generations of women have maintained distinct expectations and experiences when it comes to love. Additionally, the significance of commitment in romantic relationships has witnessed a decline. These findings also indicate that there are additional factors at play that influence the dynamics between romantic love and the duration of relationships. The triangular theory of love, being one of the most widely used theories on romantic love, proposes that romantic love consists of three components: intimacy, passion, and an absence of commitment, alongside a willingness to invest resources without expecting reciprocation (Jimenez-Picon et al. 2022 ). The Love Attitude Scale (LAS) developed by Clyde and Susan Hendrick has been a significant contribution in the study of romantic love using psychometric methods. Tobore ( 2020 ) introduced a comprehensive four-fold framework that aims to elucidate the dynamics of how love evolves and diminishes. This framework includes the elements of attraction, empathy or connection, trust, and respect. As a result, the enigmatic and unique nature of romantic love has captivated the attention of scholars from various disciplines, including psychology, biology, sociology, and neuroscience. These scholars have conducted extensive research and investigations into the complexities of romantic love. Thus, the present study conducted a comprehensive and in-depth analysis and discourse on romantic love, spanning multiple research domains. Additionally, the publication emphasized the influence of romantic love on positive emotions as well as its association with various negative behaviors. Furthermore, it underscored the importance of utilizing bibliometric analysis as a valuable approach to study and understand romantic love.

The research directions of romantic love in different disciplines

Psychologists have focused on exploring the relationship between romantic love and negative emotions in individuals with mental illnesses. Lafontaine et al. ( 2020 ) found a correlation between romantic love insecurity, specifically anxiety and avoidance, and the occurrence of intimate partner violence (IPV). This pattern of behavior was shown to undermine relationships and diminish individuals’ sense of security. Moreover, individuals with schizophrenia and other mental health conditions faced significant challenges in building and sustaining healthy interpersonal connections, partly due to the enduring stigma associated with mental illness (Budziszewska et al. 2020 ). Biological researchers have delved into the physiological activities and responses associated with romantic love. Furthermore, biological research has demonstrated that communication plays a crucial role in enhancing romantic relationships by facilitating physiological and behavioral adaptations between partners. For instance, a study by Zeevi et al. ( 2022 ) revealed that men and women in a romantic relationship can enhance their romantic interest in each other by synchronizing their skin electrical activities and modifying their behavior. These findings suggest that the social adaptation of the sympathetic nervous system and motor behavior play a critical role in the romantic attraction between partners. Furthermore, recent biological research conducted by Kerr et al. ( 2022 ) has discovered a correlation between unsuitable adult attachment in romantic relationships and the interpersonal circumplex, which is a component of personality pathology. Furthermore, a sociological study on pair-bonding conducted by Fletcher et al. ( 2015 ) highlighted that romantic love is intricately linked to the evolution and survival of Homo sapiens, making it a biologically significant function with profound evolutionary implications. Neuroscientists have examined the activation of different brain regions that are triggered by romantic love activities. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has emerged as a prominent technique for studying the neurobiological basis of love. Researchers such as Acevedo et al. ( 2020 ) and Chester et al. ( 2021 ) have utilized fMRI to investigate the neural correlates of romantic love and gain insights into the brain mechanisms underlying this complex phenomenon. Neuroscientists have identified specific brain regions associated with love, including the insula and anterior cingulate cortex. These regions are involved in the processing of emotional experiences related to valued objects. A study by Bartels and Zeki ( 2000 ) highlighted the involvement of these brain regions in the experience of romantic love, shedding light on the neural mechanisms underlying the emotional aspects of love. The activation of reward-related areas in the brain, particularly those rich in oxytocin, has been observed in individuals experiencing love. Studies by Acevedo et al. ( 2012 ) and Bartels and Zeki ( 2004 ) have shown that regions associated with reward processing, such as the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens, are involved in the experience of romantic love. Indeed, the involvement of the reward system in love has surpassed expectations. During the initial stages of romantic love, research conducted by Fisher et al. ( 2010 ) has shown that reward-related brain regions, including the bilateral ventral tegmental areas, are activated more strongly compared to the later stages of passion.

The social impact of romantic love

Undoubtedly, falling in love has a profound impact on people’s daily lives, as highlighted by research conducted by Quintard et al. ( 2021 ). Falling in love has been associated with enhanced well-being and has been correlated with fervor, activity, pleasure, and other positive emotions, as noted in research conducted by Langeslag ( 2022 ). However, it is important to acknowledge that the pitfalls of romantic love are often overlooked. Research, such as that conducted by Lonergan et al. ( 2022 ), has found associations between romantic love and criminal activity as well as psychological disorders. Additionally, studies by Aron et al. ( 2005 ), Merritt et al. ( 2022 ) and Li et al. ( 2022 ) have highlighted the presence of unpleasant affective states such as hyperarousal, anxiety, and depression in the context of romantic love. In recent decades, romantic love has undergone significant transformations that have had a substantial impact on both personal and societal life, as emphasized by research conducted by Reis et al. ( 2013 ).

The necessity of bibliometric analysis

Bibliometrics is a field that encompasses the quantitative study of documents, aiming to provide researchers with insights into academic, technological, and scientific advancements (William and Concepción 2001 ). The methodology utilized a range of techniques, including author analysis, concept mapping, clustering, factor analysis, and citation analysis, to investigate historical data and assist scholars in identifying significant trends and emerging directions within their disciplines (Daim et al. 2006 ; Hou et al. 2022 ). The term “bibliometrics” was coined by the distinguished British scientist Allen Richard in 1969, replacing the previously employed term “statistical bibliography.” In recent years, there has been a surging interest in this approach, with a growing number of researchers incorporating it into their work. Bibliometric analysis has been employed in various research domains, including the study of romantic love. These analyses offer valuable insights into the research areas that have been investigated, as well as potential future trends, challenges, and opportunities in the field. To the best of our knowledge, there have been limited previous publications that have specifically analyzed romantic love based on the triangular theory of love development and explored the concept across different disciplines.

In the current study, we utilized state-of-the-art analytical tools, including CiteSpace (6.2.R2), VOSviewer (1.6.18), Microsoft Excel (2019), and Scimago Graphica (1.0.26), in conjunction with the most recent data obtained from the Web of Science (WOS) core collection database. These tools allowed us to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric and visual analysis of publications related to romantic love published in the last decade. By employing these cutting-edge tools and leveraging the extensive data available from WOS, we aimed to gain valuable insights into the research landscape surrounding romantic love during this specific time frame. Our study aimed to achieve several objectives. First, we sought to identify the current research hotspots and trends within the field of romantic love. Second, we aimed to conduct an in-depth examination of visual maps and seminal articles, providing a comprehensive overview of the literature.

Material and methods

Data acquisition and search strategy.

The Web of Science (WOS) platform served as a valuable resource, containing a vast collection of over 9000 significant academic articles. This database stands as one of the oldest and most comprehensive citation index records, encompassing a wide range of disciplines, including social science, engineering technology, biomedicine, arts and humanities, and various other subjects. Since its establishment in 1900, the Web of Science (WOS) has served as a cornerstone of scholarly research and has wielded significant influence within academic circles (Ellegaard and Wallin 2015 ). The quantitative analysis feature of the platform facilitated the acquisition of various types of information related to scholarly publications. This included data on the annual number of papers published, papers published by state or region, popular journals within specific disciplines, frequently utilized publishing houses, and highly downloaded and cited literature. Indeed, references that receive multiple citations play a crucial role in providing a robust foundation for the study of romantic love, as emphasized by Xu et al. ( 2022 ).

The subject matter of romantic love and its interrelation with romantic relationships has a profound impact on the satisfaction and longevity of love between individuals, as highlighted by Zagefka ( 2022 ). Passionate love is a fundamental concept within romantic relationships, as emphasized by Mizrahi et al. ( 2022 ). Sternberg’s triangular theory of love stands as one of the most substantial and frequently referenced frameworks for understanding love, as noted by Sorokowski et al. ( 2021 ). To comprehensively explore the topic, the search strategy incorporated the inclusion of the following elements: The topic could encompass “romantic love,” OR “passionate love,” OR “romantic relationship,” OR “triangular theory of love.”‘ The search was conducted within the Web of Science Core Collection database, which covers the time period from 2013 to 2022. The database indexes the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) and Social Science Citation Index-Expanded (SSCI-EXPANDED). The search was limited to publications written in the English language. To refine the search and focus on specific types of publications, certain categories were excluded from the search results. These excluded categories included early access, book chapters, proceeding papers, data papers, and retracted publications. By excluding these categories, the search aimed to prioritize reviews and articles, which are typically considered primary sources of scholarly information. As a result of these refined search criteria, a total of 6858 relevant items were identified and included in the analysis.

The retrieval strategy employed in this research was designed to maintain the integrity and impartiality of the search process (see Fig. 1 ).

figure 1

To ensure that the search results were not influenced by daily database updates, all searches were conducted on a single day, specifically on March 26, 2023.

Analysis tool

For bibliometric analysis, the current study utilized a powerful combination of CiteSpace (6.2.R2), VOSviewer (1.6.18), Microsoft Excel (2019), and Scimago Graphica (1.0.26). These state-of-the-art software tools seamlessly integrated insights from scientometrics, information science, computer science, and other related fields to generate highly intuitive and informative visual maps. These maps revealed the development trajectory and structural underpinnings of scientific research. Indeed, each of these four software applications held unique and irreplaceable significance, excelling in specific domains of bibliometric analysis. Excel, for instance, demonstrated unparalleled proficiency in the intuitive transformation of charts. CiteSpace specialized in the clustering of topics and the delineation of the spatio-temporal background of words. VOSviewer played a pivotal role in both displaying and analyzing keywords, leveraging its distinctive capabilities. Lastly, Scimago Graphica contributed significantly to the geographical perspective of statistical analysis, offering insights that were unmatched in their comprehensiveness. Collectively, these tools not only proved indispensable but also brought their individual strengths to the forefront, contributing uniquely to the overall analytical landscape. Indeed, the Excel program was commonly employed to comprehensively analyze key data points such as the number of published papers, frequency of citations, and matched published documents. It was also employed to synthesize all the information for creating intuitive visual representations (Fig. 2 ) to illustrate the trends in the number of publications, citations, and their corresponding fitting functions during different periods. The use of CiteSpace in the current study was focused on highlighting the most salient occurrence burst on a timeline map and detecting the centrality of romantic love studies (Zhang et al. 2022a ). In order to attain a comprehensive understanding of the progress in romantic love research, an evolutionary analysis was undertaken, utilizing CiteSpace’s burst function. Co-occurrence analysis on pertinent keywords is another valuable method used to gain insights into the relationships and patterns among keywords in a specific research domain. Indeed, the analyses conducted, including the evolutionary analysis and co-occurrence analysis, facilitated an examination of the prevailing themes and trends of romantic love across different generations from a chronological perspective. VOSviewer, a powerful visualization tool, was utilized in the current study to portray the borders of romantic love with varying color clusters. It also facilitated the exploration of the co-occurrence of authors, institutions, and keywords associated with romantic love. The circles of various colors and sizes were used to represent the occurrence frequency of distinct cluster words and different keywords, respectively. The examination of keywords in the current study, augmented by chart analysis, delved into a more profound, comprehensive, and scientific level. Scimago Graphica 1.0.18, a tool designed for visualizing international collaboration, proved highly effective in the current study for facilitating the visualization of international collaboration (He et al. 2022 ). By organically combining the atlas and the world map, researchers were able to intuitively observe differences in the number of publications across various countries and the extent of national collaboration between different regions.

figure 2

The trend exhibited an upward trajectory, with an estimated 938 publications in 2021, compared to 502 publications in 2013. Notably, the annual publication volume in the field of romantic love had reached its peak in 2021, as indicated by the fitted equation. However, it is worth mentioning that there was a slight decrease in publication numbers during specific periods. From 2017 to 2018, the annual publication count declined from 644 to 608. Similarly, from 2019 to 2020, there was a minor decrease from 872 to 861 publications annually. Additionally, there was a slight decline from 2021 to 2022, with the number of publications decreasing from 938 to 817 annually.

In the previous study, a comprehensive range of factors was considered to provide a thorough and scientifically rigorous atlas analysis of romantic love research. These factors included the annual publication rate, citation counts, H-index, impact factor, centrality, and occurrence/citation burst. An increase in the volume of publications can indicate the growth of a field and provide insights into future research directions (Wang 2016 ). While the number of citations a paper receives may not directly measure an author’s academic influence, it can indicate the recognition of the author’s work by peers worldwide. The “H-index” was a tool for evaluating academic influence, where a researcher with an “H-index” of 10 had 10 papers that had been cited at least 10 times (Wang et al. 2021 ). Since its inception in the 1950s, the impact factor has been widely regarded as a prominent index for ranking scientific literature. It has become an emblem of the prestige and significance of journals and authors in determining the relevance of a journal (Oosthuizen and Fenton 2014 ). For the current study, Journal Citation Reports (JCR) were utilized to calculate impact factors (2021). The centrality of research objects can indeed reflect their impact on the entire field, with greater centrality indicating a greater representation of homologous study content within a subject area. In the study conducted by Gao et al. ( 2021 ), betweenness centrality scores were adjusted to the range of [0, 1]. Specifically, if the betweenness centrality score of a main keyword exceeded 0.10, it was considered to indicate the significance of the study target. In the study conducted by Xu et al. ( 2022 ), the concept of a “burst term” was utilized to refer to an unexpected term that emerged in the research, potentially indicating new directions or orientations discovered during the investigation. The Kleinberg burst detection method, which is implemented in the CiteSpace software, was employed to identify these burst terms and highlight them as indicators of frontier research.

Publication outputs

A total of 6858 records met the search criteria. As depicted in Fig. 2 , the number of annual publications in the field of romantic love has shown a consistent upward trend since 2013. This increase is accompanied by a corresponding surge in citation counts, as indicated by the fitted equation. Citation counts in the field of romantic love have also experienced a significant upsurge since 2013, with an approximate 90-fold increase by 2022. Furthermore, based on current trends and fitting curves, the number of studies in this field is expected to continue rising, with an increasing number of researchers focusing on this topic.

Distribution by journals

The current study retrieved a total of 6858 records from 1251 journals, with ~33.79% of the material published by 20 publications that released more than 50 papers in this field. The top ten journals, accounting for 23.78% (92–400) of all papers published, had an average publication count of 134 papers per journal (see Table 1 ). Among them, the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (400 publications, IF 2021 = 2.681) had the highest number of papers on romantic love research, followed by Personal Relationships (189 publications, IF 2021 = 1.528), and Personality and Individual Differences (185 publications, IF 2021 = 3.950). Notably, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology was the most influential professional core journal in this field, boasting the highest impact factor (8.460). Both European and American journals have made significant contributions to this field, with the United States and the United Kingdom accounting for 40% and 50% of the top 10 journal publishing countries/regions, respectively. The impact factors of the top 10 most-published journals ranged from 1.528 to 8.460, with an average of 4.070. It is worth noting that publishing romantic love-related articles in high-impact journals remains challenging.

Distribution by authors and research areas

A staggering 15,088 authors contributed to the total number of papers. In Fig. 3 , the collaborative efforts of the writers were illustrated through a network map, where the connections between the nodes signified their collaborative affiliations. Among the top three clusters, the red cluster included authors Joseph P. Allen, Martine Hebert, and Marie-France Lafontaine, who had converged due to their shared research interests in adolescent dating violence and aggression (Cenat et al. 2022 ; Niolon et al. 2015 ). The blue cluster consisted of authors Frank D. Fincham, James K. Monk, and Ashley K. Randall, who had explored the interplay between relationship satisfaction, stress, and relationship maintenance in romantic relationships (Randall and Bodenmann 2017 ; Vennum et al. 2017 ). The yellow cluster included authors Todd K. Shackelford, William J. Chopik, and Justin K. Mogilski, whose work focused on the topic of polygamy (Moors et al. 2019 ; Sela et al. 2017 ). Martine Hebert, Todd K. Shackelford, Frank D. Fincham, and Emily A. Impett emerged as the cooperative network’s central nodes, underscoring their crucial role in advancing research on romantic love.

figure 3

The authors’ cooperative network was partitioned into eight distinct clusters.

Table 2 provided a rundown of the most productive authors, with their published works ranging from 28 to 74 publications, averaging 41. The H-index, a yardstick for measuring academic influence, was employed to assess their impact. Notably, Emily A. Impett emerged as the dominant force within the cohort of scholars dedicated to the study of romantic love, having authored the most papers among the group (74 publications, H-index = 38). Additionally, Nickola C. Overall (42 publications, H-index = 19) and Amy Muise (60 publications, H-index = 30) also featured prominently as leading contributors to the field.

Table 3 and Fig. 4 displayed the number of publications in different fields of study related to the topic of romantic love. Notably, publications in the fields of biology, neuroscience, and economics were also included in Table 3 . The humanities were increasingly collaborating on romantic love research. Furthermore, the topic of romantic love was gaining popularity in the fields of psychology and sociology.

figure 4

The field of psychology, including psychology and psychiatry, was significantly ahead. The field of sociology encompassed various topics in the social sciences, including sociology and social work.

Distribution by country and institution

A total of 6858 publications had been published and disseminated to 104 countries and regions worldwide. In the country analysis, Scimago Graphica had been used to explore the geographic collaboration network of participating nations. The participants of the current study were drawn from 104 different countries spanning Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, and South America, with Europe exhibiting the highest level of overall engagement, underscoring the global trend toward collaboration. The United States and the United Kingdom had demonstrated the greatest degree of cooperation. Notably, China, South Africa, Spain, Italy, France, and other countries with high cooperation densities had formed the most significant multi-center cooperation network in this field (see Fig. 5 ). Figure 6 illustrated international collaboration.

figure 5

By leveraging Scimago Graphica, it was possible to merge geographical perspectives with national publications and collaborative relationships, providing an intuitive and scientific method to illuminate the various conditions of countries involved in the research on romantic love.

figure 6

The largest blue cluster was comprised of the United States, China, Switzerland, Turkey, and Norway, demonstrating collaboration across the Americas, Europe, and East Asia.

Table 4 outlined the specifics of the top ten countries in the landscape of romantic love research. The United States topped the list with 4092 publications, followed by Canada with 802 publications, and the United Kingdom with 540 publications. It is noteworthy that the majority of publications were disseminated from high-income countries, aligning with the overall prosperity of those nations. Most papers were disseminated in high-income countries. This trend might have stemmed from the overarching principles governing scientific inquiry, or it could be attributed to authors in these nations having the freedom to engage in research spanning areas not necessarily centered on economic growth. However, within the realm of general well-being, this emerges as a pertinent concern. Primarily, high-income countries historically boasted more affluent reservoirs of research resources, encompassing financial backing, cutting-edge equipment, and a pool of adept talent. This affluence empowered researchers in these nations to embark on a diverse array of investigations, spanning domains intricately tied to economic growth and extending to those delving into broader realms such as general well-being and social development. The discernible divergence in resource allocation likely contributed to the disproportionate prevalence of publications in high-income countries. Secondarily, the scrutiny of whether the romantic love research domain intricately correlates with economic growth warrants profound contemplation. At times, the merit of research doesn’t solely reside in its potential to spur short-term economic growth but extends to its impact on the overarching well-being and sustainable evolution of society. High-income countries, historically oriented toward prioritizing protracted social well-being, manifested a proclivity to endorse research that, while not directly contributing to economic growth, played an indispensable role in the comprehensive development of society. Institutional collaboration was vividly portrayed in Fig. 7 , which consisted of six clusters. A total of 3328 institutions contributed to the 6858 articles on romantic love. Of the top 10 organizations, universities occupied the top spot (as indicated in Table 5 ), with the State University System of Florida (246 publications), the University System of Ohio (248 publications), and the University of California System (365 publications) leading the pack. Notably, nine out of the top 10 institutions hailed from the United States, which was a testament to the country’s exceptional research prowess in this field.

figure 7

The red cluster denoted collaboration among Florida State University, University of Michigan, University of Washington, and Indiana University; the green cluster represented Ohio State University, University of Basel, and Nanyang Technological University; while the blue cluster embodied York University, the University of Toronto, Northwestern University, and Carleton University. Northwestern University, Florida State University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Toronto were the major nodes in the cooperative network.

Analysis of references

Reference analysis played a critical role in bibliometric research, as the references with the highest citation bursts formed the foundation of knowledge at the forefront of research (Fitzpatrick 2005 ). In Fig. 8 , the current study presented the most relevant references on romantic love, which had experienced a surge in citations over the past decade. By the end of 2022, Mikulincer and Shaver’s ( 2016 ) articles had seen a significant increase in their citation counts, with the highest spike (14.35) observed in 2016, followed by Wincentak et al.’s ( 2017 ) studies (9.9). These two studies had been widely cited over the years and accurately captured the latest trends in romantic love research.

figure 8

These references were represented by red and green bars, indicating their frequent and less frequent citation, respectively.

Mikulincer and Shaver’s ( 2016 ) delved into the causes and methods for measuring individual differences in adult attachment, as well as how to modify attachment styles, using several empirical studies. Additionally, they explored the cutting-edge genetics, neurological, and hormonal substrates of attachment, expanding the impact model’s depiction of how the attachment system functioned. In the study, Wincentak et al. ( 2017 ) discussed the prevalence of dating violence among adolescents of different genders using a meta-analysis method, while also examining the potential regulatory effects of age, demographics, and measurement. Research has shown that in adolescent dating violence, the crime rate of women was significantly lower than that of men. Based on the analysis of these articles, current research trends in romantic love included adult attachment and the examination of adolescents’ irrational beliefs about love and the resulting adverse consequences, such as dating violence.

Analysis of keywords

Keyword burst refers to keywords that have shown a sharp increase in frequency over time, enabling the assessment of the current study focus in this area and reflecting the development pattern of future research. The current study extracted the burst terms of various years in the area of romantic love to obtain the burst terms of various years in the area of romantic love (see Fig. 9 ). As we’ve seen, the field had a diverse range of research interests. By the end of 2022, the three words with the highest peak were “same-sex” (2020–2022), “conflict resolution” (2020–2022), and “social relationships” (2020–2022):

Same-sex: in a society that valued heterosexual relationships, same-sex relationships were often met with shame and stigma, leading to additional pressures uniquely linked to their sexual orientation and partnership (Feinstein et al. 2018 ; Rostosky and Riggle 2017 ). Moreover, the online conduct of gay individuals has been demonstrated to have significant implications for their sexual risk behaviors and emotional well-being in romantic relationships (Zhang et al. 2022b ). The development of effective dual interventions has been shown to enhance the health and well-being of same-sex couples and their families. These interventions should also educate parents about the potential negative effects of heteronormative assumptions and attitudes on their children’s positive adolescent development (Pearson and Wilkinson 2013 ).

Conflict resolution: previous research has shown the irony that a person’s favorite individual, such as their romantic partner, is often the very person with whom they engage in destructive behavior during conflicts, making this destructive response one of the most challenging issues in relationships (Alonso-Ferres et al. 2021 ). As a result, it was critical to effectively resolve conflicts in a constructive manner. The emergence of computer-mediated communication (CMC) as a novel conflict resolution approach prompted researchers to explore this matter. Ultimately, they discovered that there were no differences in pain, anger, and conflict resolution levels between face-to-face and CMC discussions (Pollmann et al. 2020 ). Another study focused on neural activity during conflict resolution, revealing that mediation could enhance conflict resolution and was linked to increased activity in the nucleus accumbens, a crucial area of the brain’s reward circuit (Rafi et al. 2020 ). The finding emphasizes the importance of identifying neural mechanisms that could enhance conflict resolution and improve relationship outcomes. By exploring various conflict resolution approaches and associated neural mechanisms, researchers can facilitate a deeper understanding of how to successfully resolve conflicts and enhance relationship satisfaction.

Social relationships: long-term relationships are vital to the mental health of both humans and animals. Positive emotions and experiences, such as romantic or platonic love, play a significant role in the establishment and maintenance of social bonds. With this in mind, researchers integrated brain imaging studies on emotions characterized by social connections to investigate whether and how humans and animals experience social emotions and influences similarly in the context of social relationships (Zablocki-Thomas et al. 2022 ). An ecological and cross-cutting perspective study found that black Americans viewed their partner’s interactions regarding discrimination as an opportunity for their romantic partner to offer support, as revealed in semi-structured interviews (Rice 2023 ). Furthermore, as romantic relationships represent one of the most unique types of social connections, researchers utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning techniques to explore the neurobiological mechanisms of romantic relationships (Eckstein et al. 2023 ), offering valuable insight for the preservation and maintenance of social relationships and interactions.

figure 9

Over the last 10 years, the most popular keywords were “same-sex” (11.07), “dating relationships” (9.22), and “HIV” (9.05), indicating high demand for these topics in recent years. The keywords with the longest blasting times were “dating relationships” (2014–2017) and “delinquency” (2014–2017). The phrases that were still trending in 2022 were hotspots.

Figure 10 illustrated the relationship between keywords. The connection strength between two nodes was a quantitative measure of their relationship. The most frequently used keyword, “romantic relationship,” was represented by the largest node in Fig. 10 (see Table 6 ). The “romantic relationship” (2036) node had thicker lines than “attachment” (766), “gender” (728), “satisfaction” (664), “behavior” (529), “marriage” (508), “commitment” (419), “adolescents” (417), “associations” (395), and “intimate partner relationship” (336). The nodes had a minimum link strength of 150. The close connections between “romantic relationship” and “marriage,” “commitment,” and “intimate partnership” demonstrated the importance of stable, long-term relationships in maintaining romantic love (Fu et al. 2012 ).

figure 10

The connection strength between two nodes was a quantitative measure of their relationship. The total link strength of a node was the sum of its link strengths relative to all other nodes (Liao et al. 2018).

Keywords are essential in identifying the central themes and prospective avenues of a publication. By examining the co-occurrence of keywords, one can discern the current trajectory of research and development in a specific field (Zhang et al. 2022c ). In the present investigation, a total of 16,148 keywords were extracted from 6858 articles related to romantic love, with 10,571 being used only once, accounting for 65.46% of the total keywords. Through keyword co-occurrence analysis, six distinct color-coded clusters were identified, comprising attachment, gender, romantic relationships, personality, communication, and dynamics. The red cluster, attachment, delved into the complex relationships among commitment, fulfillment, companionship, and attachment insecurity. To address the diminished satisfaction in partner relationships caused by attachment insecurity, promoting healthy dualistic coping strategies (DCS) was recommended (Peloquin et al. 2022 ). The green cluster, gender, focused on the issues of dating violence victimization experienced by young individuals of different genders, with sexual minorities being particularly vulnerable to bullying (Cosma et al. 2022 ). The blue cluster, romantic connections, primarily examined the link between depressive symptoms and violent intimate partner relationships. Recent studies showed that dating violence and peer victimization were prevalent among young individuals (Smith et al. 2021 ) and that dating aggression was associated with both internalized and externalized psychopathology in young couples (Lantagne and Furman 2021 ). Additionally, the misuse of internet dating may lead to depression (Toplu-Demirtas et al. 2020 ). Apart from the six clusters mentioned, there was a noticeable trend toward integrating research with neuroimaging technology, which might lead to the emergence of new clusters in the realm of romantic love. The interconnectedness of attachment, gender, and romantic relationships was evident in the strong theoretical foundation and widespread attention these clusters received, whereas the clusters of personality, communication, and dynamics were more peripherally related. Due to their significance, future research on romantic love will continue to explore topics such as intimate partner violence, teenage dating violence victimization, attachment insecurity, and sexual abuse, with a focus on the three interconnected clusters of attachment, gender, and romantic relationships. In traditional notions, our understanding of romantic love had primarily consisted of terms such as romantic relationships and intimate commitments. However, practical issues such as misperceptions about love and a lack of regard for partners have gradually shifted the subject matter of research pertaining to romantic love toward dating violence. The research trajectory demonstrates a shift in the focus of romantic love research from a more idealized perspective toward a more realistic one. Finally, Fig. 11 displayed a keyword timeline graph that depicted when the most prevalent keywords first appeared and their evolving importance over time.

figure 11

This keyword timeline graph was depicted when the most prevalent keywords first appeared and their evolving importance over time.

The current study used advanced bibliometrics and literature data visualization techniques with CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Web of Science to examine the growth of research publications in the field of romantic love, as well as the main research nations, journals, and emerging trends. The thorough review provided insight into the present status of development and research in this field, while also clarifying the historical path of scholarship and providing clear guidance for future research. Using bibliometric methods, the study investigated romantic love research from 2013 to 2022. The results showed a steady increase in publications on this topic, with a slight decrease noted in 2019, likely due to the detrimental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic research. However, the analysis of current trends indicates a projected increase in research output on romantic love in the coming years.

Romantic love has been a global phenomenon, with Europe and the United States leading in widespread participation and clear concentration. Among the top 10 countries producing research in this field, the United States led with 4092 publications between 2013 and 2022. China, ranking fourth in terms of publications, emerged as the most prolific developing nation (328). However, compared to the United States, China lagged behind in publications and international collaboration. Therefore, China needs to expand its research efforts in this area and broaden its international partnerships. The top ten research institutions, mainly universities, played a vital role in advancing this field. Notably, nine out of ten of these institutions were located in the United States, further highlighting the preeminent position of American academic institutions in this area of study.

In the current study, we have discovered noteworthy findings regarding notable authors in the field of romantic love. The research studies have primarily focused on four distinct perspectives: the Limerence Theory, the Rate of Change in Intimacy Model, the Self-Expansion Model, and the Triangular Theory of Love. These perspectives have proposed four possible sources of romantic passion and assessed empirical evidence for and against each. Among the authors, Emily A. Impett has emerged as the most prolific author (Carswell and Impett 2021 ). Frank D. Fincham, who has the highest H-index, has conducted extensive research on the interplay between mindfulness and idiosyncratic mindfulness in romantic relationships. Notably, his research on adolescent intimate partner violence has received the most citations (Cui et al. 2013 ; Frank and Ross 2017 ; Kimmes et al. 2018 ). Furthermore, we found that an author’s centrality and citation frequency did not always correlate with their number of publications, indicating that various factors had contributed to an author’s academic influence (Zhang et al. 2022a ).

The term “burst term” refers to a term that unexpectedly appears in research and may indicate new directions or a novel perspective derived from research (Xu et al. 2022 ). According to Fig. 8 , the following references experienced a citation burst by the end of 2022: (1) Mikulincer and Shaver ( 2016 ) delved into the causes and measures of individual differences in adult attachment, explored the modifiability of attachment styles, and unveiled cutting-edge research in genetics, neurology, and hormones associated with attachment. They also extended the impact model’s depiction of the attachment system’s operation. (2) Wincentak et al. ( 2017 ) conducted a meta-analysis to investigate the prevalence of dating violence among adolescents of various genders, while also examining the potential impact of age, demographic factors, and measurement methods. Their findings suggested that the rate of perpetration of dating violence was significantly higher among male adolescents than female adolescents. In other words, male adolescents were more likely to engage in dating violence than their female counterparts. This gender difference in dating violence rates highlighted the need for targeted prevention and intervention efforts to address this issue among young people.

CiteSpace displayed keywords in bursts, as shown in Fig. 9 . These data were significant for reference in cutting-edge prediction research. The terms “same-sex,” “conflict resolution,” and “social relationships” might be used frequently in the coming years, indicating potential areas of focus within the domain of romantic love:

Same-sex: same-sex relationships faced unique pressures and stigma in a society that largely valued heterosexual partnerships, leading to feelings of shame and additional stressors based on sexual orientation (Feinstein et al. 2018 ; Rostosky and Riggle 2017 ). Notably, studies have revealed that the online behavior of gay individuals could significantly impact their emotional well-being and sexual risk behaviors within their romantic relationships (Zhang et al. 2022b ). To improve the health and well-being of same-sex couples and their families, effective dual interventions have been developed, including educating parents about the potential harm caused by heteronormative assumptions and attitudes on their children’s adolescent development (Pearson and Wilkinson 2013 ).

Conflict resolution: prior research has revealed the paradox that a person’s beloved partner, such as their significant other, is often the individual with whom they engage in harmful behavior during conflicts. The negative reaction could be one of the most challenging issues in a relationship (Alonso-Ferres et al. 2021 ). Therefore, it is imperative to resolve conflicts in a successful manner. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has emerged as a novel approach to conflict resolution, and researchers have investigated this matter, concluding that there are no disparities in the levels of pain, anger, and conflict resolution between face-to-face and CMC discussions (Pollmann et al. 2020 ). Another study explored the neural mechanisms during conflict resolution, and researchers discovered that mediation could improve conflict resolution and was linked to elevated activity in the nucleus accumbens, a crucial area in the brain’s reward circuit (Rafi et al. 2020 ).

Social relationships: long-term relationships play a critical role in maintaining the mental health of both humans and animals. Positive emotions and emotional experiences, such as romantic or platonic love, are intricately linked to the formation and sustenance of social bonds. To gain insights into how social emotions manifest in both humans and animals, researchers integrated brain imaging studies of emotions associated with social connections (Zablocki-Thomas et al. 2022 ). From an ecological and cross-cutting perspective, another study found that Black Americans viewed their partner’s interactions around discrimination as an opportunity for their romantic partner to provide support, as revealed in semi-structured interviews (Rice 2023 ). Furthermore, given the unique nature of romantic relationships in social interactions, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms of such relationships (Eckstein et al. 2023 ), which could serve as a reference for the preservation and cultivation of social relationships.

To our knowledge, our study represented a novel application of quantitative bibliometric tools such as CiteSpace and VOSviewer to analyze the literature on romantic love over the past decade. While our analysis yielded intriguing insights into the research landscape of this field, our study was not without limitations. First and foremost, our sample was limited to articles and reviews available in a single database, and thus, may not have been fully representative of the entire research landscape on this topic. Second, the current study restricted our data collection to English-language publications, and future studies may benefit from including publications in other languages to ensure a more comprehensive analysis. Additionally, including different types of publications, such as conference papers and working papers, might have provided further insights into recent advancements in the field. Furthermore, it could be acknowledged that the analysis in the current study could be expanded to consider the contributions of other scholars and institutions in the field, beyond those captured by our data set. Finally, while the bibliometric tools used in our analysis were objective, our interpretation of the results remained subjective and may have been subject to varying interpretations.

Concluding remarks

Research significance and future development.

The present study’s comprehensive analysis of the literature on romantic love, as well as its reporting of research findings across diverse domains over the past decade, offered a solid groundwork for future research and potential worldwide applications. From 2013 to 2022, a staggering 6858 articles and reviews on romantic love were published globally, indicating a bright future for this field of inquiry. In terms of research potency, the United States led the pack, with the University of California System accounting for the majority of publications in the area of romantic love, and Emily A. Impett ranking as the most prolific contributor. The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships had published the most articles on romantic love research, while the most recent trends in romantic love-related keywords included “same-sex,” “conflict resolution,” and “social relationships.” The current research was predominantly centered around intimate relationships, evolutionary psychology, sexual orientation, and symptoms of depression. The trends elucidated by these findings underscore the holistic and interdisciplinary nature of romantic love within the realms of psychology, sociology, biology, and neuroscience. Subsequent investigations into romantic love hold the promise of a more profound amalgamation of methodologies derived from psychology and neuroscience, thereby illuminating the physiological underpinnings of love and emotional experiences. This prospect entails a meticulous exploration of brain activity, probing how intricate psychological processes intertwine with biology to forge the intricacies of romantic relationships. Furthermore, romantic love research stands poised to cultivate seamless integration and interdisciplinary cooperation across a spectrum of fields in the future, yielding profound ramifications.

Method limitation

The current study, which utilized tools such as CiteSpace and Vosviewer for a quantitative analysis of the literature on romantic love over the past 10 years, is the first of its kind to our knowledge. Our investigation, though producing intriguing results through bibliometric analysis and visualization of related articles, is not without its limitations. Firstly, the samples utilized were limited to a single database (WOS), which may not encompass all relevant publications on the subject. Secondly, the scope of our data collection was limited to articles and reviews in English only, leaving out potential information from other types of publications such as working papers and conference papers. In future studies, a broader consideration of different languages should also be given. Additionally, the neural mechanism and physiological function of romantic love remain an under-researched area with limited empirical evidence to support ongoing controversy.

Data availability

Original data for the current study are available via this link: https://rec.ustc.edu.cn/share/0d874150-b039-11ee-be97-f5a41b2eeb6e .

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This research was supported by the Starting Fund for Scientific Research of High-Level Talents at Anhui Agricultural University (rc432206) and the Outstanding Youth Program of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Anhui Province (2022AH030089) to SL.

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Han, Y., Luo, Y., Chen, Z. et al. A decade of love: mapping the landscape of romantic love research through bibliometric analysis. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 187 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02665-7

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What is love? Stanford researchers and scholars examine matters of the heart

From the fields of science to sociology, politics and philosophy, here is what Stanford research says about love and romance, in the past and present day.  

For centuries, people have tried to understand the behaviors and beliefs associated with falling in love. What explains the wide range of emotions people experience? How have notions of romance evolved over time? As digital media becomes a permanent fixture in people’s lives, how have these technologies changed how people meet?

Examining some of these questions are Stanford scholars.

From the historians who traced today’s ideas of romance to ancient Greek philosophy and Arab lyric poetry, to the social scientists who have examined the consequences of finding love through an algorithm, to the scientists who study the love hormone oxytocin, here is what their research reveals about matters of the heart.

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How romantic love is understood today has several historical origins, says Robert Pogue Harrison , the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature and a scholar of romance studies.

For example, the idea of finding one’s other half dates back to ancient Greek mythology, Harrison said. According to Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium , humans were once complete, “sphere-like creatures” until the Greek gods cut them in half. Ever since, individuals have sought after their other half.

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I love the way you love me: Responding to partner’s love language preferences boosts satisfaction in romantic heterosexual couples

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Doctoral School of Social Sciences, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

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Affiliation Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

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Affiliation Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Orlando, FL, United States of America

  • Olha Mostova, 
  • Maciej Stolarski, 
  • Gerald Matthews

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  • Published: June 22, 2022
  • https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269429
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Table 1

Chapman’s Love Languages hypothesis claims that (1) people vary in the ways they prefer to receive and express affection and (2) romantic partners who communicate their feelings congruent with their partner’s preferences experience greater relationship quality. The author proposes five distinct preferences and tendencies for expressing love, including: Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time and Gifts. In the present study partners ( N = 100 heterosexual couples) completed measures assessing their preferences and behavioral tendencies for a) expressions of love and b) reception of signs of affection, for each of the five proposed “love languages”. Relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and empathy were also assessed. The degree of the within-couple mismatch was calculated separately for each individual based on the discrepancies between the person’s felt (preferred) and their partner’s expressed love language. The joint mismatch indicator was a sum of discrepancies across the five love languages. Matching on love languages was associated with both relationship and sexual satisfaction. In particular, people who expressed their affection in the way their partners preferred to receive it, experienced greater satisfaction with their relationships and were more sexually satisfied compared to those who met their partner’s needs to lesser extent. Empathy was expected to be a critical factor for better understanding of and responding to the partner’s needs. Results provided some support for this hypothesis among male but not female participants.

Citation: Mostova O, Stolarski M, Matthews G (2022) I love the way you love me: Responding to partner’s love language preferences boosts satisfaction in romantic heterosexual couples. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269429. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269429

Editor: Sónia Brito-Costa, Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra: Instituto Politecnico de Coimbra, PORTUGAL

Received: December 7, 2021; Accepted: May 22, 2022; Published: June 22, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Mostova et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files

Funding: This work was supported by the University of Warsaw, from the funds awarded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the form of a subsidy for the maintenance and development of research potential.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Everyone has their own preferences for expressing and receiving romantic feelings. Based on his clinical observations Chapman [ 1 ] identified five distinct ways in which people show and want to receive the signs of commitment. He labeled them ‘love languages’ (LLs) and proposed division into the following domains: 1) words of affirmation (verbal compliments, or words of appreciation), 2) quality time (time spent together implying focused attention of both partners), 3) receiving gifts (visual symbols of affection), 4) acts of service (helping mate with necessary tasks) and 5) physical touch (from holding hands to sexual intercourse).

Chapman [ 1 ] used a metaphor of a ‘love tank’, which reflected people’s emotional need to feel loved. The ‘love tank’ of both partners is filled when each of them expresses the affection in a way another one prefers to receive it. According to Chapman and Southern, “once you identify and learn to speak your spouse’s primary love language…you will have discovered the key to a long-lasting, loving marriage” [ 2 , p. 18]. Thus, the author is convinced that conducting interventions designed to foster better understanding of the partner’s LLs, as well as educating people on how to put this knowledge into practice would lead to a greater relationship maintenance and satisfaction.

People often speak and understand their primary LLs, but they may “learn a secondary love language” [ 2 , p.14]. For example, the husband may be aware of his wife’s desire to receive compliments–words of affirmation, although he himself prefers being physically touched. Therefore, LLs can be divided into those in which people tend to communicate to their partners (expressed love language) and those they prefer to receive in order to keep their emotional ‘love tank’ full (felt love language).

The assumption of basic and fundamental need for love and affection is well-established and empirically supported [ 3 – 5 ]. Multiple research findings also support the notion that human’s need for love and affection boosts both personal well-being [e.g. 6 ] and satisfaction in various types of relationships [e.g. 7 , 8 ].

Research has also addressed the effects of similarity between partners on relationship outcomes. It is well established that similarity and convergence of different types in romantic partners promotes greater relationship satisfaction. For example, similarity in communication values, such as ego support or conflict management, has been shown to promote attraction and greater relationship satisfaction in couples which described themselves as ‘seriously involved’ [ 9 ].

Gonzaga and colleagues [ 10 ] also found that similarity and convergence in the personality between partners promotes similarity in their shared emotional experiences and relationship quality. Yet another study demonstrated that romantic couples who converge in their emotional experiences manifest greater relationship cohesion, while their relationships are less likely to dissolve [ 11 ]. In another study perceived similarity in text messaging, including frequency of initiating a text message exchange and expressing affection, was associated with greater relationship satisfaction [ 12 ].

Sexual satisfaction is another broadly-studied concept in the research on couples and romantic relationships. Various studies found an association between sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction [ 13 , 14 ]. For instance, in a study conducted on 387 couples, sexual satisfaction and communication independently predicted the relationship satisfaction [ 14 ]. Thus, romantic partners who are having difficulties communicating, but are at the same time sexually satisfied, will experience greater marital satisfaction. Similarity in personality traits between marital partners also proved to predict sexual satisfaction [ 15 ] In another study, de Jong and Reis [ 16 ] found that complementarity, but not similarity, in sexual preferences predicted sexual satisfaction, consistent with LL hypothesis. Being aware of one’s partner’s preferences and acting accordingly may increase the couple’s sexual satisfaction.

The act of giving may potentially be more satisfying than benefiting oneself. One study [ 17 ] found that spending more of one’s income on others predicts greater happiness than spending money on themselves. Prosocial spending is positively correlated with greater happiness in both poor and rich countries and even recalling the past instance of spending money on others has a causal impact on happiness [ 18 ]. Thus, it is possible that helping others to match their needs produces a greater emotional benefit than receiving and caring for oneself. Thus, compatibility in LLs may benefit the person as a giver, as well as a receiver.

Empathy is often believed to play a crucial role in relationships of various kinds and to be a key component of effective communication. It can be defined as the “reactions of one individual to the observed experiences of another” [ 19 , p.113]. Empathy is primarily related to one’s ability to understand and share the emotional experiences of others [e.g., 20 ]. According to Davis [ 19 , 21 ], empathy can be divided into four domains, including: empathic concern, personal distress, perspective taking and fantasy.

Research demonstrates a positive relation between a partner’s empathic accuracy and their degree of relationship satisfaction [ 22 , 23 ], when it is present in mundane and nonconflictual settings. Various studies have also found that people with higher levels of empathy are better in detecting their partners’ needs and providing them with higher-quality advice and instrumental support [ 24 – 26 ]. On the other hand, subjective perceptions of empathy may be more important for relationship satisfaction than empathic accuracy [ 27 ], i.e., the objective ability to determine one’s partners views.

Empathic accuracy implies accurate perception of people’s mental states, including thoughts and feelings [ 24 ] people that are more proficient in mentalizing may also be more skillful in understanding their partner’s needs and preferences. Such an awareness may in turn increase the likelihood of fulfilling such needs and make them choose and adjust their behavior more consciously. Thus, empathy may support congruence in LLs. Although there were some attempts to examine the factors that may moderate the relationship satisfaction when partners are misaligned in their LLs [e.g. 28 ], to our knowledge, none of the previous studies have examined the potential mediators that may drive LL matching, leading to elevated satisfaction. An empathic individual may be both more effective in giving the form of love desired by the partner, and in guiding the partner towards understanding their own needs.

Despite the great popularity that Chapman’s work had gained worldwide among both clinicians and general public, the concept of LLs remains relatively unstudied. Egbert and Polk [ 29 ] developed the Love Languages Scale based on concepts found in Chapman’s [ 1 ] LLs and suggested that the five-factor LL model had some psychometric validity. A confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated significant relationship between the five LLs and Stafford, Dainton, and Haas’ [ 30 ] relational maintenance typology, thus supporting their construct validity.

In one version of the scale participants responded about how they tend to feel love. To remain consistent with the literature we followed the term ‘felt LL’ that was used in Egbert and Polk’s [ 31 ] study to infer the preferred way of receiving love from one’s partner. However, it should be noted that two forms of the LL scale provide the data on what makes people feel loved without directly examining what is being preferred, which might be a potential conceptual problem with the LL measure.

Another study utilized measures of the autonomic nervous system, such as skin conductance and respiration rate [ 32 ]. First, 89 participants were asked to complete Chapman’s LLs questionnaire. Next, their psychophysiological responses (skin conductance, heart rate and pulse rate) were measured, while they were listening to the recorded imagery scripts (imaginal exposure and guided imagery) describing each of the LLs. It was found that participant’ arousal level increased when they were listening to their dominating or preferred LL. Specifically, a significant association was found between hearing the imagery script of their primary LL and person’s heart rate and skin conductance, although no significant increase was found in the respiration rate. In addition, good internal consistency and reliability was reported for the scale measurement of the preferred LL [ 33 ].

Other aspects of Chapman’s [ 1 ] claim have not been supported. Egbert and Polk [ 31 ] tested 84 university student couples, who had been together for at least two months. The aims was to check whether partners well-matched in their reported preferences and expressions of LLs reported greater relationship quality. They were grouped into three categories including matched, mismatched and partially matched; however, no significant effect of matching on relationship quality was found. According to later research [ 28 ] sharing the same primary (expressed) LL again did not result in relationship satisfaction. However, the researchers found that female participants’ self-regulation significantly improved partners’ satisfaction when their LLs were misaligned.

Veale [ 34 ] aimed to test whether becoming aware of one’s partner’s preferred LL would result in behavioral adaptation in the absence of any identified external motivation. First, the researcher checked whether participants felt that the love expression used by their partner was correctly identified. Second, descriptions of the LL profiles and category membership were provided to each participant, and the couples were given a brief overview of the love expression behavior related to each of five categories. Additionally, the study considered whether LL expression knowledge would influence participants’ emotional state and behavior, as well as whether efforts to make behavioral accommodation would be noticed by their partners. The research found no statistically significant difference between pre- and posttest means for any of the categories, although in general respondents agreed that their LL was correctly identified. It should be noted that LLs in the study were evaluated categorically using Chapman’s Love Language Profile, which shares the assumption that people have one dominating LL that they both feel and express the most.

The present study: Aims and hypotheses

Chapman’s [ 1 ] basic claim is that people who “talk” their partner’s LL are more satisfied in their relationships, but empirical support for the LL hypothesis remains equivocal. In the present study, we aimed to extend previous findings [e.g. 31 ] by adopting a novel, continuous approach to measure match/mismatch between partners’ LLs. Treating LL mismatch as a continuous dimension may preserve information on level of mismatch that is lost by assessing it on a categorical basis, and provide a more sensitive test of its relationships with other variables. First, we aimed to check whether romantic partners who receive affection in ways consistent with their partner’s style of expressing love report higher relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. We asked people separately about when they feel loved the most (i.e., preference for receiving love) and how they prefer to express affirmation of love. The aim was to assess the partner’s match not only in term of their dominant love language, but to also take into account possible that one’s preferences for receiving love may differ from one’s style of expressing and communicating love.

Second, we aimed to distinguish “actor” effects (mismatch lowers one’s own satisfaction) and “partner” effects (mismatch lowers the other person’s satisfaction). Chapman’s [ 1 ] hypothesis emphasizes the former, but there may also be a reciprocal effect, i.e., if my partner feels s/he is not receiving the love affirmations s/he wants, the partner’s deficit in feeling loved may lower my satisfaction. This approach provided a full picture of the interplay between both partners’ expressed and felt LLs, contrary to Chapman’s assumption that people give and feel only one dominating LL.

We aimed to test four hypotheses:

  • Relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction are negatively associated with the mismatch between the person’s felt and their partner’s expressed LLs (actor effect). This is the central claim of Chapman [ 1 ]. His account of the LLs hypothesis does not imply that the importance of LLs varies for men and women, but we tested for possible gender differences on an exploratory basis.
  • Relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction are negatively associated with the mismatch between the person’s expressed and their partner’s felt LLs (partner effect). The partner’s feelings of not being adequately loved may influence actor satisfaction.
  • Matching in LLs is associated with empathy levels, given that empathy is likely to support adaptation to the partner’s needs. Given that empathy is a multifaceted construct, we hypothesized that its most adaptive facets, i.e., empathic concern (emotional empathy) and perspective taking (cognitive empathy), would be the aspects related to LLs.
  • Empathy is associated with higher relationship and sexual satisfaction, as in multiple previous studies [e.g. 35 – 37 ]. We also anticipated testing the mediating role of empathy in the LL mismatch–satisfaction association, contingent on support for the third and fourth hypotheses.

Participants

The working sample consisted of 100 heterosexual couples (100 men, 100 women), who were sexually active with their partners. All the participants were in a current romantic relationship for at least 6 months. Relationship length varied between 6 months and 24 years ( M = 3.5 years). The initial sample consisted of N = 110, but data from 10 couples was discarded, as only one partner have completed the questionnaire or there was a significant amount of incomplete or missing information for one or both partners. When an individual item was not scored by the respondent, the average over available items was calculated and multiplyed with the number of items in the questionnaire to replace the missing value.

Age of the participants ranged from 17 to 58 (mean: 27.34). Among male participants age varied from 18 to 58 with a mean value of 28.58 ( SD = 9.68). Female age ranged from 17 to 57 with an average value of 25.10 ( SD = 7.89).

The sample was culturally diverse and it included representatives of 31 nationalities. The most commonly occurring nationalities were Ukrainians (N = 67), Poles (N = 24), Belgians (N = 15), Russians (N = 13), Americans (N = 12) and Swedes (N = 12). Majority of both male and female participants indicated their marital status as never married ( n = 116), followed by married ( n = 63), “other” ( n = 13) and divorced ( n = 8).

The participants were recruited using social media and personal connections. The online questionnaire was distributed to volunteers that provided written consent and reported being in the romantic relationships with their current partner for at least 6 months and were either native speakers of English and/or communicated in English to each other, or reported having sufficient fluency to freely and effortlessly communicate with native speakers (i.e., at least B2 level). The data were collected between October 2018 and March 2019. The subjects spent an average of 23 minutes responding to the questionnaire and were not rewarded. The attention check items with reverse wording were used respectively for each inventory to prevent incomplete and low-effort answers.

All participants gave their informed consent to participate in the study of “communication and satisfaction among couples” that is intended to gather information about various aspects of romantic relationships. They were also informed that their answers will not be assessed individually and that they will not receive any feedback on their results as a couple). We asked participants about the relationship’s length and the time since the first sexual intercourse with a current partner to ensure that the participants were sexually active with their current partners, as well as to eliminate the possibility of the ‘honeymoon effect’ [ 38 ]. We also asked both partners about their fluency in English language. Couples were asked not to discuss or compare their results with each other.

Materials and procedure

LLs were assessed using two methods. The first was the forced-choice method used by Egbert and Polk [ 31 ], while the second one included two forms of a LL scale (LLS) requiring independent ratings of preferences, which was developed and validated by Egbert and Polk [ 29 ].

First, participant received a forced-choice LL measure [ 31 ] including the following instructions: “I feel the most loved when my partner: (1) physically touches me (i.e., gives a hug, gives a kiss, holds my hand, touches me), (2) helps me out (i.e., running an errand, finishing a chore for me, helping me out, helping to keep things cleaned up), (3) spends quality time with me (i.e., really listening, doing something we both like, engages in quality conversation, spending free time), (4) says encouraging words (i.e., compliments, expresses appreciation for me, gives me credit for something I did, gives me positive comments), and (5) gives me gifts (i.e., a thoughtful birthday gift, a greeting card, a present for no special reason, a gift after being away)”. This item served only for the purpose of its later comparison to the two versions of LLS in order to check for the consistency of participant’s responses. Thus, this tool was not used as the main indicator of couples’ LLs in the subsequent analysis.

The LLS assessment [ 29 ] involved four behavioral indicators representing each of the ways to feel and express affection. In the first form of the LLS participants were asked to rate the extent to which they tend to express (or give ) love to their partners by engaging in the listed behaviors. The second form of the LLS included the same list of behaviors, but this time participants were asked to rate the extent to which each expression makes them feel loved by their partners. Thus, each version of LLS consisted of 20 self-report items, including four items per each of the five LLs described by Chapman [ 1 ], e.g., “I tend to express my feeling to my partner by telling that I appreciate him/her”. The items were rated using a five-point Likert-type scale to assess the extent of agreement on a scale of 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ). Egbert and Polk [ 29 ] reported sufficient construct validity and reliability of the questionnaire in assessing LLs.

As both partners responded to the two versions of LLS, we obtained information about how they tend to express and prefer to feel love. We could then calculate the discrepancy between these measurements. Thus, the degree to which one’s (partner) preferred to feel love (e.g., when holding hands), as rated on the Likert scale, differed from the second partner’s (actor) degree of expressing love in this way (e.g., by holding hands) served as an indicator of extent to which the respondents felt that their partners were meeting needs in terms of LLs. The sum of the discrepancy scores on the five individual LL components then reflected the degree of match or mismatch.

To remain consistent with the literature we used the term ‘felt LL’ to infer the preferred way of receiving love from one’s partner, as we were following the term used by in the previous studies. However, it should be noted that LLS measure provides the data on what makes people feel loved without directly examining what is being preferred, which might be a potential conceptual problem with the LL measure proposed by Egbert and Polk [ 29 ].

In particular, a value of 0 indicated a complete match between the way the respondent preferred to feel and how their partner expressed love (e.g., participant X rates preference for being complimented as 5, and X’s partner rates his/her expression of compliments as 5). A negative value meant that one’s partner does not express a form of love to the extent desired (e.g. participant X rates preference for being complimented as 5, and X’s partner rates his/her expression of compliments as 1). A positive value indicated that one’s partner overly expressed a form of love that the participant did not require to such an extent (e.g. participant X rates preference for being complimented as 1, and X’s partner rates his/her expression of compliments as 5). Because our interest was in overall mismatch, we converted all discrepancy scores to absolute values and computed the item-level sum of the four scores for each LL. We then summed these discrepancy scores for each individual, to provide an overall index of mismatch between one’s preferences for being loved and partner’s ways of expressing love, based on the 20 item-level discrepancy scores. Our primary outcome measure was thus overall LL mismatch; higher scores indicated greater mismatch. The internal consistency of the calculated sum of discrepancies in our study amounted to Cronbach’s α = .61 for male and α = .70 for female participants.

In addition, the internal consistency was confirmed to be acceptable or good for all of the five LLs scales before they were combined to create the discrepancy scores. In particular, the results suggested a good fit for each of the five expressed LLs: Acts of Service (α = .70), Physical Touch (α = .89), Words of Affirmation (α = .79), Quality Time (α = .78) and Gifts (α = .77). The internal consistency was also confirmed for the five felt LLs scales: Acts of service (α = .74), Physical Touch (α = .85), Words of Affirmation (α = .82), Quality Time (α = .75) and Gifts (α = .84).

Participants’ sexual satisfaction was assessed using the Index of Sexual Satisfaction questionnaire [ISS, 39 ]. The scale consists of 25-Likert-type items (e.g., “I enjoy the sex techniques that my partner likes or uses”, or “I feel that my sex life is boring”) and demonstrated high internal consistency among men (α = .91) and women (α = .92). The participants rated the statements on a 7-point Likert-type, where 1 indicated none of the time and 7 indicated all of the time . The items that implied lower sexual satisfaction (e.g., “I feel that my sex life is boring”) were reversed scored and the total score was calculated as a sum of all item scores. Higher scores indicated greater level of sexual satisfaction.

Relationship satisfaction was measured using the Relationship Assessment Scale [RAS, 40 ], one of the most frequently used questionnaires used for studying relationship quality. RAS consists of seven items measuring general relationship satisfaction (e.g., “To what extent has your relationship met your original expectations?”). Respondents are asked to rate each statement using a 5-point scale. High internal consistency of the measure was confirmed for male (α = .85) and female (α = .87) participants.

Interpersonal Reactivity Index [IRI; 19 ] was applied as a multi-dimensional assessment of empathy. This widely used self-report metric comprises 28 items. The participants are asked to rate their response on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (“ does not describe me well” ) to 5 (“ describes me very well” ). IRI consists of four distinct subscales, including: 1) perspective taking–the tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others; 2) fantasy–indicating tendencies to transpose oneself imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictitious characters in books, movies, and plays; 3) empathic concern–assessing other-oriented feelings of sympathy and concern for unfortunate others; and 4) personal distress–measuring self-oriented feelings of personal anxiety and unease in tense interpersonal settings.

We hypothesized that perspective taking and empathic concern scales would be negatively associated with LL mismatch, and positively related to satisfaction measures. Fantasy did not appear directly relevant to LLs, whereas personal distress might be positively associated with mismatch. Internal consistencies were acceptable for all four subscales among male subjects, including perspective taking (α = .74), fantasy (α = .77), empathic concern (α = .70), and personal distress (α = .70). In female participants the indicators were acceptable for the empathic concern (α = .80) and fantasy (α = .75) subscales, but poorer for perspective taking (α = .62) and personal distress (α = .60).

Preliminary analyses

This section reports descriptive statistics for the study variables, as well as tests for gender differences. We also tested within-couple correlations to investigate “assortative mating”; the extent to which people partner with those of similar characteristics to themselves.

Table 1 shows LL preferences on the forced-choice measure. Quality time was the most frequently declared LL, followed by physical touch, acts of service, words of affirmation and receiving gifts. In accordance with prior research [ 31 ], there was no significant association between gender and participants’ responses in the forced-choice LL measurement, χ 2 (1) = 14.85, p = .25 (see Table 1 ).

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Table 2 shows means and SDs for the continuous scores. The rank-ordering of means differed a little from the forced-choice data, in that Physical Touch was the highest-rated preference, in both genders, although Quality Time was also highly rated. Also, contrasting with the forced-choice data, women obtained higher mean scores in four out of five LLs dimensions–all except for acts of service. It seems that women generally preferred to receive love from their partners more intensely than men did (see Table 2 ). Table 2 also shows data for ratings of expressed love. The order of preferences was similar to that for feeling preferences. Participants tended to express love to their partners primarily by physically touching them, followed by spending quality time together, saying words of affirmation, doing acts of service and giving gifts. No significant sex difference was observed for any but one expressed LL: female participants scored slightly higher than male participants in the expression of quality time LL.

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Table 2 shows that, despite the gender differences in felt LLs, men and women did not differ on the overall indicator of LL mismatch, i.e., inconsistency between one’s LL preferences and the partner’s ways of expressing love. The mismatch indicator does not capture directional biases; i.e., whether mismatch results from the partner providing a deficiency of acts of love, or providing more than the person wants. The raw differences were calculated by subtracting the partner’s expressed LL from the actor’s felt (preferred) level of LLs. Positive values indicate deficiency, while negative values signify excess. The analysis demonstrated that the female participants generally experienced a "lack" in terms of their preferred levels of receiving LLs, particularly in the case of Quality Time. On the other hand, male participants seemed to perceive or feel the affection to a lesser extent than their female partners reported expressing it, thus indicating an "excess". However, this was not the case for men’s Acts of Service LL.

Table 2 also shows the cross-gender correlations for LLs. Overall LL mismatch was quite substantially correlated across the couples. However, at the level of individual feelings and expressions, only two out of five LLs–acts of service and gifts–showed significant correlations (assortative mating). Thus, the least valued LLs showed assortative mating but the most valued did not, for both feelings and expressions.

Table 2 also provides descriptive statistics for the satisfaction and empathy variables. There were no significant gender differences in satisfaction, but consistent with other studies [e.g. 41 ] female participants’ advantage in empathy was observed across all the IRI dimensions. Of the IRI scales, only empathic concern showed a significant though small-magnitude correlation.

Hypotheses testing

In line with our first hypothesis, we obtained a significant negative association between relationship satisfaction and the LL mismatch indicator, in both men and women (see Table 3 ). Thus, the greater the discrepancy between preferred and felt LLs, the less satisfied the participants were with their relationships. Similar associations were observed for sexual satisfaction. The actor effects of LL mismatch were stronger in men, particularly for sexual satisfaction, for which the correlations were -.37 (men) and -.21 (women).

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Discrepancies in three LLs appeared to be particularly important for participants’ relationship and sexual satisfaction (see S1 Appendix ). Specifically, mismatch in Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation and Quality Time LLs separately were significantly associated with both male and female partners’ relationship satisfaction. Each of these love languages separately was also significantly associated with men’s sexual satisfaction. However, among female participants this association was only significant for the Physical Touch and Quality Time LLs, and their sexual satisfaction.

In addition, supporting the second hypothesis, partner effects proved significant–the respondent’s satisfaction with their relationship was associated with their partner’s LL mismatch. Partner effects were significant for both men and women. It may be as important to properly respond to the partner’s LL needs as to have one’s own LL preferences satisfied.

The third hypothesis was that cognitive and emotional facets of empathy would be associated with lower LL mismatch (see Table 3 ). The results indicated some significant actor effects in men. In particular, empathic concern ( r = -.27, p < . 01 ) and perspective taking ( r = -.34, p < . 01 ) components of empathy were higher in male individuals with smaller LL discrepancy, consistent with the hypothesis. However, this was not the case for female participants (see Table 3 ). Women whose partners scored higher on perspective taking ( r = -.26, p < . 01 ) and fantasy dimensions of IRI also showed lower LL mismatch. Our hypothesis regarding the links between empathy and LL matching was then only partially supported.

Contrary to the fourth hypothesis, IRI empathy dimensions proved generally unrelated to both relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. The only two exceptions referred to men’s perspective taking (positive actor effect on sexual satisfaction in men) and personal distress (women’s distress was related to lower men’s relationship satisfaction). Although some scholars [e.g. 42 ] would emphasize that the absence of the association is not disqualifying the possibly of mediation, we found that in the present analysis there was no reason to test models in which empathy mediated effects of LL mismatch on satisfaction.

Finally, we compared actor and partner effects in LL mismatch–satisfaction associations (see Table 4 ). The bivariate associations suggested both effects. For example, for men, relationship satisfaction was related both to their own and the woman’s mismatch ( r s of -.40 and -.36). To conduct a more rigorous comparison, we ran regression analyses with both men and women LL mismatch as predictors, by gender and by satisfaction scale. At the first step, these analyses controlled for length of relationship, which may be a confound of satisfaction. The second step entered either men or women LL mismatch, and the final step included both mismatch variables. Such a procedure allowed to examine the added value of each step of the model and to test for the incremental validity of actor vs. partner effects. For all analyses, both men and women LL mismatch contributed significantly to the regressions when entered separately at Step 2, consistent with the bivariate results. For men, the final regressions at Step 3 showed independent effects of both mismatch variables; male relationship and sexual satisfaction depends on both actor and partner effects. For women, the final regression for relationship satisfaction was similar, but the female mismatch predictor fell just short of significance. Neither predictor was significant at Step 3 for sexual satisfaction. Women’s sexual satisfaction was more weakly predicted overall than the other outcome measures in these analyses (10% variance explained vs. 21–25%).

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Overall, both actor and partner effects were found, providing further support for both the first and second hypotheses. We also tested for interactive effects of both partners’ LL matching indicators in all four analyses. No significant interaction effects were found, indicating that benefits of LL matching are additive.

In addition, we found that relationship length was more consistently associated with lower relationship satisfaction than with sexual satisfaction. However, no significant correlation between LL mismatch and relationship length was observed for both men ( r = .01, p = .90) and women ( r = .01, p = .91), which suggests that partners do not adjust their expressed LL to their counterpart’s preferences over time.

The present study sought to test empirically Chapman’s [ 1 ] hypothesis of LLs and their association with relationship and sexual satisfaction, as well as to explore whether matching on LLs is associated with empathy. This was accomplished by examining partners’ preferences for receiving and expressing love and assessing their relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and four features of empathy.

Our study provides novel evidence in support of Chapman’s [ 1 ] notion that speaking one’s partner love language leads to higher quality relationships and create a positive emotional climate within the couple. In particular, the findings supported our major hypothesis that individuals whose partners express love in the way they prefer to receive it experience elevated relationship and sexual satisfaction. Previous work on sexual satisfaction has focused on discrepancies in desire as an influence on dissatisfaction [e.g. 43 ]. The present data suggest a broader role for discrepancy in displays of love that are not overtly sexual. The substantial positive correlations found between relationship and sexual satisfaction are consistent with previous research [ 44 ].

There were no significant gender differences in relationship and sexual satisfaction, nor in overall LL mismatch. However, women scored higher than men on four of the five “feeling” scales, indicating greater levels of need than men, with the largest effect sizes found for the desires for quality time and words of affirmation. This result contrasts with previous findings that men appear to rely more on their partner for social and emotional support than women do [ 45 , 46 ]. Possibly, men are more focused on fulfilling the social role of being in a committed relationship than specific affectionate behaviors, whereas women require more visible signs of love from their partner. Dykstra and Fokkema [ 46 ] suggest that women are more strongly oriented towards expressive and nurturing functions in marriage, implying greater awareness of whether their male partners is providing affirmations of love. Socialization to be emotionally independent may also contribute to men downplaying their needs for intimacy and affection [ 47 ]. Thus, the LL mismatch variable may not fully capture gender differences in the experience of relationships. Despite differences in the means of the “feeling” variables, our main predictions were supported for both male and female participants, implying that LLs function similarly in both genders.

In addition, findings supported the second hypothesis, that the actor’s satisfaction would be negatively associated with the partner’s LL mismatch. The regression analyses confirmed that both actor and LL mismatch predicted lower satisfaction. In the analyses of male respondents, both types of mismatches added significantly to the variance explained; findings in women showed a similar trend although not all effects reached significance, especially for sexual satisfaction. Partner effects tended to be slightly stronger predictors of relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction than the person’s own degree of matching. Previous findings in the field of positive psychology [e.g. 17 , 18 ] showing that acts of giving such as prosocial spending may potentially be more satisfying and lead to greater happiness, when compared to benefiting oneself. The partner effect is important in that it implies that LL matching is related to the actual quality of loving actions and communication between partners, and not merely individual perceptions. By contrast, higher emotional intelligence benefits the actor but not the partner, implying that this factor enhances actor perceptions of relationship quality, but it is not transmitted to the partner so that the benefit is internal to the actor [ 48 ].

Our findings were also in line with the previous research conducted with respect to other forms of behaviors that contribute to the quality of relationships. For instance, in two studies, relational maintenance strategies strongly predicted commitment, relational satisfaction, stability and loving others [ 49 , 50 ]. Among other maintenance strategies, the studies examined positivity (e.g., upbeat during conversations, avoiding criticism), assurance (e.g., expressions of love, affirming commitment), social networks (e.g., spending time with common friends) and sharing tasks (e.g., engaging in household chores), which also resemble some aspects of the Words of Affirmation, Quality Time or Acts of service LLs. In addition, romantic physical touch was previously found to be strongly correlated with the relationship and partner satisfaction [ 51 ]. Receiving gifts was yet another factor that was previously found to be positively associated with the relationship strength, perceived similarity, as well as evaluation of the relationships’ future potential [e.g. 52 , 53 ].

The regression analyses showed that LL–satisfaction associations remained robust with length of relationship controlled. Relationship length was negatively correlated with the relationship satisfaction, as in other studies [e.g. 54 , 55 ]. However, no meaningful association was observed between the length of relationship and matching on LLs, implying that people do not necessarily learn LLs of their partners with time. A focus on LLs might thus be of value in relationship counseling.

To our knowledge, this is the first study that found empirical support for LL hypothesis, contrasting with Egbert and Polk’s study [ 31 ], which found no significant association between matching on LLs and relationship satisfaction. This discrepancy in the results between the previous research and our findings may a consequence of the method used to assess LLs. In our analysis we treated felt and expressed LLs as continuous dimensional qualities rather than categorizing participants based on a single dominant LL. The method based on collapsing couple types (e.g. matched, partially matched, or mismatched) appeared to exaggerate differences in preferences for the five LLs. Dimensional assessment may be preferable to typologizing LLs. In the light of the present data, Chapman’s [ 1 ] claims that people tend to manifest one, dominant LL should be revised in favor of assessing multiple preferences for expressing and giving love using the five LLs.

We further hypothesized that empathy may be a factor that drives matching on LLs, which in turn leads to the higher relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction among romantic partners. We aimed to check whether people, who scored higher on empathy scale (perspective taking and empathetic concern subscales, in particular), would also be more successful in expressing love in the way their partners prefer to receive it. Nevertheless, we did not find support for this prediction. Although small significant associations between matching in LLs and some empathy subscales (namely: perspective taking and fantasy) were observed among men, analogical effects were not observed in women. It is possible that because men tend to be less empathetic than women [e.g. 56 , 57 ], the effect that high scores on empathy have on their relationships is stronger. However, the two significant associations in men did not transfer into significantly higher satisfaction among female partners.

Thus, benefits of LL matching on relationship and sexual satisfaction do not appear to be mediated by empathy. From a relationship counseling perspective, the implication is that training couples to improve matching may be addressed instrumentally as a skill to be acquired. For instance, such an intervention program could begin with measuring the level of discrepancies between partners in expressed vs. felt LLs, and providing both partners with ideas for specific behaviors that they could use to better meet the emotional needs of each other, as endorsed by Chapman [ 1 ]. Expressing love in the form desired may enhance relationship quality, even if the actor lacks cognitive and emotional insight into the partner’s needs.

There are several other strengths and limitations of the current study that should be noted. Our sample included participants from different age groups, cultural backgrounds and with various relationship duration, which might serve as an indicator of greater generalizability and external validity of the findings. On the other hand, the multicultural sample might have been a confounding variable, which has influenced the findings in an uncontrolled way. Future research could study bigger and more homogeneous samples. Although in the precent study we have controlled for relationship length, when testing our hypotheses, in the subsequent researches more could be done to examine the association between the relationship length and matching on LLs (e.g., controlling for log or inverse values of the relationship duration).

This study applied an online self-report survey method which results in several significant limitations as well as response biases related to social desirability [ 58 ]. Other potentially problematic issues associated with the present study design include increased possibility of condescending responses, participants’ self-selection, low response rate, submitting multiple responses, duration of the questionnaire, biased distribution channels as well as limited introspective ability of the respondent. At the same time, these methods could be associated with greater self-disclosure due to an online disinhibition effect [ 59 ].

The lack of suitable remuneration for the participants may have resulted in the response biases and nonprobability sampling. Other methods of assessment, as well as strategies aimed to prevent the response biases (i.e. adding several attention checks) and encouraging subjects providing reimbursement for participation are needed to eliminate the response and participation biases.

Another point that has to be addressed is the direction of causality. Even though the present results confirmed LL–satisfaction associations, future research should seek to establish the direction of causation between those factors. For instance, there is a possibility that romantic partners who are more satisfied in their current relationships are also more likely to give and appreciate LLs behaviors. Our study also did not assess other factors that might drive matching on LLs. The observed association could also be multi-directional or be mediated by another variable. For instance, emotional intelligence may contribute to romantic relationship satisfaction and quality [see 60 , 61 ]. Matching on LLs may also be a byproduct of assortative mating for personal characteristics like intelligence or personality type [ 62 ]. Other individual differences that were shown to influence relationship quality, such as time perspective or chronotype, could be also taken into account as potential mediators or confounders of the effects of LLs on relationship outcomes [e.g. 55 ; 63 ].

In conclusion, this study provides a unique contribution to the empirical literature on Chapman’s basic assumption of Five Love Languages [ 1 ]. Our findings suggest that people who better match each other’s preferences for LLs are more satisfied with their relationships and sexual life. Moreover, it appears that satisfying the needs of one’s partner has at least as strong an impact on the individual’s perceptions of relationship quality as receiving expression of love in the desired ways does. However, contrary to our hypothesis, small associations between matching on LLs and degree of empathy were observed only for some empathy subscales among male, but not female participants, and empathy was unrelated to satisfaction. Future work may explore other possible mediators of the LL matching–relationship satisfaction association.

The present findings, particularly the novel way to assess matching for LLs presented in the present paper, may be important for the subsequent research in the field of the romantic relationships. They also provide useful practical implications for marital and family counseling, as well as for laymen who aim to improve the quality of their relationship. Learning to recognize and react to one’s partners love needs may be an important skill for building relationship satisfaction in both partners.

Supporting information

S1 appendix..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269429.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269429.s002

S1 File. Variables’ names and abbreviations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269429.s003

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I love the way you love me: Responding to partner’s love language preferences boosts satisfaction in romantic heterosexual couples

Olha Mostova

1 Doctoral School of Social Sciences, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Maciej Stolarski

2 Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Gerald Matthews

3 Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Orlando, FL, United States of America

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files

Chapman’s Love Languages hypothesis claims that (1) people vary in the ways they prefer to receive and express affection and (2) romantic partners who communicate their feelings congruent with their partner’s preferences experience greater relationship quality. The author proposes five distinct preferences and tendencies for expressing love, including: Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time and Gifts. In the present study partners ( N = 100 heterosexual couples) completed measures assessing their preferences and behavioral tendencies for a) expressions of love and b) reception of signs of affection, for each of the five proposed “love languages”. Relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and empathy were also assessed. The degree of the within-couple mismatch was calculated separately for each individual based on the discrepancies between the person’s felt (preferred) and their partner’s expressed love language. The joint mismatch indicator was a sum of discrepancies across the five love languages. Matching on love languages was associated with both relationship and sexual satisfaction. In particular, people who expressed their affection in the way their partners preferred to receive it, experienced greater satisfaction with their relationships and were more sexually satisfied compared to those who met their partner’s needs to lesser extent. Empathy was expected to be a critical factor for better understanding of and responding to the partner’s needs. Results provided some support for this hypothesis among male but not female participants.

Introduction

Everyone has their own preferences for expressing and receiving romantic feelings. Based on his clinical observations Chapman [ 1 ] identified five distinct ways in which people show and want to receive the signs of commitment. He labeled them ‘love languages’ (LLs) and proposed division into the following domains: 1) words of affirmation (verbal compliments, or words of appreciation), 2) quality time (time spent together implying focused attention of both partners), 3) receiving gifts (visual symbols of affection), 4) acts of service (helping mate with necessary tasks) and 5) physical touch (from holding hands to sexual intercourse).

Chapman [ 1 ] used a metaphor of a ‘love tank’, which reflected people’s emotional need to feel loved. The ‘love tank’ of both partners is filled when each of them expresses the affection in a way another one prefers to receive it. According to Chapman and Southern, “once you identify and learn to speak your spouse’s primary love language…you will have discovered the key to a long-lasting, loving marriage” [ 2 , p. 18]. Thus, the author is convinced that conducting interventions designed to foster better understanding of the partner’s LLs, as well as educating people on how to put this knowledge into practice would lead to a greater relationship maintenance and satisfaction.

People often speak and understand their primary LLs, but they may “learn a secondary love language” [ 2 , p.14]. For example, the husband may be aware of his wife’s desire to receive compliments–words of affirmation, although he himself prefers being physically touched. Therefore, LLs can be divided into those in which people tend to communicate to their partners (expressed love language) and those they prefer to receive in order to keep their emotional ‘love tank’ full (felt love language).

The assumption of basic and fundamental need for love and affection is well-established and empirically supported [ 3 – 5 ]. Multiple research findings also support the notion that human’s need for love and affection boosts both personal well-being [e.g. 6 ] and satisfaction in various types of relationships [e.g. 7 , 8 ].

Research has also addressed the effects of similarity between partners on relationship outcomes. It is well established that similarity and convergence of different types in romantic partners promotes greater relationship satisfaction. For example, similarity in communication values, such as ego support or conflict management, has been shown to promote attraction and greater relationship satisfaction in couples which described themselves as ‘seriously involved’ [ 9 ].

Gonzaga and colleagues [ 10 ] also found that similarity and convergence in the personality between partners promotes similarity in their shared emotional experiences and relationship quality. Yet another study demonstrated that romantic couples who converge in their emotional experiences manifest greater relationship cohesion, while their relationships are less likely to dissolve [ 11 ]. In another study perceived similarity in text messaging, including frequency of initiating a text message exchange and expressing affection, was associated with greater relationship satisfaction [ 12 ].

Sexual satisfaction is another broadly-studied concept in the research on couples and romantic relationships. Various studies found an association between sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction [ 13 , 14 ]. For instance, in a study conducted on 387 couples, sexual satisfaction and communication independently predicted the relationship satisfaction [ 14 ]. Thus, romantic partners who are having difficulties communicating, but are at the same time sexually satisfied, will experience greater marital satisfaction. Similarity in personality traits between marital partners also proved to predict sexual satisfaction [ 15 ] In another study, de Jong and Reis [ 16 ] found that complementarity, but not similarity, in sexual preferences predicted sexual satisfaction, consistent with LL hypothesis. Being aware of one’s partner’s preferences and acting accordingly may increase the couple’s sexual satisfaction.

The act of giving may potentially be more satisfying than benefiting oneself. One study [ 17 ] found that spending more of one’s income on others predicts greater happiness than spending money on themselves. Prosocial spending is positively correlated with greater happiness in both poor and rich countries and even recalling the past instance of spending money on others has a causal impact on happiness [ 18 ]. Thus, it is possible that helping others to match their needs produces a greater emotional benefit than receiving and caring for oneself. Thus, compatibility in LLs may benefit the person as a giver, as well as a receiver.

Empathy is often believed to play a crucial role in relationships of various kinds and to be a key component of effective communication. It can be defined as the “reactions of one individual to the observed experiences of another” [ 19 , p.113]. Empathy is primarily related to one’s ability to understand and share the emotional experiences of others [e.g., 20 ]. According to Davis [ 19 , 21 ], empathy can be divided into four domains, including: empathic concern, personal distress, perspective taking and fantasy.

Research demonstrates a positive relation between a partner’s empathic accuracy and their degree of relationship satisfaction [ 22 , 23 ], when it is present in mundane and nonconflictual settings. Various studies have also found that people with higher levels of empathy are better in detecting their partners’ needs and providing them with higher-quality advice and instrumental support [ 24 – 26 ]. On the other hand, subjective perceptions of empathy may be more important for relationship satisfaction than empathic accuracy [ 27 ], i.e., the objective ability to determine one’s partners views.

Empathic accuracy implies accurate perception of people’s mental states, including thoughts and feelings [ 24 ] people that are more proficient in mentalizing may also be more skillful in understanding their partner’s needs and preferences. Such an awareness may in turn increase the likelihood of fulfilling such needs and make them choose and adjust their behavior more consciously. Thus, empathy may support congruence in LLs. Although there were some attempts to examine the factors that may moderate the relationship satisfaction when partners are misaligned in their LLs [e.g. 28 ], to our knowledge, none of the previous studies have examined the potential mediators that may drive LL matching, leading to elevated satisfaction. An empathic individual may be both more effective in giving the form of love desired by the partner, and in guiding the partner towards understanding their own needs.

Despite the great popularity that Chapman’s work had gained worldwide among both clinicians and general public, the concept of LLs remains relatively unstudied. Egbert and Polk [ 29 ] developed the Love Languages Scale based on concepts found in Chapman’s [ 1 ] LLs and suggested that the five-factor LL model had some psychometric validity. A confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated significant relationship between the five LLs and Stafford, Dainton, and Haas’ [ 30 ] relational maintenance typology, thus supporting their construct validity.

In one version of the scale participants responded about how they tend to feel love. To remain consistent with the literature we followed the term ‘felt LL’ that was used in Egbert and Polk’s [ 31 ] study to infer the preferred way of receiving love from one’s partner. However, it should be noted that two forms of the LL scale provide the data on what makes people feel loved without directly examining what is being preferred, which might be a potential conceptual problem with the LL measure.

Another study utilized measures of the autonomic nervous system, such as skin conductance and respiration rate [ 32 ]. First, 89 participants were asked to complete Chapman’s LLs questionnaire. Next, their psychophysiological responses (skin conductance, heart rate and pulse rate) were measured, while they were listening to the recorded imagery scripts (imaginal exposure and guided imagery) describing each of the LLs. It was found that participant’ arousal level increased when they were listening to their dominating or preferred LL. Specifically, a significant association was found between hearing the imagery script of their primary LL and person’s heart rate and skin conductance, although no significant increase was found in the respiration rate. In addition, good internal consistency and reliability was reported for the scale measurement of the preferred LL [ 33 ].

Other aspects of Chapman’s [ 1 ] claim have not been supported. Egbert and Polk [ 31 ] tested 84 university student couples, who had been together for at least two months. The aims was to check whether partners well-matched in their reported preferences and expressions of LLs reported greater relationship quality. They were grouped into three categories including matched, mismatched and partially matched; however, no significant effect of matching on relationship quality was found. According to later research [ 28 ] sharing the same primary (expressed) LL again did not result in relationship satisfaction. However, the researchers found that female participants’ self-regulation significantly improved partners’ satisfaction when their LLs were misaligned.

Veale [ 34 ] aimed to test whether becoming aware of one’s partner’s preferred LL would result in behavioral adaptation in the absence of any identified external motivation. First, the researcher checked whether participants felt that the love expression used by their partner was correctly identified. Second, descriptions of the LL profiles and category membership were provided to each participant, and the couples were given a brief overview of the love expression behavior related to each of five categories. Additionally, the study considered whether LL expression knowledge would influence participants’ emotional state and behavior, as well as whether efforts to make behavioral accommodation would be noticed by their partners. The research found no statistically significant difference between pre- and posttest means for any of the categories, although in general respondents agreed that their LL was correctly identified. It should be noted that LLs in the study were evaluated categorically using Chapman’s Love Language Profile, which shares the assumption that people have one dominating LL that they both feel and express the most.

The present study: Aims and hypotheses

Chapman’s [ 1 ] basic claim is that people who “talk” their partner’s LL are more satisfied in their relationships, but empirical support for the LL hypothesis remains equivocal. In the present study, we aimed to extend previous findings [e.g. 31 ] by adopting a novel, continuous approach to measure match/mismatch between partners’ LLs. Treating LL mismatch as a continuous dimension may preserve information on level of mismatch that is lost by assessing it on a categorical basis, and provide a more sensitive test of its relationships with other variables. First, we aimed to check whether romantic partners who receive affection in ways consistent with their partner’s style of expressing love report higher relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. We asked people separately about when they feel loved the most (i.e., preference for receiving love) and how they prefer to express affirmation of love. The aim was to assess the partner’s match not only in term of their dominant love language, but to also take into account possible that one’s preferences for receiving love may differ from one’s style of expressing and communicating love.

Second, we aimed to distinguish “actor” effects (mismatch lowers one’s own satisfaction) and “partner” effects (mismatch lowers the other person’s satisfaction). Chapman’s [ 1 ] hypothesis emphasizes the former, but there may also be a reciprocal effect, i.e., if my partner feels s/he is not receiving the love affirmations s/he wants, the partner’s deficit in feeling loved may lower my satisfaction. This approach provided a full picture of the interplay between both partners’ expressed and felt LLs, contrary to Chapman’s assumption that people give and feel only one dominating LL.

We aimed to test four hypotheses:

  • Relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction are negatively associated with the mismatch between the person’s felt and their partner’s expressed LLs (actor effect). This is the central claim of Chapman [ 1 ]. His account of the LLs hypothesis does not imply that the importance of LLs varies for men and women, but we tested for possible gender differences on an exploratory basis.
  • Relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction are negatively associated with the mismatch between the person’s expressed and their partner’s felt LLs (partner effect). The partner’s feelings of not being adequately loved may influence actor satisfaction.
  • Matching in LLs is associated with empathy levels, given that empathy is likely to support adaptation to the partner’s needs. Given that empathy is a multifaceted construct, we hypothesized that its most adaptive facets, i.e., empathic concern (emotional empathy) and perspective taking (cognitive empathy), would be the aspects related to LLs.
  • Empathy is associated with higher relationship and sexual satisfaction, as in multiple previous studies [e.g. 35 – 37 ]. We also anticipated testing the mediating role of empathy in the LL mismatch–satisfaction association, contingent on support for the third and fourth hypotheses.

Participants

The working sample consisted of 100 heterosexual couples (100 men, 100 women), who were sexually active with their partners. All the participants were in a current romantic relationship for at least 6 months. Relationship length varied between 6 months and 24 years ( M = 3.5 years). The initial sample consisted of N = 110, but data from 10 couples was discarded, as only one partner have completed the questionnaire or there was a significant amount of incomplete or missing information for one or both partners. When an individual item was not scored by the respondent, the average over available items was calculated and multiplyed with the number of items in the questionnaire to replace the missing value.

Age of the participants ranged from 17 to 58 (mean: 27.34). Among male participants age varied from 18 to 58 with a mean value of 28.58 ( SD = 9.68). Female age ranged from 17 to 57 with an average value of 25.10 ( SD = 7.89).

The sample was culturally diverse and it included representatives of 31 nationalities. The most commonly occurring nationalities were Ukrainians (N = 67), Poles (N = 24), Belgians (N = 15), Russians (N = 13), Americans (N = 12) and Swedes (N = 12). Majority of both male and female participants indicated their marital status as never married ( n = 116), followed by married ( n = 63), “other” ( n = 13) and divorced ( n = 8).

The participants were recruited using social media and personal connections. The online questionnaire was distributed to volunteers that provided written consent and reported being in the romantic relationships with their current partner for at least 6 months and were either native speakers of English and/or communicated in English to each other, or reported having sufficient fluency to freely and effortlessly communicate with native speakers (i.e., at least B2 level). The data were collected between October 2018 and March 2019. The subjects spent an average of 23 minutes responding to the questionnaire and were not rewarded. The attention check items with reverse wording were used respectively for each inventory to prevent incomplete and low-effort answers.

All participants gave their informed consent to participate in the study of “communication and satisfaction among couples” that is intended to gather information about various aspects of romantic relationships. They were also informed that their answers will not be assessed individually and that they will not receive any feedback on their results as a couple). We asked participants about the relationship’s length and the time since the first sexual intercourse with a current partner to ensure that the participants were sexually active with their current partners, as well as to eliminate the possibility of the ‘honeymoon effect’ [ 38 ]. We also asked both partners about their fluency in English language. Couples were asked not to discuss or compare their results with each other.

Materials and procedure

LLs were assessed using two methods. The first was the forced-choice method used by Egbert and Polk [ 31 ], while the second one included two forms of a LL scale (LLS) requiring independent ratings of preferences, which was developed and validated by Egbert and Polk [ 29 ].

First, participant received a forced-choice LL measure [ 31 ] including the following instructions: “I feel the most loved when my partner: (1) physically touches me (i.e., gives a hug, gives a kiss, holds my hand, touches me), (2) helps me out (i.e., running an errand, finishing a chore for me, helping me out, helping to keep things cleaned up), (3) spends quality time with me (i.e., really listening, doing something we both like, engages in quality conversation, spending free time), (4) says encouraging words (i.e., compliments, expresses appreciation for me, gives me credit for something I did, gives me positive comments), and (5) gives me gifts (i.e., a thoughtful birthday gift, a greeting card, a present for no special reason, a gift after being away)”. This item served only for the purpose of its later comparison to the two versions of LLS in order to check for the consistency of participant’s responses. Thus, this tool was not used as the main indicator of couples’ LLs in the subsequent analysis.

The LLS assessment [ 29 ] involved four behavioral indicators representing each of the ways to feel and express affection. In the first form of the LLS participants were asked to rate the extent to which they tend to express (or give ) love to their partners by engaging in the listed behaviors. The second form of the LLS included the same list of behaviors, but this time participants were asked to rate the extent to which each expression makes them feel loved by their partners. Thus, each version of LLS consisted of 20 self-report items, including four items per each of the five LLs described by Chapman [ 1 ], e.g., “I tend to express my feeling to my partner by telling that I appreciate him/her”. The items were rated using a five-point Likert-type scale to assess the extent of agreement on a scale of 1 ( strongly disagree ) to 5 ( strongly agree ). Egbert and Polk [ 29 ] reported sufficient construct validity and reliability of the questionnaire in assessing LLs.

As both partners responded to the two versions of LLS, we obtained information about how they tend to express and prefer to feel love. We could then calculate the discrepancy between these measurements. Thus, the degree to which one’s (partner) preferred to feel love (e.g., when holding hands), as rated on the Likert scale, differed from the second partner’s (actor) degree of expressing love in this way (e.g., by holding hands) served as an indicator of extent to which the respondents felt that their partners were meeting needs in terms of LLs. The sum of the discrepancy scores on the five individual LL components then reflected the degree of match or mismatch.

To remain consistent with the literature we used the term ‘felt LL’ to infer the preferred way of receiving love from one’s partner, as we were following the term used by in the previous studies. However, it should be noted that LLS measure provides the data on what makes people feel loved without directly examining what is being preferred, which might be a potential conceptual problem with the LL measure proposed by Egbert and Polk [ 29 ].

In particular, a value of 0 indicated a complete match between the way the respondent preferred to feel and how their partner expressed love (e.g., participant X rates preference for being complimented as 5, and X’s partner rates his/her expression of compliments as 5). A negative value meant that one’s partner does not express a form of love to the extent desired (e.g. participant X rates preference for being complimented as 5, and X’s partner rates his/her expression of compliments as 1). A positive value indicated that one’s partner overly expressed a form of love that the participant did not require to such an extent (e.g. participant X rates preference for being complimented as 1, and X’s partner rates his/her expression of compliments as 5). Because our interest was in overall mismatch, we converted all discrepancy scores to absolute values and computed the item-level sum of the four scores for each LL. We then summed these discrepancy scores for each individual, to provide an overall index of mismatch between one’s preferences for being loved and partner’s ways of expressing love, based on the 20 item-level discrepancy scores. Our primary outcome measure was thus overall LL mismatch; higher scores indicated greater mismatch. The internal consistency of the calculated sum of discrepancies in our study amounted to Cronbach’s α = .61 for male and α = .70 for female participants.

In addition, the internal consistency was confirmed to be acceptable or good for all of the five LLs scales before they were combined to create the discrepancy scores. In particular, the results suggested a good fit for each of the five expressed LLs: Acts of Service (α = .70), Physical Touch (α = .89), Words of Affirmation (α = .79), Quality Time (α = .78) and Gifts (α = .77). The internal consistency was also confirmed for the five felt LLs scales: Acts of service (α = .74), Physical Touch (α = .85), Words of Affirmation (α = .82), Quality Time (α = .75) and Gifts (α = .84).

Participants’ sexual satisfaction was assessed using the Index of Sexual Satisfaction questionnaire [ISS, 39 ]. The scale consists of 25-Likert-type items (e.g., “I enjoy the sex techniques that my partner likes or uses”, or “I feel that my sex life is boring”) and demonstrated high internal consistency among men (α = .91) and women (α = .92). The participants rated the statements on a 7-point Likert-type, where 1 indicated none of the time and 7 indicated all of the time . The items that implied lower sexual satisfaction (e.g., “I feel that my sex life is boring”) were reversed scored and the total score was calculated as a sum of all item scores. Higher scores indicated greater level of sexual satisfaction.

Relationship satisfaction was measured using the Relationship Assessment Scale [RAS, 40 ], one of the most frequently used questionnaires used for studying relationship quality. RAS consists of seven items measuring general relationship satisfaction (e.g., “To what extent has your relationship met your original expectations?”). Respondents are asked to rate each statement using a 5-point scale. High internal consistency of the measure was confirmed for male (α = .85) and female (α = .87) participants.

Interpersonal Reactivity Index [IRI; 19 ] was applied as a multi-dimensional assessment of empathy. This widely used self-report metric comprises 28 items. The participants are asked to rate their response on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (“ does not describe me well” ) to 5 (“ describes me very well” ). IRI consists of four distinct subscales, including: 1) perspective taking–the tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others; 2) fantasy–indicating tendencies to transpose oneself imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictitious characters in books, movies, and plays; 3) empathic concern–assessing other-oriented feelings of sympathy and concern for unfortunate others; and 4) personal distress–measuring self-oriented feelings of personal anxiety and unease in tense interpersonal settings.

We hypothesized that perspective taking and empathic concern scales would be negatively associated with LL mismatch, and positively related to satisfaction measures. Fantasy did not appear directly relevant to LLs, whereas personal distress might be positively associated with mismatch. Internal consistencies were acceptable for all four subscales among male subjects, including perspective taking (α = .74), fantasy (α = .77), empathic concern (α = .70), and personal distress (α = .70). In female participants the indicators were acceptable for the empathic concern (α = .80) and fantasy (α = .75) subscales, but poorer for perspective taking (α = .62) and personal distress (α = .60).

Preliminary analyses

This section reports descriptive statistics for the study variables, as well as tests for gender differences. We also tested within-couple correlations to investigate “assortative mating”; the extent to which people partner with those of similar characteristics to themselves.

Table 1 shows LL preferences on the forced-choice measure. Quality time was the most frequently declared LL, followed by physical touch, acts of service, words of affirmation and receiving gifts. In accordance with prior research [ 31 ], there was no significant association between gender and participants’ responses in the forced-choice LL measurement, χ 2 (1) = 14.85, p = .25 (see Table 1 ).

Note . χ 2 (1) = 9.52, p = .25. Numbers in parentheses indicate column percentages.

Table 2 shows means and SDs for the continuous scores. The rank-ordering of means differed a little from the forced-choice data, in that Physical Touch was the highest-rated preference, in both genders, although Quality Time was also highly rated. Also, contrasting with the forced-choice data, women obtained higher mean scores in four out of five LLs dimensions–all except for acts of service. It seems that women generally preferred to receive love from their partners more intensely than men did (see Table 2 ). Table 2 also shows data for ratings of expressed love. The order of preferences was similar to that for feeling preferences. Participants tended to express love to their partners primarily by physically touching them, followed by spending quality time together, saying words of affirmation, doing acts of service and giving gifts. No significant sex difference was observed for any but one expressed LL: female participants scored slightly higher than male participants in the expression of quality time LL.

Note . E = expressed; F = felt; LLs = love languages. LL Mismatch reflects the misfit between one’s felt and their partner’s expressed love languages accumulated for all LLs; higher values indicate poorer fit. Hedges’ g is an effect size indicator endorsed for paired samples t-test (see King & Minium, 2003)

*p < .05,

**p < .01.

Table 2 shows that, despite the gender differences in felt LLs, men and women did not differ on the overall indicator of LL mismatch, i.e., inconsistency between one’s LL preferences and the partner’s ways of expressing love. The mismatch indicator does not capture directional biases; i.e., whether mismatch results from the partner providing a deficiency of acts of love, or providing more than the person wants. The raw differences were calculated by subtracting the partner’s expressed LL from the actor’s felt (preferred) level of LLs. Positive values indicate deficiency, while negative values signify excess. The analysis demonstrated that the female participants generally experienced a "lack" in terms of their preferred levels of receiving LLs, particularly in the case of Quality Time. On the other hand, male participants seemed to perceive or feel the affection to a lesser extent than their female partners reported expressing it, thus indicating an "excess". However, this was not the case for men’s Acts of Service LL.

Table 2 also shows the cross-gender correlations for LLs. Overall LL mismatch was quite substantially correlated across the couples. However, at the level of individual feelings and expressions, only two out of five LLs–acts of service and gifts–showed significant correlations (assortative mating). Thus, the least valued LLs showed assortative mating but the most valued did not, for both feelings and expressions.

Table 2 also provides descriptive statistics for the satisfaction and empathy variables. There were no significant gender differences in satisfaction, but consistent with other studies [e.g. 41 ] female participants’ advantage in empathy was observed across all the IRI dimensions. Of the IRI scales, only empathic concern showed a significant though small-magnitude correlation.

Hypotheses testing

In line with our first hypothesis, we obtained a significant negative association between relationship satisfaction and the LL mismatch indicator, in both men and women (see Table 3 ). Thus, the greater the discrepancy between preferred and felt LLs, the less satisfied the participants were with their relationships. Similar associations were observed for sexual satisfaction. The actor effects of LL mismatch were stronger in men, particularly for sexual satisfaction, for which the correlations were -.37 (men) and -.21 (women).

Note . Partner effects are shadowed in light grey. Assortative mating effects are provided in bold font.

Discrepancies in three LLs appeared to be particularly important for participants’ relationship and sexual satisfaction (see S1 Appendix ). Specifically, mismatch in Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation and Quality Time LLs separately were significantly associated with both male and female partners’ relationship satisfaction. Each of these love languages separately was also significantly associated with men’s sexual satisfaction. However, among female participants this association was only significant for the Physical Touch and Quality Time LLs, and their sexual satisfaction.

In addition, supporting the second hypothesis, partner effects proved significant–the respondent’s satisfaction with their relationship was associated with their partner’s LL mismatch. Partner effects were significant for both men and women. It may be as important to properly respond to the partner’s LL needs as to have one’s own LL preferences satisfied.

The third hypothesis was that cognitive and emotional facets of empathy would be associated with lower LL mismatch (see Table 3 ). The results indicated some significant actor effects in men. In particular, empathic concern ( r = -.27, p < . 01 ) and perspective taking ( r = -.34, p < . 01 ) components of empathy were higher in male individuals with smaller LL discrepancy, consistent with the hypothesis. However, this was not the case for female participants (see Table 3 ). Women whose partners scored higher on perspective taking ( r = -.26, p < . 01 ) and fantasy dimensions of IRI also showed lower LL mismatch. Our hypothesis regarding the links between empathy and LL matching was then only partially supported.

Contrary to the fourth hypothesis, IRI empathy dimensions proved generally unrelated to both relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. The only two exceptions referred to men’s perspective taking (positive actor effect on sexual satisfaction in men) and personal distress (women’s distress was related to lower men’s relationship satisfaction). Although some scholars [e.g. 42 ] would emphasize that the absence of the association is not disqualifying the possibly of mediation, we found that in the present analysis there was no reason to test models in which empathy mediated effects of LL mismatch on satisfaction.

Finally, we compared actor and partner effects in LL mismatch–satisfaction associations (see Table 4 ). The bivariate associations suggested both effects. For example, for men, relationship satisfaction was related both to their own and the woman’s mismatch ( r s of -.40 and -.36). To conduct a more rigorous comparison, we ran regression analyses with both men and women LL mismatch as predictors, by gender and by satisfaction scale. At the first step, these analyses controlled for length of relationship, which may be a confound of satisfaction. The second step entered either men or women LL mismatch, and the final step included both mismatch variables. Such a procedure allowed to examine the added value of each step of the model and to test for the incremental validity of actor vs. partner effects. For all analyses, both men and women LL mismatch contributed significantly to the regressions when entered separately at Step 2, consistent with the bivariate results. For men, the final regressions at Step 3 showed independent effects of both mismatch variables; male relationship and sexual satisfaction depends on both actor and partner effects. For women, the final regression for relationship satisfaction was similar, but the female mismatch predictor fell just short of significance. Neither predictor was significant at Step 3 for sexual satisfaction. Women’s sexual satisfaction was more weakly predicted overall than the other outcome measures in these analyses (10% variance explained vs. 21–25%).

Note . Mismatching on LL = the degree of discrepancy between one’s preferred and partners’ expressed LL; lower values indicate a better match. RS = Relationship satisfaction, SS = Sexual Satisfaction.

† Compared with step 2a.

Overall, both actor and partner effects were found, providing further support for both the first and second hypotheses. We also tested for interactive effects of both partners’ LL matching indicators in all four analyses. No significant interaction effects were found, indicating that benefits of LL matching are additive.

In addition, we found that relationship length was more consistently associated with lower relationship satisfaction than with sexual satisfaction. However, no significant correlation between LL mismatch and relationship length was observed for both men ( r = .01, p = .90) and women ( r = .01, p = .91), which suggests that partners do not adjust their expressed LL to their counterpart’s preferences over time.

The present study sought to test empirically Chapman’s [ 1 ] hypothesis of LLs and their association with relationship and sexual satisfaction, as well as to explore whether matching on LLs is associated with empathy. This was accomplished by examining partners’ preferences for receiving and expressing love and assessing their relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and four features of empathy.

Our study provides novel evidence in support of Chapman’s [ 1 ] notion that speaking one’s partner love language leads to higher quality relationships and create a positive emotional climate within the couple. In particular, the findings supported our major hypothesis that individuals whose partners express love in the way they prefer to receive it experience elevated relationship and sexual satisfaction. Previous work on sexual satisfaction has focused on discrepancies in desire as an influence on dissatisfaction [e.g. 43 ]. The present data suggest a broader role for discrepancy in displays of love that are not overtly sexual. The substantial positive correlations found between relationship and sexual satisfaction are consistent with previous research [ 44 ].

There were no significant gender differences in relationship and sexual satisfaction, nor in overall LL mismatch. However, women scored higher than men on four of the five “feeling” scales, indicating greater levels of need than men, with the largest effect sizes found for the desires for quality time and words of affirmation. This result contrasts with previous findings that men appear to rely more on their partner for social and emotional support than women do [ 45 , 46 ]. Possibly, men are more focused on fulfilling the social role of being in a committed relationship than specific affectionate behaviors, whereas women require more visible signs of love from their partner. Dykstra and Fokkema [ 46 ] suggest that women are more strongly oriented towards expressive and nurturing functions in marriage, implying greater awareness of whether their male partners is providing affirmations of love. Socialization to be emotionally independent may also contribute to men downplaying their needs for intimacy and affection [ 47 ]. Thus, the LL mismatch variable may not fully capture gender differences in the experience of relationships. Despite differences in the means of the “feeling” variables, our main predictions were supported for both male and female participants, implying that LLs function similarly in both genders.

In addition, findings supported the second hypothesis, that the actor’s satisfaction would be negatively associated with the partner’s LL mismatch. The regression analyses confirmed that both actor and LL mismatch predicted lower satisfaction. In the analyses of male respondents, both types of mismatches added significantly to the variance explained; findings in women showed a similar trend although not all effects reached significance, especially for sexual satisfaction. Partner effects tended to be slightly stronger predictors of relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction than the person’s own degree of matching. Previous findings in the field of positive psychology [e.g. 17 , 18 ] showing that acts of giving such as prosocial spending may potentially be more satisfying and lead to greater happiness, when compared to benefiting oneself. The partner effect is important in that it implies that LL matching is related to the actual quality of loving actions and communication between partners, and not merely individual perceptions. By contrast, higher emotional intelligence benefits the actor but not the partner, implying that this factor enhances actor perceptions of relationship quality, but it is not transmitted to the partner so that the benefit is internal to the actor [ 48 ].

Our findings were also in line with the previous research conducted with respect to other forms of behaviors that contribute to the quality of relationships. For instance, in two studies, relational maintenance strategies strongly predicted commitment, relational satisfaction, stability and loving others [ 49 , 50 ]. Among other maintenance strategies, the studies examined positivity (e.g., upbeat during conversations, avoiding criticism), assurance (e.g., expressions of love, affirming commitment), social networks (e.g., spending time with common friends) and sharing tasks (e.g., engaging in household chores), which also resemble some aspects of the Words of Affirmation, Quality Time or Acts of service LLs. In addition, romantic physical touch was previously found to be strongly correlated with the relationship and partner satisfaction [ 51 ]. Receiving gifts was yet another factor that was previously found to be positively associated with the relationship strength, perceived similarity, as well as evaluation of the relationships’ future potential [e.g. 52 , 53 ].

The regression analyses showed that LL–satisfaction associations remained robust with length of relationship controlled. Relationship length was negatively correlated with the relationship satisfaction, as in other studies [e.g. 54 , 55 ]. However, no meaningful association was observed between the length of relationship and matching on LLs, implying that people do not necessarily learn LLs of their partners with time. A focus on LLs might thus be of value in relationship counseling.

To our knowledge, this is the first study that found empirical support for LL hypothesis, contrasting with Egbert and Polk’s study [ 31 ], which found no significant association between matching on LLs and relationship satisfaction. This discrepancy in the results between the previous research and our findings may a consequence of the method used to assess LLs. In our analysis we treated felt and expressed LLs as continuous dimensional qualities rather than categorizing participants based on a single dominant LL. The method based on collapsing couple types (e.g. matched, partially matched, or mismatched) appeared to exaggerate differences in preferences for the five LLs. Dimensional assessment may be preferable to typologizing LLs. In the light of the present data, Chapman’s [ 1 ] claims that people tend to manifest one, dominant LL should be revised in favor of assessing multiple preferences for expressing and giving love using the five LLs.

We further hypothesized that empathy may be a factor that drives matching on LLs, which in turn leads to the higher relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction among romantic partners. We aimed to check whether people, who scored higher on empathy scale (perspective taking and empathetic concern subscales, in particular), would also be more successful in expressing love in the way their partners prefer to receive it. Nevertheless, we did not find support for this prediction. Although small significant associations between matching in LLs and some empathy subscales (namely: perspective taking and fantasy) were observed among men, analogical effects were not observed in women. It is possible that because men tend to be less empathetic than women [e.g. 56 , 57 ], the effect that high scores on empathy have on their relationships is stronger. However, the two significant associations in men did not transfer into significantly higher satisfaction among female partners.

Thus, benefits of LL matching on relationship and sexual satisfaction do not appear to be mediated by empathy. From a relationship counseling perspective, the implication is that training couples to improve matching may be addressed instrumentally as a skill to be acquired. For instance, such an intervention program could begin with measuring the level of discrepancies between partners in expressed vs. felt LLs, and providing both partners with ideas for specific behaviors that they could use to better meet the emotional needs of each other, as endorsed by Chapman [ 1 ]. Expressing love in the form desired may enhance relationship quality, even if the actor lacks cognitive and emotional insight into the partner’s needs.

There are several other strengths and limitations of the current study that should be noted. Our sample included participants from different age groups, cultural backgrounds and with various relationship duration, which might serve as an indicator of greater generalizability and external validity of the findings. On the other hand, the multicultural sample might have been a confounding variable, which has influenced the findings in an uncontrolled way. Future research could study bigger and more homogeneous samples. Although in the precent study we have controlled for relationship length, when testing our hypotheses, in the subsequent researches more could be done to examine the association between the relationship length and matching on LLs (e.g., controlling for log or inverse values of the relationship duration).

This study applied an online self-report survey method which results in several significant limitations as well as response biases related to social desirability [ 58 ]. Other potentially problematic issues associated with the present study design include increased possibility of condescending responses, participants’ self-selection, low response rate, submitting multiple responses, duration of the questionnaire, biased distribution channels as well as limited introspective ability of the respondent. At the same time, these methods could be associated with greater self-disclosure due to an online disinhibition effect [ 59 ].

The lack of suitable remuneration for the participants may have resulted in the response biases and nonprobability sampling. Other methods of assessment, as well as strategies aimed to prevent the response biases (i.e. adding several attention checks) and encouraging subjects providing reimbursement for participation are needed to eliminate the response and participation biases.

Another point that has to be addressed is the direction of causality. Even though the present results confirmed LL–satisfaction associations, future research should seek to establish the direction of causation between those factors. For instance, there is a possibility that romantic partners who are more satisfied in their current relationships are also more likely to give and appreciate LLs behaviors. Our study also did not assess other factors that might drive matching on LLs. The observed association could also be multi-directional or be mediated by another variable. For instance, emotional intelligence may contribute to romantic relationship satisfaction and quality [see 60 , 61 ]. Matching on LLs may also be a byproduct of assortative mating for personal characteristics like intelligence or personality type [ 62 ]. Other individual differences that were shown to influence relationship quality, such as time perspective or chronotype, could be also taken into account as potential mediators or confounders of the effects of LLs on relationship outcomes [e.g. 55 ; 63 ].

In conclusion, this study provides a unique contribution to the empirical literature on Chapman’s basic assumption of Five Love Languages [ 1 ]. Our findings suggest that people who better match each other’s preferences for LLs are more satisfied with their relationships and sexual life. Moreover, it appears that satisfying the needs of one’s partner has at least as strong an impact on the individual’s perceptions of relationship quality as receiving expression of love in the desired ways does. However, contrary to our hypothesis, small associations between matching on LLs and degree of empathy were observed only for some empathy subscales among male, but not female participants, and empathy was unrelated to satisfaction. Future work may explore other possible mediators of the LL matching–relationship satisfaction association.

The present findings, particularly the novel way to assess matching for LLs presented in the present paper, may be important for the subsequent research in the field of the romantic relationships. They also provide useful practical implications for marital and family counseling, as well as for laymen who aim to improve the quality of their relationship. Learning to recognize and react to one’s partners love needs may be an important skill for building relationship satisfaction in both partners.

Supporting information

S1 appendix, funding statement.

This work was supported by the University of Warsaw, from the funds awarded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the form of a subsidy for the maintenance and development of research potential.

Data Availability

  • PLoS One. 2022; 17(6): e0269429.

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PONE-D-21-38702I love the way you love me: Responding to partner’s love language preferences boosts satisfaction in romantic heterosexual couplesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Stolarski,

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Please provide the following information/changes:

Methods: Questionnaires:. Provide information about the dates on which the questionnaire was applied on the average time spent on responses (discuss whether there could have been condescending responses and other response biases), and whether there were several attention checks. Clarify if there were payments to participants as a way to encourage participation.

In research in which self-response questionnaires are used, there could have been condescending responses and other response biases related to the social desirability.  The results of online surveys may be affected by bias due for example to low response rates, to a self-selection linked to the salience of a topic, the length of time required to complete the survey, the presentation of the questionnaire, the contact delivery modes, the use of pre-notifications and the presence of incentives. Furthermore, in online surveys, subjects often have greater self-disclosure. The results of the web-based surveys must consider all these aspects to be considered valid and reliable.  Moreover, about bias in participation, note the possible self-selection bias and the nonprobability sampling used to select the participants. See for example Van de Mortel, T.F. Faking it: Social desirability response bias in self-report research. Aust. J. Adv. Nurs. 2008, 25,40. Please provide information about this topic on methods section.

Did you have any missing data or did everyone answer all the questions? If you did have missing data, how did you treat the "missingness"?

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7. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Author response to Decision Letter 0

17 May 2022

Thank you for your email dated April 5th, 2022 that addresses the points raised during the review process. We highly appreciate the Reviewer’s generous comments on the manuscript.

We have carefully reviewed them and revised the manuscript to address the following concerns, as well as the Journal Requirements.

We have addressed the editorial points as follows:

ad.1: “Provide information about the dates on which the questionnaire was applied on the average time spent on responses (discuss whether there could have been condescending responses and other response biases), and whether there were several attention checks”.

The questionnaire was applied over the period between October 2018 to March 2019. The subjects spent an average of 23 minutes responding to the questionnaire.

We have used the reverse wording items for each inventory to screen out careless respondents. No additional attention checks were used in the survey.

We are aware that self-response questionnaires tend to be affected by the response biases. We have clarified it in the Methods section and proposed an additional future research suggestion to address the potential flaws.

The information is now provided in the manuscript in lines 236-239, and 562-569.

ad. 2: “Clarify if there were payments to participants as a way to encourage participation”.

No, the subjects participated in the survey voluntary and were not paid for their participation. It is now clarified in the Method section and addressed as a potential limitation in the Discussion.

The information is now provided in the manuscript in lines 237-238, and 570-574.

ad. 3: “In research in which self-response questionnaires are used, there could have been condescending responses and other response biases related to the social desirability…Please provide information about this topic on methods section”.

We have provided information on the potential biases in response and participation in our survey, including the possibility of the condescending responses. It is now addressed in the Method and Discussion sections.

The information is now provided in the manuscript in lines 562-574, and addressed in 238-244.

ad. 4: “Did you have any missing data or did everyone answer all the questions? If you did have missing data, how did you treat the "missingness"?”

Yes. Ten couples were discarded from the study due to significant amount of missing information for one or both partners. When one question was missed (i.e. not scored) by the respondent, the average over available items was calculated and multiplied with the number of items in the questionnaire to replace the missing value.

The information is now provided in the manuscript in lines 215-222.

Formal suggestion: Please change "female” or "male" to "woman” or "man" as appropriate, when used as a noun

This point is now addressed across the entire manuscript; the only remaining uses of “male” and “female” are when these words are used as adjectives.

We have attached a marked-up copy that highlights changes made to the original version, as well as unmarked version of our revised manuscript. If you have any further questions or suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.

Submitted filename: Response-to-Reviewers.docx

Decision Letter 1

23 May 2022

PONE-D-21-38702R1

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Sónia Brito-Costa, Ph.D.

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Acceptance letter

27 May 2022

Dear Dr. Stolarski:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact gro.solp@sserpeno .

If we can help with anything else, please email us at gro.solp@enosolp .

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Sónia Brito-Costa

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Psychological Research on Love and Its Influence in Adult Human Relationships

example of research title about love

Now, here is this topic about love. The subject without any movie, novel, poem and song cannot exist. The topic of love has fascinated scientists, philosophers, historians, poets, playwrights, novelists, and songwriters, as well as all other human beings.

I decided to look at this subject from a scientific point of view. It was very interesting to search and to write this article, and I hope that it will be interesting to you to read it. It is ironic, that as I am writing this article on Saturday in the empty Riordan Clinic, while drinking tea and eating chocolate that I found a love poem from “Romeo and Juliet” inside the wrapping.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON LOVE Whereas psychological science was slow to develop an active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject. The excellent review of the central and well-established findings from psychologically informed research on love and its influence in adult human relationships is presented in this article:

“Love. What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?” H Reis and A Aron. The brief summary of the ideas from this article is presented below.

example of research title about love

On the other hand, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.

The first major intellectual development was the work of Charles Darwin, who proposed that reproductive success was the central process underlying the evolution of species. Evolutionary theorizing has led directly to such currently popular concepts as mate preference, sexual mating strategies, and attachment, as well as to the adoption of a comparative approach across species.

A second development was the work of Sigmund Freud. Contemporary research and theory on love features many psychodynamic principles that were first introduced by Freud, such as the importance of early childhood experiences, the powerful impact of motives operating outside of awareness, the role of defenses in shaping the behavioral expression of motives, and the role of sexuality as a force in human behavior

A third historically significant development was the work of Margaret Mead. Mead’s vivid descriptions of cultural variations in the expression of love and sexuality led researchers to consider the influence of socialization and to recognize cultural variation in many aspects of love.

example of research title about love

At the same time, social psychologists were beginning work that would show that adult love could be studied experimentally and in the laboratory.

Any history of psychological research on love would be incomplete without reference to “l’affaire Proxmire”. In March 1975, William Proxmire, a powerful U.S. Senator, gave the first of a series of so-called Golden Fleece Awards to Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield, the two most prominent love researchers of the time. They had recently received a federal grant for their work. To some, their work was a gross misuse of federal tax-payer dollars and a topic “better left to poets.” For the ensuing years, that ill-informed and ignoble proclamation cast a pall not only on Berscheid and Hatfield but on any scientist interested in studying love. To this day, politics occasionally obstructs funding for research on love.

Despite the political barrier to love research in the U.S., other countries, particularly Canada, have taken a more enlightened view, as have at least two private foundations.

example of research title about love

Considerable evidence supports a basic distinction, first offered in 1978, between passionate love (“a state of intense longing for union with another”) and other types of romantic love, labeled companionate love (“the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined”). The evidence for this distinction comes from a variety of research methods, including psychometric techniques (e.g., factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and prototype analysis), examinations of the behavioral and relationship consequences of different forms of romantic love, and biological studies, which are discussed in this article.

Most work has focused on identifying and measuring passionate love and several aspects of romantic love, which include two components: intimacy and commitment. Some scholars see companionate love as a combination of intimacy and commitment whereas others see intimacy as the central component, with commitment as a peripheral factor (but important in its own right, such as for predicting relationship longevity). In some studies, trust and caring were considered highly prototypical of love, whereas uncertainty and “butterflies in the stomach” were more peripheral.

Passionate and companionate love solves different adaptational problems. Passionate love may be said to solve the attraction problem—that is, for individuals to enter into a potentially long-term mating relationship, they must first identify and select suitable candidates, attract the other’s interest, engage in relationship-building behavior, and then go about reorganizing existing activities and relationships so as to include the other. All of this is effortful, time-consuming, and disruptive. Consequently, passionate love is associated with many changes in cognition, emotion, and behavior. For the most part, these changes are consistent with the idea of disrupting existing activities, routines, and social networks to orient the individual’s attention and goal-directed behavior toward a specific new partner.

example of research title about love

Considerably less effort has been devoted toward understanding the evolutionary significance of the intimacy and commitment aspects of love. However, much evidence indicates that love in long-term relationships is associated with intimacy, trust, caring, and attachment, all factors that contribute to the maintenance of relationships over time.

More generally, the term companionate love may be characterized by a communal relationship: a relationship built on mutual expectations that one’s self and a partner will be responsive to each other’s needs.

It was speculated that companionate love, or at least the various processes associated with it, is responsible for the noted association between social relatedness and health and well-being. In a recent series of papers, it was claimed that marriage is linked to health benefits.

Having noted the positive functions of love, it is also important to consider the dark side. That is, problems in love and love relationships are a significant source of suicides, homicides, and both major and minor emotional disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Love matters not only because it can make our lives better, but also because it is a major source of misery and pain that can make life much worse.

One particularly timely prediction is that psychological theories of love are likely to become more biologically informed, in the sense that the psychological and behavioral phenomena associated with love will have clear, comprehensible, and distinguishable neural and hormonal substrates. This will be useful not so much for the intrinsic purpose of identifying the brain and body regions in which love occurs, but rather because the identification of neural and hormonal circuits corresponding to particular experiences and behaviors will allow researchers to sort the various phenomena associated with love into their natural categories.

example of research title about love

It is also believed that research will address how culture shapes the experience and expression of love. Although both passionate and companionate love appears to be universal, it is apparent that their manifestations may be moderated by culture-specific norms and rules.

Passionate and companionate love have profoundly different implications for marriage around the world, considered essential in some cultures but contra-indicated or rendered largely irrelevant in others. For example, among U.S. college students in the 1960s, only 24% of women and 65% of men considered love to be the basis of marriage, but in the 1980s this view was endorsed by more than 80% of both women and men.

Finally, the authors believe that the future will see a better understanding of what may be the quintessential question about love: how this very individualistic feeling is shaped by experiences in interaction with particular others.

example of research title about love

Why Love Has Wings and Sex Has Not: How Reminders of Love and Sex Influence Creative and Analytic Thinking (J.A. Forster). This article examines cognitive links between romantic love and creativity and between sexual desire and analytic thought based on construal level theory. It suggests that when in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters, they focus on the present and on concrete details enhancing analytic thinking. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or when they experience sex, subtle or even unconscious reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change processing modes. Two studies explicitly or subtly reminded participants of situations of love or sex and found support for this hypothesis.

Passion, Intimacy, and Time: Passionate Love as a Function of Change in Intimacy (R.F. Baumeister, E. Bratslavsky) To build on existing theories about love, the authors propose that passion is a function of change in intimacy (i.e., the first derivative of intimacy overtime). Hence, passion will be low when intimacy is stable (either high or low), but rising intimacy will create a strong sense of passion. This view is able to account for a broad range of evidence, including frequency of sex in long-term relationships, intimate and sexual behavior of extraverts, gender differences in intimate behavior, gain and loss effects of communicated attraction, and patterns of distress in romantic breakups.

example of research title about love

TO LOVE, OR NOT TO LOVE. Love Stories of Later Life: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Romance (Amanda Smith Barusch. Oxford University Press, 2008.) This book is a qualitative study employing in-depth interviews and an open-ended survey distributed on the Internet. Barusch (a professor of social work) focused her study on four research questions. They include, but are not limited to 1. How do older adults describe and experience romantic love? 2. How do gender, culture, and age influence the lived experience of romantic love? 3. Is it possible to fall in love at advanced ages? If so, how do adults describe this experience? Do their descriptions differ from those offered by younger people? 4. How do older adults interpret their lived experiences of romance?

Barusch writes with two different ‘voices’ for two different audiences. First, she writes for academic gerontologists who have an interest in the study of late relationships. Second, she writes for elders who want to gain insight into romantic and sexual relationships in later life. She hopes that this audience will gain strength and insight by reading her book. The book is delightful, hopeful and inspiring.

It is rare for an author to successfully address two such diverse audiences. We encourage you to read this fine work.

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610 Relationship Essay Topics and Examples

🏆 best relationship titles and essay examples, 👍 good relationship topics, 🎓 simple & easy titles about relationships, 🥇 most interesting relationship research titles, 👍 argumentative essay topics about relationships, ✍️ relationship essay topics for college, ❓ research questions about relationships.

Relationships essays are essential for many different fields of study, especially the social sciences. Whether the topic is that of friendship, mothers, fathers, siblings, distant relatives, or life partners, there is a vast wealth of information titles you can explore.

You can discuss the formation of various bonds between people, its expressions, and how relationships endure or fall apart over time.

Separation, both physical and spiritual, and its effects on existing bonds can be particularly pertinent topics in our age, where people feel that long-distance relationships have become easier due to the emergence of the Internet.

Similarly, you can observe the changes in family relationships that have emerged now that there is much more mobility, and relatives can live far apart. By combining these ideas with excellent writing guidelines, you will write a powerful essay.

The variety and complexity of human bonds is among the most fascinating relationship essay topics. A person will meet and get to know hundreds of people throughout his or her lifetime, and each such meeting establishes a relationship.

People can be friends, enemies, or in a variety of states in between, such as rivalry. These relationships allow them to work together well in case of friendlier attitudes but can impede their productivity if the people are hostile to each other.

This topic may be of interest to business managers and researchers who are interested in why cooperation succeeds or fails. However, keep in mind that the topic is still being studied, and no conclusive statements can be made.

The compatibility of various personalities is a source of many interesting relationship essay ideas. Psychology is a rapidly developing science, and its interpersonal component is of interest to a wide variety of people and organizations.

Considering how many different productive relationships can arise from interactions that are not necessarily friendly, the task of the researchers is large-scale and complex.

Some relationships can be vastly different despite involving similar pairs or groups of people, and it is the task of psychology to determine whether small differences in personality caused the changed outcome or it was a matter of chance.

The current research offers many interesting examples and explanations that you can use to make an impact.

Here are some additional tips for your writing process:

  • Consider the influence of prolonged and forced close conditions, such as cohabitation, workplace interactions, or family relations on how people’s attitudes towards each other develop and dedicate some relationship essay titles to them.
  • Some relationships are easier to establish than others, with distant relatives and friends of friends being examples. You may want to discuss how catalysts may influence the interactions between relative strangers.
  • Discuss the persistence of relationships when various issues, such as separation, surface. Provide statistics on concepts such as the success of long-distance relationships.
  • Conversely, you can try to discuss the role of emerging communication technologies on relationship formation and continuation. On the Internet, people can sometimes become friends without knowing each other’s name. Furthermore, many long-distance couples rely on web messaging and video chat features to stay close.
  • Romantic relationships deserve special attention due to their prominence in contemporary research and public awareness. Services such as Tinder make finding a partner much easier than before, but pairs formed in this fashion may not last as long as traditional ones.

Check the IvyPanda website to find a diverse selection of relationship essay examples and other useful paper samples!

  • The Relationship Between Eliezer and His Father Essay Their experience at the concentration camp changes the relationship between son and father, and the despicable treatment by the Nazis helps Eliezer and his father develop a strong connection.
  • Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother (Gertrude) – Attitude Towards Her The conversation between Hamlet and his mother brings back Gertrude to her senses where she feels guilty and ashamed of her actions.
  • Factors Affecting Employee Relationships They explained that government policies needed to check the excessive imbalance of power between employers and employees in the labor market.
  • Social Media and Interpersonal Relationships This has made some of the relations blossom It can be concluded that social media has both positive and negative effects on relationships.
  • Phonology and Morphology Relationship Essay This study shows that morphemes as trends of phonemes may not be a valid point of view because of the role of the phoneme in language.
  • George Orwell’s 1984: Winston and Julia’s Relationship Essay In the relationship, Julia teaches Winston the idea of love, and the love feeling is then manipulated and directed towards Big Brother.
  • Exploring Relationship in Raymond Carver’s “Why Don’t You Dance?” In the story, the author juxtaposes the young couple with the man to highlight the solitary existence of the latter. In contrast to the man, the boy and the girl feel as the people around […]
  • Relationship Between Language and Culture Essay The purpose of the essay is to clearly highlight the issue of intercultural communication with reference to language. Language is the first element that helps an individual to distinguish the cultural orientations of individuals.
  • Stanley and Blanche Relationship in A Streetcar Named Desire The “impurity” of Blanche’s past suggests the final of the play and it is a quite logical completion of the story.
  • Interpersonal Relationships The level of interdependence among partners in interpersonal relationships allows for the influx of opinions, thoughts and feelings but the success and longevity of interpersonal relationships basically thrives on communication as a basic component, determining […]
  • Does Age Matter in Relationships? However, it is important to note that this may be a source of conflict in a relationship. Another benefit associated with an age gap in relationships is maturity that the older partner is likely to […]
  • Relationships Between Dorian Gray, Lord Henry, and Basil Hallward The relationships between Dorian Gray, Lord Henry, and Basil Hallward are all different yet interesting to analyze. The Picture of Dorian Gray explores topics of male friendship and feelings.
  • Ethics and Morality Relationship Ethics is a term used to refer to the body of doctrines that guide individuals to behave in a way that is ideologically right, fine, and appropriate.
  • Power and Culture: Relationship and Effects The relational determination in a particular society is a product of the role and function of power in a designated society.
  • BMW’s CRM: Case Study This paper concentrates on the number of issues like conceptual framework of CRM, the adoption of CRM framework, CRM in the automobile industry, methodological framework, customer database, the effectiveness of CRM strategy on this company, […]
  • Relationships Between Gods and Mortals in Greco-Roman Mythology The popularity of the theme of love affairs between the gods and the mortals can be explained with the peculiarities of the concept of divinity in Greeks and Romans.
  • Philosophy and Relationship between Freedom and Responsibility Essay As a human being, it is hard to make a decision because of the uncertainty of the outcome, but it is definitely essential for human being to understand clearly the concept and connection between freedom […]
  • McDonald’s Customer Relationship Management Evaluation Essay If the relationship between the customers and the company is short-term and capricious, the chances of timely and honest communication are low.
  • Philosophy and Religion Relationships The most basic concept that is addressed by both religion and philosophy is the existence of good and evil. Education and the upbringing of a child are one of the key effectors on the forces […]
  • Heartland And Hinterland Relationship Concept in Canada The Net Migration Pattern The pattern of migration in relation to the hinterland and heartland was dictated by the socioeconomic opportunities at the place of destination and the flow of migrants was from the hinterlands […]
  • Relationship Between Fact and Theory Considering the philosophical direction of this paper and the need to discuss the importance of facts regarding theories and vice versa, it could be difficult to find out which domination is possible and reasonable.
  • Relationship Between Ethics and Religion Essay While a believer will pose that the two function as a couple, a non-believer, on the other hand will hold that morality is independent of religion.
  • Father-Son Relationship in The Odyssey by Homer In Odyssey therefore, it is expected that the relationship of Odysseus and Telemachus is as admiring as it is; the father is proud of his son, who is courageous and the son is proud of […]
  • Father-Son Relationships in Hamlet – Hamlet’s Opinion In the case of Hamlet, he surrenders his own life and future to the will of his father, albeit following significant hesitation, not to mention the passage of an entire play.
  • Zora Neale Hurston & Langston Hughes: The Dispute That Ruined Their Relationship First, Hughes claims that he developed the plot of this play, did some characterizations and dialogues, whereas Hurston was supposed to recreate the atmosphere of Southern life as the action of Mule Bone took place […]
  • Long-Distance and Extended Time Effect on Relationships Despite the negative views that many people have regarding long-distance relationships, research shows that there are couples who are in such arrangements and happy with the way they relate to each other. On the other […]
  • Humans’ Relationship and A Good Society Thus for a society to be a good one, the people living in it should relate well and solve differences with maturity and diplomacy. A good society is one that makes it comfortable for people […]
  • The Relationship of Attention and Perception Essay Once the brain gathers information from the surrounding environment, attention allows one to select on what they want to focus on from the brain.
  • The Relationship Between Kafka and His Father The father was a burden to him and though at times he was to be good to the son, his deep feelings of hatred towards his father would not be shaken by any good gesture […]
  • What Is the Relationship between Language and Humanity? Biopolitics is crucial in the discussion of the relationship between humans and animals because it highlights the power of nature. In the same vein, man and animals have been differentiated by language, one of the […]
  • Relationships’ Types and Differences Common types of relationships include family relationships, intimate relationships, professional relationships, and friendships. Each of these relationships is expressed in a different stage of development.
  • Night by Elie Wiesel: Eliezer’s Changing Relationship With His Father He began to feel the loss and gripped with fear of losing his father, the forthcoming experiences and need for protection; he clings to his father.
  • The Relationship between Politics and Economics Today, political economy can be used to refer to some sections of a country’s economy that are influenced by politics and law or just the country’s whole economy being in relation to politics and law.
  • The Cultural-Individual Dialectic and Social Nature of Intercultural Relationships This specific type of dialectics is based on the idea that communication of persons depends not only on cultural aspects and differences but also on their individual attributes and visions. Thus, the cultural-individual dialectic is […]
  • Money, Happiness and Relationship Between Them The research conducted in the different countries during which people were asked how satisfied they were with their lives clearly indicated the existence of a non-linear relationship between the amount of money and the size […]
  • Relationship Between Average Cost and Marginal Cost The paper focuses on the relationship between average and marginal costs and importance of an entrepreneur’s knowledge about it.
  • Survey to Study the Relationship Between Fast Food Consumption and Obesity The survey aims to analyze if there is any connection between consumption of fast food and obesity. The study aims to ascertain the relationship between fast food consumption and obesity.
  • Arthur Miller: Relationships in the “Death of a Salesman” It is a satirical play that highlights the life of Willy Loman, the main character, a traveling salesman who has worked for Wagner Company for thirty-four years and ends up a failure because it is […]
  • Discussion on Business-Government Relationship With the ever-changing dynamics of the business world, the government has assumed a senior role in protecting businesses and influencing the economy in an array of ways.
  • Friendship as a Personal Relationship Friends should be people who are sources of happiness to one another and will not forsake each other even when everybody around is against them.
  • Human-Environment Relationships and Interaction The abundance of natural resources and the presence of different physical features might help not only to follow the trends of the global population but also to predict its movement and distribution of it. Interaction […]
  • The Glass Menagerie: How Laura’s Relationship With Jim Changed the Tone of the Play Jim is Tom’s friend and was in the same school as Laura, he is engaged and when he tells this to Laura on their first meeting after school, she is heartbroken because she loved him.
  • Relationship between Form and Structure in Design They are the materials, climate and even a social structure that can dictate the form of a building. The form and function of a building can influence each other or even go separately.
  • What Is the Relationship Between Capitalism and Democracy? The importance of the roles played by the stock market in the capitalistic economy is related considerably to the aspects of democracy and free market.
  • Tourism – Environment Relationships Relationship between tourism and the environment There is a great dependency of tourism on the environment as described by Holden and Fennel’s book The Routledge Handbook of Tourism and Environment.
  • Fly Emirates: Customer Relationship Management One of the key advantages of CRM systems used in Fly Emirates is the increase in yearly revenue and the number of loyal customers.
  • The Relationship Between Liberty and Necessity – David Hume On the other hand, Hume defines the concept of necessity as the kind of uniformity observed in the unique operations and processes in nature.
  • Dance and Mathematics Relationship Choreographers, in teaching dance techniques, can use knowledge of mathematics, the knowledge is also used to arrange dancers on the stage and control their movements.
  • Ethical Theories and Nepotism Relationships Relating to the ethical theory of ethics of justice to nepotism, it should be mentioned that justice is considered to be fair on the basis of various human considerations.
  • Social Changes in Human Relationships and Interactions To achieve this goal, the paper will include the following sections: population social change, how the change is taking place, the engines driving the change, data demonstrating that this change is taking place and will […]
  • Factors That Shape the Relationship Between the Buyer and the Suppliers The purpose of this paper is to identify the key factors that appear to shape the business-relationship between the supplier and the buyer.
  • Father-Son Relationships: Generation Gap The hierarchical relationship structure between father and son normally exists where directions and directives are given from a vertical order, that is, the father is all-knowing and gives all the directives, the son is supposed […]
  • Relationship Between Buyer and Supplier It involves a client and a contractor whereby the client needs the contractor’s services in terms of expertise, manpower, and machineries required to create a product or infrastructure necessary for the development of the business.
  • High Task & High Relationship Leadership Style Discussion of high task-high relationship leadership style The leadership underpinned by high-task-high relationship concerns with the inclusion of both tasks and relationships.
  • Power and Knowledge Relationship: Michel Foucault View On the other hand, he was of the opinion that knowledge is an aspect of power and that power is able to produce knowledge as opposed to acting as a deterrent to it.
  • Culture Influence on Intimacy and Human Relationships These intrigues emerge when understanding the influence of culture on human relationships by understanding the influence of collectivist and individualistic cultures on intimacy.
  • Customer Relationship Management Besides, lack of proper communication was also one of the reasons that contributed to the poor relationship between the IBM and its customers.
  • Mother-Daughter Relationships in “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of “Two Kinds”, and to discuss the causes of differences between mothers and daughters and the moment of the conflict resolution.
  • Creating a Healthy Loving Relationship Offering support to the other partner at all times and in all endeavors enhances the bonding and creates a path for commitment of either partner in his/her role in the relationship.
  • Relationship Between Politics and Leisure in Australia In conclusion, the understanding of the term “leisure time” depends on the individual point of view and attitude of the person rather than on the type or the location of the activity.
  • Customer Relationship: Best Buy, the Body Shop and Walmart The store operates on the Customer-to-Customer platform and Business-to-Business platforms. The most notable CRM strategy adopted by the Best Buy is the contact management since it provides a decision support system to select the best […]
  • Pedagogy and Andragogy: Learner-Teacher Relationship From the discussion, we found out that the appropriateness of identified andragogy in classroom activities mainly relied on the knowledge, skills and ideas possessed by the learners.
  • Descriptive and Inferential Statistics’ Relationship For example, in a variable such as incomes of patients, the best statistics to represent the typical income would be the mean the mean and / or the median.
  • The Relationship Between Entrepreneurship and Creativity On the entrepreneurial front, creativity should ensure that the profitability of an innovation in both monetary and social terms is tapped.
  • Clay Spheres: The Mass and the Diameter Relationship In this experiment, the aim was to derive a relationship between the mass and the diameter of clay spheres to obtain the density.
  • Characters’ Relationship in ”The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson While Tessie is a free-spirited woman, the Old Man is superstitious and full of fears of the unknown. However, Tessie; driven by her free spirit, gathers the courage to question the results of the lottery […]
  • Customer Relationship Management of Royal Bank of Canada The data can also be used in creating the profile of each and every customer. The bank anticipates the needs of its customers and discourages mass marketing to huge customer segments.
  • The relationship between form and content The relationship between form and content has been affected by the advent of the Internet and the growth of Web publishing platforms.
  • Intercultural Relationships Importance However, this study does not mean that a person is born with a predetermined perception on things, only that genes can define the temperament of the person and can later suggest different preferences of beliefs […]
  • Parental Involvement in Teenage Relationships Parents can monitor their child’s academic progress, engage them in conversations about romance and relationships, and give them career advice and guidance. Parental involvement in their children’s academic and social lives helps parents to understand […]
  • Tourism’ and Employment’ Relationship in the Present World Tourists’ payments act as a source of wages to employees in the tourism sector. Employees in the tourism sector require training and skill development as the industry requires different levels of skills.
  • Relationships in “A Mercy” by Toni Morrison The women portrayed in the story are Rebekka, the wife of the farm owner Jacob Vaark, Florens, a black slave sold to the farmer, Lina, the Indigenous servant, and Sorrow, the woman with an unknown […]
  • Do Antony and Cleopatra Transcend the East-West Divide in Their Relationship? This piece of work gives a critical analysis of the play, Antony and Cleopatra, with much emphasis given to the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra. From the play, it is palpable that the relationship between […]
  • Marriage Relationships in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Hemingway Harry and his wife, Helen, are stranded in Mount Kilimanjaro and their interactions reveal that their rocky relationship is a result of a mixture of frustration, incorrect decisions, getting married for wrong reasons, and unreciprocated […]
  • Marital Satisfaction Inventory for Relationship Therapy The Marital Satisfaction Inventory or the MSI is a data collection method in the form of a questionnaire. The MSI questionnaire is often used to diagnose the crisis of the marital subsystem at any stage […]
  • Kiko Milano UK Company: Customer Relationships In the United Kingdom, Kiko Milano faced a problem of reductions in the number of customers who buy products online and in stores located in different regions of the country.
  • The Relationship between Stress Management and Criminal Recidivism Employment tends to increase the social capital of individuals, what is usually referred to as the networks of shared norms and values, which augments the access to the much-needed necessities.
  • Love and Relationships in “The Notebook” Movie The paper explores the motion picture The Notebook because it is one of the vivid examples of a romantic story that demonstrates how love helps people to overcome challenges in life.
  • Father-Son Relationships in “My Oedipus Complex” and “Powder” The son in this situation shows some features of his personality as a doubtful and worrying individual making it harder for the father to impress him.
  • Relationship of ’Community Engagement’ to Society Community engagement tries to harmonize the community regardless of the status in the society, and it does this by bringing people to the table – both the community members and the elites.
  • Good Parent-Children Relationship Characteristics of the children compared to those of the parents can also influence the relationships between the parents and the children.
  • Theatre and Society Symbiotic Relationship Out of all the forms of art, theatre is the closest to society.”Theatre is the most social of the arts. Theatre is the most social form of art and the closest to society.
  • Buyer-Supplier Relationships and Their Types These are as follows: Toyota: a federation of businesses dominated by a Toyota; the suppliers are partners, and the main company possesses partial ownership of these companies.
  • Relationship Between Neoliberalism and Imperialism As the western world, led by the United States, later attained the control of the world long after the Second World War, the idea of putting the state at the centre of the economic functionality […]
  • Public Relations and Relationship Marketing The organizers of the 2011 Mobile Research conference should consider using public relations and relationship marketing in order to ensure that the event promotion is successful.
  • Ecomap and Genogram Relationship Family members have been visiting the family regularly to monitor the condition of the child and give them moral and financial support for the child’s medication.
  • Why Some Victims Stay in a Sexually Abusive Relationship? The victim of the sexual abuse might have a feeling that they are failing their family, state of affairs, or even the abusive partner.
  • Compare the Relationship of Mothers and Daughters in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea The two works by the authors are related in that one work is the rewrite of another or almost the duplicate of another and therefore almost all the themes are the same in both books […]
  • Shinto and Its Relationship With China and Buddhism As such, those who identify with the two religions have continued to engage in practices of the Buddhist and Shinto faiths either knowingly or unknowingly.
  • The Ideal Relationship This is because the woman is not supposed to be a follower of all the men in the planet. This and other roles should be clear to both of the parties involved in a relationship.
  • William Shakespeare: Father-Daughter Relationship in “The Tempest” One of the main conditions according to which a daughter is going to be protected in the future is the strong assuredness that a daughter is in good and loving hands, protected like under the […]
  • Love and Relationship Humans have always asked inexplicable questions about love such as, “Why do we fall in love?” or “What makes us love others?” We may not necessarily have perfect answers for all the questions regarding love […]
  • My Belief About Family Relationships I have chosen to discuss my belief about family relationships instead and how my father and family play an important role in shaping that belief. That is my belief in life and I know that […]
  • Relationship between Leadership and Management Additionally, it is apparent that the only constant in the business world is change, and for this reason, for employees to be sure of coping with such changes, there is need for them to acquire […]
  • The Relationships Between Science and Religion It is imperative to note that the concept of religion and science differs to a larger extent and are independent from each other.
  • Mother vs. Grandmother Relationships Comparison However, in my case, proximity is in reverse proportion to the extent of emotional rapport and willingness to interact that I have been exhibiting in the dialogue with my mother and my grandmother.
  • Interpersonal Relationship Theories The attraction theory states that people form relationships based on five principles of attraction: similarity, proximity, reinforcement, physical attractiveness and personality, socioeconomic and educational status, and reciprocity of liking. It is based on the economic […]
  • Finches’ Beak Size and Seed Size Relationship The study aims to hypothesize the evolutionary relationship between the relative length of the beaks and the sizes of seeds that finches eat.
  • Relationships in the “Crazy, Stupid, Love” Movie The process of the revaluation of the timeless values is not instantons and finite. The main theme of that film is the human relationships and the problem of miscommunication in the family.
  • Unethical Behavior in Teacher-Student Relationships The relationship between teacher and student should be one for the welfare of a student. It is also applicable to the students and the first amendment of the US constitution allows all the students to […]
  • The Relationship Between Religion and Abnormal Psychology But whose judgment will we use to separate the two contrasting elements of the psychology of normal and abnormal behaviors? Some religious beliefs permit the use of alcohol and it’s considered normal, yet others find […]
  • Parent-Child Relationships in “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker The more distant and fractious relationship is between the narrator and Dee. The narrator is referred to as “Mama,” and a mama she is.
  • Traditional Marketing vs. Relationship Marketing The study also brought the harmonization between the theory of relationship marketing and implementation of the relationship marketing.”The relationship marketing strategy of the future is one that builds a desire”.
  • Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty This shows that the strength of the relationship between the crime index and people living below the line of poverty is.427.
  • Personality and Leadership Style Relationship According to his approach and tests, stable and introverted people are phlegmatic, stable and extroverted are sanguine, unstable and introverted are melancholic, and unstable and extroverted are choleric.
  • Sustainable Development’ and Economic Growth’ Relationship The concepts of sustainable development and economic growth are interconnected with the aim of protecting the available wealth of the earth and at the same time creating more opportunities towards satisfaction of human needs.
  • Relationships and Love: “Hippolytus” by Euripides He worships the goddess of “hunting and chastity, Artemis and ignores Aphrodite, the goddess of love”. Hippolytus is the favorite of this goddess as he prefers hunting and staying chaste and rejects worshipping the goddess […]
  • Business Relationships Aspects Analysis Trust and commitment are useful concepts in managing business to customer and business-to-business relationships. This foundation led to the development of the trust and commitment theory, which presupposes that healthy business relationships are held together […]
  • Islam Akhun and His Relationship With Aurel Stein in the Silk Road Islam’s creativity was clear from the counterfeits and the ornate particulars he provided on the circumstances and provenance. This paper explores the history of Islam Akhun in the Silk Road and his relationship with Aurel […]
  • Effects of Internet Addiction on Family Relationships Among Teenagers In the modern society, cyber bullying refers to the instances where the individual uses the internet to interfere with the rights and freedoms of others.
  • Gregor’s Relationship With His Father in “The Matamorphosis” This paper seeks to explore the father and son relationships in Metamorphosis and Oedipus the King and offers a comparison for the two.
  • Relationship Between Psychology and Christian Faith Truly, I have realized that sincerity is found in Jesus discipleship and the study of persona, but the varying aspects guiding the honesty are the belief in Christ and analytical thinking.
  • Man-Woman Relationship in “The Flea” by John Donne The speaker says, “This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is” However, at the same time the image of the flea is intended to show that sex is […]
  • Motivation, Emotion, and Behavior Relationships Therefore, motivation is a result of external and internal desires that relate to the behavior of a person towards meeting a certain goal How people begin moving toward a behavior varies as emotions pull them […]
  • The Issue of “Man’s Relationship with the Divine” in Greek Mythology As the reader explores the idea of divinity throughout most of the Greek mythologies and epics, it becomes clear that there is a strong connection between the people of Greece and their gods thus making […]
  • Historical Relationship of the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos and How It Is Changing the Environment To begin with, the hunting practices of this native group, as well as the invasion of the European into their land, led to a great decline in the herds of the white-tailed deer in the […]
  • The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Tenure The findings of the questionnaire did not corroborate the alternate hypothesis that there was a significant correlation between job satisfaction and tenure.
  • Relationship Dynamics in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” We are going to depict the marriage in Earnest as an option or a necessary “business” move in an aristocratic society using the prism of Wilde’s point of view on Victorians era.
  • Iago and Othello Relationships With the help of relationships between Iago and Othello, Shakespeare conveyed the idea that good and evil have to coexist for the sake of the world balance.
  • The relationship between employees’ job satisfaction and customer satisfaction in service business The study is necessitated by the realization that customer satisfaction is determined by the perceptions the customers have on the nature and the quality of services offered.
  • Attraction and Repulsion as the Drivers of Male-Female Relationships When talking about the latter, it is possible to distinguish two dominant emotions that affect the communication between a woman and a man: attraction and repulsion.
  • The Relationship Between Physical Therapist and Physical Therapist Assistant Conversely, the training offered to the PTA’s enables them to provide care, support, and physical handling of clients under a management strategy developed by the PT.
  • EU-USA Relationship Analysis In the present day, the United States and the European Union have the most integrated interrelation in the sphere of economy and the largest bilateral investment and trade relationship worldwide.
  • Psychology and Enduring Relationships In line with this view and drawing on the link between the length and benefits of coupling, it is important to understand the psychology of enduring relationships to predict the extent that people stay together.
  • Relationships Between American Literature and American Society Therefore this paper will look at the American literature from the time of colonization by the Europeans, and how various events social and historical have shaped the American literature, making it unique among other literal […]
  • Social Exchange Theory and Human Relationships The authors go further to argue that people tend to negotiate and comply with obligations of relationship building. In order to support the theory, the book uses the analogy of monetary value and exchange.
  • What Is the Relationship Between Mind and Body? As noted by the author, Socrates depicted the human body as the part or an instrument of the soul, admitting at the same time that the corporal health depended directly on the wellness of the […]
  • The Puritans and the American Natives Relationship An important aspect that contributed to the religious conflict between the Puritans and the Natives was the means through which religious beliefs were shared.
  • Relationship Between Body and Consciousness by Jean-Paul Sartre In this regard, he posits that it is only possible to reflect on the nature of the body by first establishing the order of reflection. He therefore claims that the body is in the order […]
  • The Relationship Between the European Union and the United States Both the EU and the U.S.have a deep sense of widely shared values and a strong belief in democracy as a way of governance, adherence to principles of the rule of law, respect for human […]
  • Form Follows Function: Relationship between Form and Structure Thus, the construction of the building depends on many other issues, such as culture, landscape and the desire of the client, of course. The first factor that influences on the form of the building is […]
  • Modern Families: Intimate and Personal Relationships Since Queen’s family lived in the United States and my family resided in England, this paper presents an integrated comparison of household aspects in the two countries.
  • Relationship Between Parents and Children The book is based on the story of a farmer and his family, who, due to the problematic nature of the head of the family, are forced to change their place of residence: “None of […]
  • Relationships. To My Beloved Spouse on How to Love In order to be fair to each other, and not leave us guessing about where we stand or how we expect each other to act within the confines of our marriage, I thought it best […]
  • Entity Relationship Diagrams for IT Projects The weakness is that the system caused a months delay in reimbursement of the expenses and this caused a financial loss for the sales personnel.
  • Relationship Between Caregivers and Behavior of Youth The purpose of the study is to evaluate how youths and caregivers perceive their relationships relative to the occurrence of externalizing and internalizing behaviors.
  • Dark Triad Effects on Romantic Relationships Moreover, the high scores on dark triad qualities are related to antisocial behaviors, promiscuity, and preference for short-term relationships. For men with dark triad traits, the low levels of agreeableness and empathy makes them to […]
  • Thomas Hobbes’ and Classical Realism Relationship Neo-realism on the other hand is the modern realism practiced in most of the nations today. One of the greatest contributions that Hobbes made in realism was the definition of power.
  • Apple and Brand-Customer Relationship An established brand loyalty is important to a company since it makes it more harder for new products to gain a market share, it increases a company’s ability and strength to respond to competitive threats, […]
  • Relationship Between Students Mathematics Performance and Support Provided by Teachers Using the theoretical framework, the teacher may also offer support by introducing to the classroom a system that aims to reward the students who perform better in mathematics while stressing the fundamental importance of teacher-student […]
  • The Natural World, Human Identity, Human Relationships, and Civilization: A Perspective From the Book of Genesis The book of Genesis is the basis of the review made in this paper. The book of Genesis tells the story of creation by illustrating the Lord as the architect of the universe.
  • The Relationship Between Green Buildings and Operations Management Once a total budget for a green building project is set, project management should think in terms of the possible impact of different combinations: the extremes of spending the total budget, and the results expected […]
  • Culture and Public Administration Relationship in Canada Organizations in Canada can be characterized as ones who base their development on the principles not of the strong hierarchy and centralization, but on the possibilities for the communication and interaction on all the levels […]
  • Customer Relationship Management Software Through the codification of customer-business interactions, CRM software has allowed many companies to benefit from increased sales and improved customer loyalty.
  • Starbuck’s Ethical Relationship with Stakeholders In fact, the company has for long been considered as ‘the employer of choice’ as a result of its tendency to take good care of its employees and the other stakeholders.
  • Public Relations and Crisis Management Link The significance of developing a CMP lies in the fact that it aids in the process of collecting the necessary information to deal with the crisis.
  • Christianity and Globalization – Relationship By demonstrating the values behind each religion, globalization leads to greater understanding and tolerance of humanity’s leading religious traditions, one of which is Christianity.
  • Personal and Public Relationships in the Hooper’s Movie “The King’s Speech” He is also intending to marry a woman who was previously divorced, and this is not approved by the church and the people of the country.
  • Unhappy Relationships in Hemingway’s Life and Fiction In “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, Hemingway reveals his latent fear of strong women and being dominated as he depicts the story of a middle-aged man who is finally beginning to understand […]
  • If “Love Is a Fallacy,” Are the “Loves” or Romantic Relationships Portrayed in the Story Logical or Illogical (Fallacious)? The purpose of this paper is to compare “love” as it is portrayed in two stories, “The gifts of Magi” and “Love is a fallacy”.
  • Social Media in Enhancing Social Relationships and Happiness Social media and technology assist to foster and maintain relationships where the people live in different geographical regions. There is a major concern that social media and technology poses a threat to the traditional fabric […]
  • Technology and Language Relationships As we discover how complicated language is, we also move into a new form of language, a visual literacy, that takes place in the advent of the ubiquity of computer screens.
  • Media’s Relationship to Anti-social Behavior The media has played a very essential role in terms of educating young people on the positive activities that they can engage in to build their lives. However, the internet is also full of negative […]
  • Interpersonal Relationships: Effects of Attachments Styles Additionally, the connection created between a child and their parents tends to determine the kind of expectations that they will have toward their partners when they establish an interpersonal relationship in their adulthood. These styles […]
  • Relationship Between Unemployment and Crimes Agnew, argue that crime is caused by strain that a person face throughout life, and this can be contributed to the degree of educational inequality in society.
  • Wal-Mart: The Challenge of Managing Relationships With Stakeholders Stakeholders to an organization are the individuals who are affected by the decisions and the actions that the organization takes. Stakeholders are very important to the survival of an organization and any organization should look […]
  • Art and Freedom. History and Relationship The implication of this term is that genus art is composed of two species, the fine arts, and the useful arts. This, according to Cavell, is the beauty of art.
  • Starbucks Analysis: Identifying Key Transformation or Throughput Processes and Looking at the Relationships Between Them Here we will conduct a diagnostic study in Starbuck to find the transactional variable and establish the degree of fitment between the different components and how they are related to each other.
  • Group Counseling: Change in Relationships The specified analysis is possible due to the use of the Thinking, Feeling, and Behaving Model, which allows one to explore the affective and emotional domain of the participants.
  • Forensic Psychology: Media and Crime Relationship Consequently, it is arguable that exposure to stimuli involving violence such as the one found in a violent video game and some TV programs including cartoons may cause activation of aggressive scripts among children.
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  • Effects of Body-Worn Cameras on the Relationships Between the Police and Citizens
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  • Fatherhood and Relationships Programs
  • Discussion of Human Relationships
  • The Americans and Indigenous People Relationships
  • Respect and Self-Respect: Impact on Interpersonal Relationships and Personal Identity
  • The Themes of Obsession and Relationship in the Stories
  • Staging Relationships by Henrik Ibsen
  • Emerging Adults With ASD and the Importance of Close Relationships
  • The Europeans and Native Americans Relationships
  • The US and Apple Relationship in the Field of Cybersecurity
  • Reasons for Cohabiting: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships
  • Relationship Satisfaction: Sexual, Emotional Intimacy, and Communication
  • The Self-Sabotage Problem in Relationships
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  • Mentoring in Science and Engineering and Interpersonal Relationship Training
  • Parenthub as Resource for Parent-Child Relationships Building
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  • Analysis of Marital Relationship Problems
  • The Relationships Between Parents and Children and Keys to Their Success
  • The Love and Marriage Relationship Analysis
  • Adolescent Relationship and School Culture
  • The Relationship Between Diabetes and COVID-19
  • The Ethics and Law Relationship Analysis
  • Coach-Player Relationship: Power Distance and Individualism-Collectivism
  • Family Relationship: Life-Span Development
  • Personal Relationship With Substance Abuse
  • Economic Growth and Unemployment Relationship in the USA
  • Relationship: Communication Between Family Members
  • Economic Status and Severity of Punishment Relationship
  • The Relationship Between Sexual Orientation and Suicide
  • Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 and a Healthy Lifestyle Relationship
  • “Family Relationships in What It Means to Say Phoenix Arizona” by S. Alexie
  • The Relationship of Western Cultures to Aboriginal Children
  • Obesity and COVID-19 Relationship Analysis
  • The Relationship Between the Working Memory and Non-Conscious Experiences
  • Consciousness: The Link Between Working Memory and Unconscious Experience
  • Sociology of the Family: Love and Relationships
  • The Relationship Between Single-Parent Households and Poverty
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  • Benefit and Honesty in Human Relationships
  • How I Formed My Present Relationship to the Written Word
  • Online Dating Platforms, Sex, and Relationships
  • Empathy in Parent-Child Relationships
  • Parent-Child Relationships in Later Life
  • History and Technology Relationship Analysis
  • Communication Conflict and Climate in Relationships
  • Factors Making a Relationship Successful
  • Gross Domestic Product and Quality of Life Relationship
  • Personal Relationships in “Why Women Kill” TV Series
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  • Relationship Between Pairs of Concepts
  • Heroin Overdose and Socioeconomic Status Relationship
  • Analysis of Situations in Relationships With Management
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  • The Relationship Between Epigenetics and the Effects of the Holocaust
  • Researching Relationship Between Using Cannabis and Psychosis
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  • The Relationship Between Personality and Infidelity Among Millennials
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  • Evaluating the Employer-Employee Relationship
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  • Effect of Supportive Relationships on School
  • Socioeconomic Status and Health Relationship
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  • Negotiation and Emotions in Business Relationship
  • Civilization’s ‘Blooming’ and Liberty Relationship
  • Political Economy: Relationship Between Poverty, Inequality, and Nationalism
  • Moral Responsibility: Ethics and Human Relationships
  • The Relationship Between Gender Inequality and Women’s Economic Independence
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  • The Relationship Between Vitamin D Deficiency and Asthma Disease in Children
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  • The Problem of Business Relationships Built on Romantic
  • Drug Design and the Qualitative Structure: Activity Relationship
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  • The Relationship Between Hypothyroidism and Obesity
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  • The Social Relationship and the Causes of Violence in Female Gangs
  • Patient-Doctor Relationship: Quality Improvement Intervention Plan
  • Clubs’ Relationship With Fans and Internet
  • Age-Crime Relationships and Motivations
  • The Relationship of Drugs and Crime
  • Lawyers and Ethics: Attorney-Client Relationship
  • The Relationship of Type 2 Diabetes and Depression
  • The Relationship Between the Principal and the Agent
  • Relationship Among Mental Health, Hypertension and Telomere Length
  • European Union’s Global Relationships and Economy
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  • “Relationships of Problematic Internet Use With Depression”: Study Strengths and Weaknesses
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  • The Relationship Between Memory and Oblivion
  • Belongings and Relationship With Past Experiences
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  • Private Equity: A Private-Public Investing Relationship Pattern
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  • The Story of Macbeth by W. Sheakspeare: Relationship and Strengths Between Macbeth and His Wife
  • Power, Relationship & Influence
  • A Model for Defining Relationships Between Variables
  • Canada’s Role in the History of Money: The Relationship Between Ownership and Control
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  • Who God Is and What Relationship Exists in Man and God
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  • The Special Relationship and Future British Foreign Policy
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  • Relationship Between Civil Society and State of an Australian Public Sphere
  • The Relationships Between Male and Female in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by D. K. Philip
  • China-Tibet Relationship in Beijing Olympics 2008
  • The Relationship Between Emotion Regulation Suppression and the Academic and Life Stress Levels
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  • Relationship Between the Brain and the Nervous System
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  • Adulthood and Aging. Intergenerational Relationships
  • The Relationships Between Physiotherapists and Educators, Parents, and Service Providers
  • Impact of Stress on Intimate Relationship
  • Relationship Marketing: Does Trust Always Lead to Loyalty?
  • Relationship Between Lobbying and Corruption
  • Great Depression and the American People’s Relationship With Their Government
  • Theory and Practice Relationship in Social Work
  • How to Ruin a Good Relationship
  • “Preventing Violence in Relationships” by Wolfe D. A.
  • Love and Culture; A Study of Relationships Among the Tamil, Fulbe, Inuit
  • Online Hospitality Business: Establish and Conduct Business Relationships
  • Heart of Gold Café: Establishing and Maintaining Business Relationships
  • Victims and Witnesses of Violence: The Relationship.
  • Relationships Between Philosophical Wisdom, Mythology and Astronomy
  • Relationships Between Women: “Animal Dreams” by Barbara Kingsolver
  • Israel’s Relationship with Other Nations Analysis
  • Relationship Between Illness and Digust Sensitivity
  • The Relationship Between Divergent Thinking and Creative Process
  • Interpersonal Relationship in “The Pushing Hands”
  • South Africa and US Economic and Political Relationship
  • The Relationship Between Compulsive Binge Eating Disorder and Long Term Health
  • Media and Tourism: Symbiotic Relationship
  • Language and Cognitive Development Relationship
  • The Relationship Between Political Instability and the Motivation. A Study of Thailand
  • Relationships Between Anxiety, Perceived Support and Self-Esteem
  • Communication in a Relationship and Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory
  • Human Experiential Behavior and Love Relationship
  • Interracial Relationships in Canada
  • Pervasiveness and Attribution Bias in Relationships
  • Family Relationship: Lawrence and Joyce
  • Physician-Patient Relationship. When Gift Becomes Bribe
  • Medical Anthropology. Doctor-Patient Relationships
  • Relationship Marketing: Application to Thermal Spas
  • European Union and Central & Eastern Europe Relationships
  • Chinese Relationships With Foreign Business Partners
  • Untreated Bipolar Disorder’s Impact on Relationships
  • Analysis of Behavior Patterns in Heterosexual Relationships
  • Psychological Theories for Human-Nature Relationship
  • Family Relationships of an Anorexic Person
  • Relationship Between the Supreme Court and the High Court Justice
  • Dependent Relationship and Informal Power
  • Diabetes Self-Management: Relationships & Expectations
  • Cultural Competence, Relationships & Expectations
  • Atrium Health: Customer Relationship Management
  • Managerial Accounting Control Orientation and Organizational Outcomes
  • The Relationship Between the Past and the Present in 18th-19th Century London Writing
  • Brand Activism and Green Advertising Relationship
  • Social Media Technology Usage and Customer Relationship Performance
  • Aramex Company’s Customer Relationship Management
  • Social Customer Relationship Management in the UAE
  • Legal Issues of Ending a Relationship
  • “Data Mining and Customer Relationship Marketing in the Banking Industry“ by Chye & Gerry
  • Relationships Between Governments and Organizations
  • The Conceptual Relationship Between Memory and Imagination
  • The Impact of the Relationship Between Aboriginal and Chinese People on Taiwan’s Development
  • Personal Relationships Wellness Philosophy
  • Freud and Hamlet’s Relationship with His Mother
  • The Roaring Twenties and Racial Relationships
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  • Skills for Close Relationship: Preparing and Training
  • Empirically Supported Relationships in Counseling
  • Sex at Dawn: Modern Relationships
  • Race and Social Class Relationship
  • Relationships and Communication
  • Decision-Making and Manager-Employee Relationships
  • Student Engagement and Achievement Relationship
  • Business as a Workplace: Building Relationships
  • Abusive Intimate Relationships and Turning Points
  • American Family Relationships: Dynamics Alterations
  • Dual Relationships in Professional Psychology
  • Process Consultation in Building Relationships
  • Renewable Energy and Politics Relationships
  • Power, Relationships and Influence
  • Homosexual Relationships: Ethical Reflection
  • Does Sexual Satisfaction Change With Relationship Duration?
  • How Does Bruce Lundgren Explores Relationship in His Poetry?
  • Can Long Distance Relationships Work?
  • Does Age Difference Matter in a Relationship or Marriage?
  • How Does Infidelity Affect A Relationship?
  • Can Relationship Bring More Provision in Rural Public Goods?
  • Does Changing Gender Role Affect Family Relationship?
  • How Does One’s Relationship to One’s Past Influence One’s Present?
  • Can Romantic Relationship Quality Mediate the Relation Between Psychopathy and Subjective Well-Being?
  • How Has Social Media Affected the Relationship Between Celebrities and Fans?
  • Does Modern Day Communication via Social Network Put an End to True and Sincere Relationship?
  • How Do Intimate Couples Act at Various Stages of a Relationship?
  • Can Servant Leaders Fuel the Leadership Fire?
  • How Can Nurse Establish Therapeutic Relationship With Patient?
  • Does Peer Pressure Have an Influence on College Students Being in a Monogamous Relationship?
  • Can Social Media Marketing Improve Customer Relationship Capabilities and Firm Performance?
  • How Does Browning Present the Relationship Between Men and Women in His Two Poems?
  • Does Relationship Quality Matter in Consumer Ethical Decision Making?
  • How Does Attraction Work When We Build Up Our Social Relationship?
  • Does Sibling Relationship Matter to Self-Concept and Resilience in Adolescents Under Residential Care?
  • How Does Child Trauma Affect a Relationship Attachment?
  • Does Subjective Well-Being Show a Relationship Between Parents and Their Children?
  • How Does Communication Affect the Relationship Between Customer and Organization?
  • Does the Positive Relationship Between Health and Marriage Reflect Protection or Selection?
  • How Does Culture Shape the World and Form Relationships?
  • Does the Between Person–Organization Relationship Fit and Work Attitudes Differ for Blue-Collar and White-Collar Employees?
  • How Did Descartes Explain the Relationship Between Mind and Body?
  • Chicago (A-D)
  • Chicago (N-B)

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IvyPanda . "610 Relationship Essay Topics and Examples." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/relationship-essay-examples/.

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How To Create Unique Research Paper Titles About Love

How many books, movies, sonnets, plays, dances and songs have love as their theme? Trust me, you won’t be short of finding something on this subject! Having said that, you may be feeling like you don’t know where to begin. Well, if that’s the case, here are some great suggestions to help you on your way.

  • With such a broad theme, the first thing you’ll need to do is narrow down the subject. You’ll also need to make sure that there are plenty of sources to research and use as supporting material.
  • The arts, as mentioned, are one place where you’ll find the theme, but you could look at the subject from various angles. How do scientists see it from a chemical reaction perspective? What do psychoanalysts have to say? What different types are there? –Platonic (in which case, you should take a look at Plato!), romantic, brotherly-sisterly-motherly, godly…
  • You should choose the subject that you’re interested in the most, as passion always comes across in writing- particularly with this topic!
  • Once you have chosen your main area, you should narrow it down even more. ‘Love in the arts’ is a pretty big topic in itself after all! So, you may want to focus on Shakespeare for instance. You may want to narrow that down further into his sonnets or certain plays. You would need to think about what questions would arise and what answers you might expect. Study what others have had to say about the bard’s relation to romanticism. Think through as many questions that pertain to the theme as you can before plumping for your research paper’s title.
  • If you do choose a subject as well known and as much written about as William Shakespeare, it’s even more important to make it a one off theme in your title. It will be hard to find a specific angle to come from, but the more you can do that, the better your paper will be.

If you decide to choose a more obscure subject, this could work in your favour- but remember not to pick the subject just because of its obscurity!

  • It will certainly help if you study other papers about the topic. You will find a plethora of examples online and there will be plenty in your campus library. By looking at samples, you can see what subjects have been done to death, which could be expanded upon and which are just duds!

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Love Research Paper

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This sample love research paper features: 4400 words (approx. 15 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 48 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Introduction

What is and is (perhaps) not love, love typologies and theories, theories of courtship, relationship troubles, recent trends in scholarship on romantic pairings.

  • Bibliography

The question of “What is love?” has piqued curiosity and engendered frustration for much of history. The exasperated answer that you “just know” when you are in love is reflected in the body of sociological literature on the phenomenon. Sociologists do not seem to agree on a uniform definition, although there are several competing but complementary typologies that attempt to pin down those emotional and behavioral states that add up to romantic “love.”

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Love scholarship can be roughly divided into two philosophical camps: (1) that which argues love must have certain components to be genuine, for instance, to differentiate it from mere liking or lust, and (2) that which suggests that love is a publicly informed but privately experienced state that is whatever the person “in love” believes it to be. Research on romantic love attachments often addresses the behaviors used in dating or, more infrequently, courtship; however, not all research on dating and courtship specifically addresses love. In this research paper, I will treat the three topics as separate. This is a conceit; clarity may be improved by separating the threads of romantic entanglement, but in research, as in life, the division is nowhere near as neatly accomplished.

It should also be mentioned here that the experience of love as understood in modern Western society has not been shared by all cultures in all times. In ancient Greece, true love between equals was seen as possible only between two men; although men married for purposes of procreation, a close emotional bond with a woman was seen as undesirable (Hendrick and Hendrick 1992). Romantic love as featured in novels and film began in the twelfth century. At this time, love came to be understood as an intense and passionate relationship that made the lover somehow a better person and was thus a worthy pursuit, albeit one with elaborate rules and rituals that required time and resources (Singer 1984). The ability to participate was associated with aristocrats or members of the “court,” and it is this circumstance that gives us the term courtship.

Still, the expectation that one would love one’s spouse was many years in coming. According to Stone (1980), changes in economic production and labor markets, together with public health measures, helped to encourage young persons to marry for love. Families had less sway over the choices of young people as production moved away from the family and into the factory, and as life expectancy increased, so did the emotional investment a spouse was willing to make in his or her partner. In some cultures where partners are still chosen by a young person’s family, love is still not seen as a requisite for marriage. In this view, romantic love is a poor basis for forming a lasting union—and this normative stance is evident in research on spousal choice and sentiment. In one study (Levine et al. 1995), researchers asked participants in 10 countries whether they would marry a person who had the traits that they hoped for in a spouse, but whom they did not love. In the United States, fewer than 5 percent of people said that they would make such a match, while in nations such as Pakistan and Japan, young people were much more likely to consider such a union (50.4 and 35.7 percent, respectively). In nations where familism takes precedence over individual goals and desires, love and marriage are not always experienced together. Should love develop between the two, so much the better—but if not, the marriage is based on a solidly practical foundation designed to maintain familial and community stability.

With such an elusive topic, it is perhaps not surprising that many scholars who study love resort to metaphors to try to explain what love is. The rich and varied collection of metaphors include love as a “story” that we tell ourselves and one another (Sternberg 1998), expressions of love as policy statements that set forth the terms and expectations of the relationship (Van de Vate 1981), love as intensely focused and sustained attention in another person (see Brown 1987; Rowntree 1989), and love as emotion via decision (Hatfield and Rapson 1987).

Many scholars differentiate between the “falling in love” state of early romantic attachment and the more companionate state of being in a love relationship after the original flush has worn off (see Hendrick and Hendrick 1992). The intensity of early love is impossible for most couples to maintain. As the relationship progresses, partners come to have a warmer and closer feeling of intimacy, termed companionate love, rather than the all-encompassing passion experienced when the relationship was new (Berscheid and Walster 1978).

Dorothy Tennov’s (1979) work on “limerence” is perhaps the most systematic exploration of the difference between falling in love and being in a committed love relationship. According to Tennov, limerence is a transient state that involves preoccupation with the “limerent object” (i.e., the person one is falling for) together with idealization, mood swings, and physiological arousal. Limerence may be positive, that is, mutual, or negative/ unrequited. Much of limerence occurs in the mind of the one experiencing the emotion. Most people will become limerent at some point in their lives. The experience is generally not permanent—a limerent state lasts an average of around two years—but may occur more than once in a lifetime. What some people experience as a loss of passion, to Tennov, is the waning of the limerent state.

Other research suggests that love is what the lover defines it to be. Lee’s (1973) famous typology of “love styles” identifies six basic types of love experience; not all of the styles of love fit widespread cultural definitions of how romantic love develops and progresses. The primary styles of eros, ludus, and storge and the secondary styles of mania, pragma, and agape reflect different beliefs regarding love and loving behavior as well as personal preferences and comfort levels. The style that most closely resembles ideals of romantic love is termed eros. Lovers who have the eros style tend to value sexual and sensual contact with the beloved, to have a well-formed image of the beloved or a “type” that they tend to be drawn to, to become sexual fairly quickly in a relationship, to define the experience as “love” quite quickly, and to feel that the experience of the relationship is of great importance and scope. By contrast, lovers with styles of ludus, storge, mania, pragma, and agape do not fit the stereotypical mold of romantic love presented in novels and film, although manic lovers fit negative stereotypes of obsessed love. Ludus-style lovers are most interested in the conquest possible when chasing a potential partner. Love, to the ludus lover, is a game of strategy. These lovers are more likely to be pursuing multiple partners and to attempt to limit emotional displays with a partner or potential partner in an effort to maintain an advantage in the dyad. Sexual contact may be more likely to have an aspect of accomplishment and play in these pairings. Storge-style lovers, by contrast, focus on comfort and emotional closeness in a relationship. A relationship between partners with storge style of loving is generally not very physical and passion is not of paramount importance. To outsiders who equate the intense and exquisite experience of limerence as love, storge lovers can seem more like close friends. This is not altogether incorrect, as deep friendship is the basis of this form of love. Lovers who tend toward the pragma style are practical and stress what the potential partner brings to the bargaining table. These lovers are seeking to make the best deal for future life circumstances as possible. Manic love, on the other hand, is not reasoned. This form of love is love for love’s sake; manic lovers value love to the point of obsession and experience an emotional roller coaster of jealousy, insecurity, and elation. The manic lover does not allow the relationship to develop over time but instead attempts to force the partner to make a declaration of love and intention. If ludic lovers enjoy the experience and have fun with love, manic lovers, for all that they yearn for love, generally feel miserable while in a relationship. The final style in Lee’s typology, agape, is very rare in romantic love. This form of love is selfless and based on an almost spiritual desire for the other’s good. Generally, this type of love is considered an ideal.

Sternberg (1998) also suggests an individual and subjective approach to the experience of love. Sternberg’s work shows how lovers story their experiences; the resulting catalogue of love “stories” shows how individuals draw on shared understandings of what love is to fashion coherent and yet individual accounts of the love experience. Some love stories identified by Sternberg include love as science, love as journey, love as art, and love as war.

Most couples who profess a permanent bond (whether in a marriage or other commitment ceremony) describe their partnership as strong and explain that they have great love for their partner. But, over time, evaluations shift. Some couples lose the intense feeling of love and closeness, while other couples experience what can be termed global adoration, which seems to increase marital satisfaction and stability (Neff and Karney 2005:480).

The closeness experienced by partners determines the form of love experienced according to Sternberg (1986). Sternberg’s well-known triangle theory of love suggests that love is a triangle with three points, each formed by a component of love: intimacy (i.e., emotional investment and closeness), passion (excitement and arousal, both emotional and physical), and commitment (a decision to maintain the relationship over time). A love relationship may be stronger in one or two areas and thus have a different character than would another relationship that features a different combination of attributes. For instance, infatuated love features great passion but lacks both intimacy and commitment, fatuous love includes passion and commitment without intimacy, and consummate love completes the triangle with all three components present.

Love and Courtship

Love and courtship are associated in Reiss’s (1960, 1980) wheel theory of love. Unlike Sternberg’s triangle theory, wheel theory assumes a standard progression of romantic relationships that encourages love to develop during the courtship process. These stages are sequential, each successful completion leading to the next step in the courtship process. First, couples experience rapport, or a feeling of ease with one another. Often, this is the result of shared attitudes and backgrounds, which encourages homogamy (or the tendency of people to marry others who are similar to themselves in background and experience). When a couple has rapport, communication is easier and the next stage of self-revelation is facilitated. In this stage, each partner exposes “who I am” to the other; within the norms of their social class and culture, partners will reveal information about themselves to the other, which helps to build closeness. As partners learn more and more about one another and begin to feel closer, the sentiment of mutual dependency grows. In this stage, each partner begins to rely on the other and feel as part of an interdependent unit. If this stage is fully experienced, and the relationship continued, the partners will take on unique significance for one another. One doesn’t merely have “a girlfriend” who could be easily replaced by another female of similar background and attractiveness. This person brings unique benefits not easily found with others and thus this person has special status. If the couple completes the final stage of intimacy need fulfillment, by each partner deciding that the relationship fits his or her needs for closeness and disclosure, the relationship will likely result in an official partnering.

Another metaphor for partner choice during courtship is a “filter.” Alan Kerckhoff and K. E. Davis (1962) posited a filter theory of partner choice based on couples successfully passing through a series of filters, including social characteristics, similarity of values, and need complementarity.

At each stage, potential partners who are not acceptable are excluded from further consideration. Murstein (1970) refined this theory with his stimulus-value-role (SVR) model of partner selection. In brief, partners progress from the stimulus stage, where social similarity and physical attractiveness first catch one’s attention, through the stage of value where partners compare attitudes and beliefs on a variety of issues to check for fit and compatibility, and finally to role, to see if the potential partner fits with the idealized expectations that each has for a potential mate. Interestingly, Murstein notes that while physical attraction is very important for the initiation of a partnership, people generally choose partners whose attractiveness is similar to their own rather than seeking to find the most physically impressive partner possible.

Generally, courtship differs from dating in that it is more structured and subject to cultural norms. Courtship, unlike the looser dating, is acknowledged as codified behavior designed to lead to a permanent partnership or marriage (Cere 2001). Some researchers who detail courtship norms and patterns suggest that the erosion of courting behavior in Western societies in the twentieth century, while not solely determinant, corresponds to a lack of preparation for marriage and the attendant rise in rates of divorce (see Kass and Kass 1999).

Courtship as a field of inquiry in modern sociology has been called “virtually moribund” (Glenn, cited in Cere 2001). Few academics in family sociology now study the more traditional pathways that young adults take to marriage. According to Cere (2001), studies of courtship are now found within three general schools of inquiry: sociobiology, exchange theory, and close-relationship theory (p. 55).

Willard Waller (1937) was one of the first sociologists to note that the marriage contract was based on a bargain that was becoming less and less explicit. In Waller’s view, couples placed greater stress on love as a basis for marriage because of the lack of understanding of agreed-on and culturally sanctioned bases for marriage.

Courtship, then, stopped being a proving ground for potential partners to check one another for fitness as mate. Beth Bailey (1988) detailed the evolution of courtship from a private enactment of cultural expectation to a more public and also more sexually intimate “dating” brought about by market courtship. Courting moved from the home environment of family, church, and culture to the paid arena of dating sites such as restaurants, movies, and clubs. Courtship, beginning to morph into dating, became something to be purchased rather than something to be performed.

Gary Becker (1974) suggested the now well-known exchange theory model of courtship. In brief, people marry when the perceived benefits of a given pair bond outweigh the perceived costs of the bond. Each party is aware of what preferences or characteristics they require, and what resources, or attributes they have to offer another are part of the deal they wish to strike. From this perspective, courtship is akin to a long interview in which each party attempts to broker the best deal possible given the resources they may possess. However, this theory is criticized for its inability to account for the great persuasive and compelling nature of “love” and the desire to form a permanent bond with a partner who, to an outsider, might seem like a very poor choice. Exchange theory requires that each party be a rational actor with sufficient insight into their own and their partner’s motivations and qualities to be able to evaluate and strike the desired bargain.

Sociobiological theories of courtship focus on partners’ selection of a mate who will provide maximum reproductive success. Stated broadly, men seek out women who show physical signs of fertility (i.e., youth, attractiveness, and the appearance of health), while women are more likely to seek a partner who is able and willing to support a family (see Buss 1988; Tooke and Camire 1991; Benz, Anderson, and Miller 1995).

Courtship also has a retrospective character. Couples spending time together generally define their activity as dating; after the pair has become engaged or has married, the period of dating becomes the courtship that led to the decision to permanently partner. Courtship as experienced and referenced, then, is increasingly the province of memory and redefinition and is produced and reproduced in family storytelling occasions. Ponzetti (2005) identifies courtship tales as a major theme in family storytelling and explains that the courtship story serves as a ready explanation of how the pair decided to marry, thus chronicling the beginning of a family unit. By cofashioning the tale of courtship, spouses can fashion a partnership history that may help them to transcend present difficulties.

While the term courtship generally refers to mate selection leading to long-term partnership, dating has a much more casual connotation. Dating behavior as studied by sociologists runs the gamut from the very casual “hanging out” that isn’t “really dating” (Owens 2005) to spending time with one or more potential partners, to having fun without any expectation of permanence. Dating can be difficult to distinguish from friendship at times, especially among young adults and teens who spend unstructured time hanging out with one another but who do not necessarily seek to define their relationships and who may deny that they have been on a “date.” In some instances, young adults form committed sexual and emotional relationships that are durable, although they do not necessarily have an expectation of permanence while reporting that they have “never dated” or “never been on a date” (Owens 2005).

The difference in goals present in dating and courtship gives a “two-tiered system of heterosexual interaction” to modern romance (Cate and Lloyd 1992:24). In fact, the goal and seriousness of the relationship is often the basis for marking whether the couple is “dating” or “courting,” with dating evolving into courtship when the couple becomes both serious and sexually exclusive. Homogamy is present among dating, cohabiting, and married couples and forms an aspect of partner selection at all levels of commitment, but there does seem to be a “winnowing process” whereby the requirements and expectations of a partner become more and more stringent as the relationship moves from mere dating to a more permanent partnership (Blackwell and Lichter 2004:719).

Studies of the early stages of partner choice in dating tend to focus on initial attraction (Buss et al. 2001) and the techniques that people use to draw partners to them (see Clark, Shaver, and Abrahams 1999). Frequently, this literature deals with the ideal or goal relationship that a partner holds going into a potential relationship. Studies of the early stages of a dating relationship, therefore, often gauge the predating expectations or desires of partners. An example would be Yancey’s (2002) study of who interracially dates; factors such as religious background, political stance, residential region, and educational background influence whether a person will date outside their own racial or ethnic background.

Dating troubles are also a popular avenue for inquiry. Dating involves a plethora of potential difficulties, including dishonesty, infidelity, emotional turmoil, miscommunication, and struggles over power and dominance. Deception, therefore, is part of the mating dance. Both men and women understand that a potential partner will likely hide or minimize negative attributes and highlight other characteristics that would make him or her more attractive in the dating arena. In heterosexual pairings, deception follows gendered norms of what is and is not attractive in a potential spouse. As previously noted, men place a higher premium on youth when considering potential partners, while women are more likely to stress ability to support a family. Interestingly, each sex understands that the other is trying to appeal to these norms. Men acknowledge that women are going to be deceptive about intentions to maintain a youthful and attractive appearance, while women and men agree that men are more likely to be deceptive about financial prospects for the future (Benz et al. 1995).

Couples deceive one another not only to attract a partner who might otherwise not be interested but also to hide “competing relationships” or “outside-relationship activities,” and to gloss over the “state of the relationship,” including decreasing of contact (Tolhuizen 1991, cited in Cate and Lloyd 1992:87). Whether a partner chooses to stay or leave after discovering deception is influenced by communication patterns and the person’s style of attachment (Jang, Smith, and Levine 2002).

Deception is not the only serious complication that couples face. More direct forms of aggression in relationships also exist. Intimate partner violence began receiving widespread attention in the 1980s. Although earlier studies may have made brief mention of violence in intimate relationships, it was not until the 1980s that explicit acknowledgement was offered that sexual assault and other forms of violence occurred in courtship and dating (Cate and Lloyd 1992). This oversight is surprising, as physical violence occurs in as many as 40 percent of dating couples (Simons, Lin, and Gordon 1998). Both male and female partners report experiencing common couple violence such as pushing or slapping, but men are more likely than women to engage in serious violence against a partner (Johnson and Ferraro 2000). Lifetime chances of being the victim of intimate partner violence are also skewed by gender. About a quarter of women but fewer than 10 percent of men will be physically assaulted by an intimate partner (see Tjaden and Thoennes 1998).

Much of the sociological literature on romantic pairings prior to 1970 focused on homogamy, propinquity, and complementarity of roles among young heterosexual couples. In more recent decades, researchers have included homosexual couples in studies of love, dating, and partnering (for a notable example, see Vaughan 1986). Moreover, studies of dating and courtship now include older daters, who may or may not have children from previous unions or who may be grieving the loss of a spouse due to divorce or widowhood (see Huyck 2001; Dickson, Hughes, and Walker 2005). Among adults in later life, dating relationships follow traditional gender norms (McElhany 1992) and provide a great deal of personal satisfaction and emotional closeness whether or not the relationship leads to marriage (Bulcroft and O’Conner 1986). Still, seniors who date experience some drawbacks unique to their life circumstances. Older women in the dating market feel vulnerable to being taken advantage of financially and practically in what Dickson et al. (2005) term the “nurse and purse phenomenon” (p. 78).

Work in this field evolves as people find new and innovative ways to relate to one another sexually and romantically. At present, two subfields are emerging as very important to the study of romantic pairings: work on love relationships that involve distance, such as cyber-romance or “living apart together” (LAT) relationships (Levin 2004), and on the liminal and open-ended pairings usually, but not exclusively, experienced by young adults and which have been termed friends-with-benefits relationships (Hughes, Morrison, and Asada 2005).

The more well-known of the two areas of inquiry is an exploration of what in the past was combined into the notion of “long-distance relationships.” These relationships have exploded with the advent of the Internet; it is now possible to meet partners, disclose personal information in real time through messaging, and even be physically intimate virtually. Online relationship research is a burgeoning field that includes work on Internet personals as a way to meet potential partners (see Groom and Pennebaker 2005), online chat as a gateway to potential real-world infidelity (Mileham 2003), online intimacy as a form of sexual exchange (Waskul 2002), and e-mail messaging (Hovick, Meyers, and Timmerman 2003) as a means of relationship maintenance.

The LAT relationship is a “historically new family form” that developed due to changing norms and societal circumstances over the past 30 years (Levin 2004). Partners in LAT relationships view themselves as a committed couple and their social network shares this image, but the partners maintain separate residences—sometimes hours away from one another—due to work or familial obligations or even personal preference. These relationships are distinguished from commuter marriages or relationships in that the pair does not share a primary home part-time, with one partner also renting an apartment during work or school.

A very recent trend in relationship research involves the friends-with-benefits relationship (FWBR) that involves sexual intimacy but not necessarily an explicitly emotional romantic connection as “romance” is traditionally understood. These pairings may or may not involve expectations by partners that the relationship will evolve into something more emotionally intimate (Hughes et al. 2005). These relationships combine the benefits of a friendship with that of a sexual relationship, but without the responsibility and time constraints present in more traditional romantic relationships.

Research on love, courtship, and dating will continue to evolve as new modes of pairing up and maintaining emotional closeness become more accessible. It is likely that electronic modes of relating will receive more attention from scholars. Not only has the Internet reduced much of the stigma of placing the “personals ad,” but early stages of courting and relating can now be conducted with little—or no—in-person contact. Obviously, such circumstances come with attendant complications: How does one establish rapport and trust without the many cues in-person contact allows? What are the effects of distanced relating on disclosure and truth telling? Do these pairings become sexual more quickly because of a heightened sense of intimacy and “knowingness”? Extra-relationship pairings via electronic media will also continue to garner increased attention, as the definition of what “counts” as cheating moves further from a physical-contact model to a more flexible conceptualization of contact that takes attention, time, and focus from the primary relationship.

Studies of relational power and earnings will also factor strongly in family scholarship in the coming decades. Women have always worked, as family scholars who detail the historical family unit of production have noted. However, if current trends continue, women will be the majority of college graduates and may begin to catch up to men in their professional accomplishments and dollar earnings. This transition, if it occurs, will not be a simple one as it will challenge long-held notions of gender and place within a heterosexual pair bond.

Taking into account both electronic modes of relating and economic pressures felt by couples, we can also expect to see more scholarship on distance relationships and commuting. Established couples may choose to live apart due to career or educational necessity. Electronic communications and other forms of technology (e.g., cellular telephones that can be used to call one another or to send photos or text messages) may be used to maintain emotional closeness despite geographic distance.

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- For a history project: "Stories Behind the Statues: Decoding the Hidden Narratives of Public Monuments"

Remember that every research topic and discipline may call for a slightly different approach. It's a good idea to look at published research articles in your field to get a sense of how others have crafted their titles. Often, academic journals have online archives, providing an excellent source of examples.

Ultimately, allow yourself some flexibility and creative freedom as you craft your research title. Keep it concise, informative, and engaging, and you'll be well on your way to a great title. Good luck!

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Before You Write a Love Essay, Read This to Get Examples

The day will come when you can’t escape the fate of all students: You will have to write a what is love essay.

No worries:

Here you’ll find tons of love essay topics and examples. No time to read everything? Scroll down to get a free PDF with original samples.

Definition: Essay on Love

First, let’s define what is love essay?

The most common topics are:

  • Definition of love
  • What is love?
  • Meaning of love

Why limit yourself to these hackneyed, general themes? Below, I’ll show how to make your paper on love original yet relevant to the prompt you get from teachers.

Love Essay Topics: 20 Ideas to Choose for Your Paper

Your essay on love and relationship doesn’t have to be super official and unemotional. It’s ok to share reflections and personal opinions when writing about romance.

Often, students get a general task to write an essay on love. It means they can choose a theme and a title for their paper. If that’s your case,  feel free to try any of these love essay topics:

  • Exploring the impact of love on individuals and relationships.
  • Love in the digital age: Navigating romance in a tech world.
  • Is there any essence and significance in unconditional love?
  • Love as a universal language: Connecting hearts across cultures.
  • Biochemistry of love: Exploring the process.
  • Love vs. passion vs. obsession.
  • How love helps cope with heartbreak and grief.
  • The art of loving. How we breed intimacy and trust.
  • The science behind attraction and attachment.
  • How love and relationships shape our identity and help with self-discovery.
  • Love and vulnerability: How to embrace emotional openness.
  • Romance is more complex than most think: Passion, intimacy, and commitment explained.
  • Love as empathy: Building sympathetic connections in a cruel world.
  • Evolution of love. How people described it throughout history.
  • The role of love in mental and emotional well-being.
  • Love as a tool to look and find purpose in life.
  • Welcoming diversity in relations through love and acceptance.
  • Love vs. friendship: The intersection of platonic and romantic bonds.
  • The choices we make and challenges we overcome for those we love.
  • Love and forgiveness: How its power heals wounds and strengthens bonds.

Love Essay Examples: Choose Your Sample for Inspiration

Essays about love are usually standard, 5-paragraph papers students write in college:

  • One paragraph is for an introduction, with a hook and a thesis statement
  • Three are for a body, with arguments or descriptions
  • One last passage is for a conclusion, with a thesis restatement and final thoughts

Below are the ready-made samples to consider. They’ll help you see what an essay about love with an introduction, body, and conclusion looks like.

What is love essay: 250 words

Lao Tzu once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Indeed, love can transform individuals, relationships, and our world.

A word of immense depth and countless interpretations, love has always fascinated philosophers, poets, and ordinary individuals. This  emotion breaks boundaries and has a super power to change lives. But what is love, actually?

It’s a force we feel in countless ways. It is the warm embrace of a parent, filled with care and unwavering support. It is the gentle touch of a lover, sparking a flame that ignites passion and desire. Love is the kind words of a friend, offering solace and understanding in times of need. It is the selfless acts of compassion and empathy that bind humanity together.

Love is not confined to romantic relationships alone. It is found in the family bonds, the connections we forge with friends, and even the compassion we extend to strangers. Love is a thread that weaves through the fabric of our lives, enriching and nourishing our souls.

However, love is not without its complexities. It can be both euphoric and agonizing, uplifting and devastating. Love requires vulnerability, trust, and the willingness to embrace joy and pain. It is a delicate balance between passion and compassion, independence and interdependence.

Finally, the essence of love may be elusive to define with mere words. It is an experience that surpasses language and logic, encompassing a spectrum of emotions and actions. Love is a profound connection that unites us all, reminding us of our shared humanity and the capacity for boundless compassion.

What is love essay: 500 words

example of research title about love

A 500-word essay on why I love you

Trying to encapsulate why I love you in a mere 500 words is impossible. My love for you goes beyond the confines of language, transcending words and dwelling in the realm of emotions, connections, and shared experiences. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to express the depth and breadth of my affection for you.

First and foremost, I love you for who you are. You possess a unique blend of qualities and characteristics that captivate my heart and mind. Your kindness and compassion touch the lives of those around you, and I am grateful to be the recipient of your unwavering care and understanding. Your intelligence and wit constantly challenge me to grow and learn, stimulating my mind and enriching our conversations. You have a beautiful spirit that radiates warmth and joy, and I am drawn to your vibrant energy.

I love the way you make me feel. When I am with you, I feel a sense of comfort and security that allows me to be my true self. Your presence envelops me in a cocoon of love and acceptance, where I can express my thoughts, fears, and dreams without fear of judgment. Your support and encouragement inspire me to pursue my passions and overcome obstacles. With you by my side, I feel empowered to face the world, knowing I have a partner who believes in me.

I love the memories we have created together. From the laughter-filled moments of shared adventures to the quiet and intimate conversations, every memory is etched in my heart. Whether exploring new places, indulging in our favorite activities, or simply enjoying each other’s company in comfortable silence, each experience reinforces our bond. Our shared memories serve as a foundation for our relationship, a testament to the depth of our connection and the love that binds us.

I love your quirks and imperfections. Your true essence shines through these unique aspects! Your little traits make me smile and remind me of the beautiful individual you are. I love how you wrinkle your nose when you laugh, become lost in thought when reading a book, and even sing off-key in the shower. These imperfections make you human, relatable, and utterly lovable.

I love the future we envision together. We support each other’s goals, cheering one another on as we navigate the path toward our dreams. The thought of building a life together, creating a home filled with love and shared experiences, fills my heart with anticipation and excitement. The future we imagine is one that I am eager to explore with you by my side.

In conclusion, the reasons why I love you are as vast and varied as the universe itself. It is a love that defies logic and surpasses the limitations of language. From the depths of my being, I love you for the person you are, the way you make me feel, the memories we cherish, your quirks and imperfections, and the future we envision together. My love for you is boundless, unconditional, and everlasting.

A 5-paragraph essay about love

example of research title about love

I’ve gathered all the samples (and a few bonus ones) in one PDF. It’s free to download. So, you can keep it at hand when the time comes to write a love essay.

example of research title about love

Ready to Write Your Essay About Love?

Now that you know the definition of a love essay and have many topic ideas, it’s time to write your A-worthy paper! Here go the steps:

  • Check all the examples of what is love essay from this post.
  • Choose the topic and angle that fits your prompt best.
  • Write your original and inspiring story.

Any questions left? Our writers are all ears. Please don’t hesitate to ask!

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55 Creative and Romantic Love Story Book Title Ideas

By: Author Paul Jenkins

Posted on Published: January 12, 2023  - Last updated: December 28, 2023

Categories Creativity

Whether you’re a romance author or simply looking for fun book title ideas for a love story, love stories are always enjoyable to write. If you’re looking for a new favorite, check out these love story book title ideas. From sweet tales of young love to steamy reads full of passion, there’s a title for every romance author on this list. So curl up with your favorite beverage and get ready to fall in love with some great titles!

55 Love Story Book Title Ideas

  • A Heart’s Enchantment
  • Starstruck Lovers
  • Whispered Promises of Love
  • Through the Gates of Love
  • Passionate Embrace
  • Undying Devotion
  • True Love’s Fury
  • Tender Trifles of Love
  • Captivated Hearts
  • Love’s Enduring Legacy
  • Moonlight Amour
  • From Here to Eternity
  • Dreaming of You
  • Sunrise Serenade
  • Always in My Heart
  • My Only Love
  • Heaven Sent
  • A Love So Pure
  • Sweetest of Dreams
  • Wings of Love
  • Joyous Union
  • Love’s Sweet Refrain
  • A Love Story for the Ages
  • Love’s Melody
  • Two Halves of a Whole
  • Fragile Ties of Passion
  • Heaven’s Call
  • Cherished Moments
  • Love at First Sight
  • Our Love Grows Stronger
  • Unconditional Love
  • All for Love
  • Awakened by Love
  • Beloved Heart
  • Once in a Lifetime
  • Embrace of Love
  • Everlasting Love
  • My Love is True
  • A Love That Lasts
  • Captive of Love
  • The Strength of Love
  • Destiny’s Love
  • A Love to Cherish
  • Beyond Words
  • A Love Transcending Time
  • Sweet Surrender
  • The Sound of Love
  • More Than Words Can Say
  • An Eternity of Love
  • Love’s Eternal Flame
  • Unspoken Longings
  • Love Rekindled
  • Unconditional Devotion
  • Love Under the Starry Skies
  • Love’s Eternal Gift

How to Name a Love Story

Choose Something Memorable

When crafting a story title, one of the most important things to remember is that it should be memorable. Your readers should be able to easily recall your title so they can recommend it to their friends or family members.

It’s also important that your title stands out from other similar titles in its genre. For example, if you’re writing a novel about love and loss, don’t choose something generic like “Love and Loss.” Instead, try something unique that stands out from similar titles, such as “The Unrequited Love Affair.”

Be Appropriate

Your story title should always remain appropriate in content and tone. You want to ensure that your audience feels comfortable reading your work and doesn’t feel they need to censor themselves when sharing it with others. Also, be aware of cultural sensitivities—avoid language or imagery that certain groups could misinterpret or deem offensive.

Use Writing Prompts

If you’re struggling with a good title for your story, why not try using writing prompts? Writing prompts provide an easy way to generate ideas for titles quickly and effectively. Type in “writing prompt” into Google or another search engine, and you’ll find plenty of websites that provide ideas for stories , characters, settings, and even titles!

How to Write a Love Story

Create an engaging plot.

The plot is the backbone of your story and should be carefully developed to make sure it keeps readers engaged. Start by establishing the setting in which your story takes place and introducing the main characters. Then, determine what obstacles or challenges stand in the way of your characters getting together–these could be external or internal forces that need to be overcome before they can have their happily ever after.

Finally, consider where you want your characters’ relationship and how you plan to get them there. This will help ensure that your plot doesn’t feel stagnant or predictable as it develops.

Develop Your Characters

Your characters should be dynamic and layered so readers can relate to them and understand why they’re going through this particular journey of finding love. Spend some time thinking about each character’s backstory and motivations, so you know who they are as individuals before they become part of a couple.

Make sure they each have unique personalities, strengths, weaknesses, flaws, etc., so that readers are invested in their relationship even when it hits its bumps.

Create Intense Conflict

No good love story is complete without conflict! Readers need to see why these two people have difficulty connecting and what ultimately helps them overcome those obstacles (which could range from family disapproval or career ambitions to personal trauma).

Conflict is also essential for adding tension throughout your story–without it; your narrative may come off as too saccharine-sweet or trite. Give your characters something real to fight for!

Use Description Liberally

Description is essential for helping readers visualize the setting of your story and feel like they’re right there alongside your characters as they fall in love with one another. Incorporate sensory details (such as sights, smells, tastes) into meaningful moments between your two protagonists; not only will this help bring their relationship alive on the page, but it will also help convey important themes within your narrative arc—perhaps even making it more emotionally resonant than if you had relied solely on dialogue alone!

What Makes a Good Hook for a Love Story

Set the mood with a strong opening sentence.

The opening sentence of your love story should set the tone of the whole tale. Whether you want to start with an intense action scene or an emotional monologue, choose one technique and stick with it throughout the book.

For example, if you open with a dramatic action scene, keep up that intensity throughout the book by including suspenseful moments. This will keep your readers engaged and excited about what will happen next.

Introduce Your Characters Immediately

It’s important to introduce both of your main characters as early as possible to give your readers an idea of who they are and why they should care about them. You can describe each character’s physical traits—hair color, eye color, height—and their personality traits—outgoing or shy? Funny or serious? Laid back or ambitious?—so readers can start forming connections with them.

Create Tension Between Your Characters

Your characters don’t have to be immediately smitten with each other; in fact, creating tension between them can be even more interesting for readers! Have one character disagree with the other about something important or have one character think they know better than the other—whatever it is, make sure there is some friction between them from page one. This will give readers something tangible to root against and make them eager to see how things turn out.

What Makes a Book Title Attractive

Conveying meaning and emotion.

It’s essential to make sure your title conveys meaning and emotion in as few words as possible. Your title should evoke emotion from your reader, whether it be curiosity, excitement, or joy. An excellent way to do this is by using descriptive words that set the tone for your book and express its theme. Additionally, avoid generic titles like “The Big Adventure,” which could describe any number of books. Instead, opt for something more specific like “The Pirate’s Treasure Hunt” or “The Witch’s Curse,” which will immediately pique the reader’s interest.

Being Unique

Similarly, make sure your title stands out among other books in its genre by being unique. This means avoiding clichés and overused phrases such as “A Journey Through Time” or “Tales from Another Land.”

To ensure you come up with something original, brainstorm different combinations of words that relate to your story and then try them out until you find one that resonates with you. Additionally, if you need help coming up with ideas, plenty of online tools are available to help generate titles for books, so don’t hesitate to use them!

Using Imagery

Imagery can also be constructive when writing an attention-grabbing book title. Words such as “whisper” or “frosty” can evoke vivid mental images that draw readers in even before reading the story’s synopsis. For example, instead of calling your novel “The Werewolf,” why not call it “Howling Under The Moon”? This is much more evocative than simply naming it after the creature itself. It gives readers immediate suspense and intrigue about what might happen in the story !

Exploring Beyond Romance: Dive into Mystery

If you’ve enjoyed this article on love storybook title ideas and want to expand your creative horizons, why not delve into the world of mystery? Visit our article on Mystery Story Ideas for inspiration to craft intriguing and suspenseful narratives. Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just starting, these ideas will spark your imagination and can add an exciting new twist to your love storytelling repertoire.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are good book titles for a love story.

Good book titles for a love story can range from poignant and romantic to fun and whimsical. Some great examples of love story book titles include: “The Kiss of Fate,” “The Wedding Date,” “Forever in Love,” “Lost and Found Love,” “Playing by Heart,” “Twin Flame Reunion,” and “Love Conquers All.” Additionally, consider using lyrics from love songs or classic quotes as inspiration to create unique titles that are both meaningful and memorable.

How do I develop an original title for my love story?

The best way to create an original title for a love story is to draw upon experiences in your life that have resonated with you—moments of joy or heartbreak. Additionally, look to art forms like music and literature for inspiration—whether through song lyrics or quotes from classic works of literature. Combining these elements can help you brainstorm creative concepts that truly capture the essence of your novel.

Are there any tips to help me develop a title for my love story?

– Incorporate alliteration or rhymes into your titles – this helps make them easier to remember and more eye-catching. – Try playing with puns or double entendres – these can often be quite clever and amusing. – Utilize metaphors – these can be powerful tools when conveying complex emotions within just a few words.

Can I use the book title ideas provided in the article for my work?

You can use the book title ideas in the article for your work. However, it is recommended to customize or modify them to suit your unique story and avoid copyright issues.

How important is the book title for the success of my love story?

The book title plays a significant role in capturing the attention of potential readers.

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80+ Great Research Titles Examples in Various Academic Fields

Research titles examples

Coming up with a research title for an academic paper is one of the most challenging parts of the writing process. Even though there is an unlimited quantity of research titles to write about, knowing which one is best for you can be hard. We have done the research for you and compiled eighty examples of research titles to write on. Additionally, we have divided the research titles examples into sections to make them easier to choose.

Research Study Examples of Current Events

Examples of research topics on ethics, title of research study examples on health, research paper title examples on social concerns, examples of research title on art and culture, example of research interest in religion, samples of research study topics on technology, research examples of environmental studies, good research title examples on history, specific topic examples regarding education, research title examples for students on family, food, and nutrition, research problems examples computer science, samples of research title about business marketing and communications, sample of research study topics in women’s studies, research problem example on politics, what are some examples of research paper topics on law, final words about research titles.

When it comes to choosing a good sample research title, research is one of the best tips you can get. By reading widely, including your school notes and scholarly articles, you will have a problem/line of interest examples in research. Then, you can derive any question from areas that appear to have a knowledge gap and proceed with researching the answer. As promised, below are eighty research title examples categorized into different areas, including social media research topics .

  • Discuss the peculiar policies of a named country – for example, discuss the impacts of the one-child policy of China.
  • Research on the influence of a named political leader, say a president, on the country they governed and other countries around. For instance, you can talk about how Trump’s presidency has changed international relations.
  • Conduct an analysis of a particular aspect of two named countries – for example, the history of the relationship between the U.S. and North Korea.
  • Compare the immigration laws in two or more named countries – for example, discuss how the immigration laws in the U.S. compares with other countries.
  • Discuss how the Black Lives Matter movement has affected the view and discussions about racism in the United States.
  • Enumerate the different ways the government of the United States can reduce deaths arising from the unregulated use of guns.
  • Analyze the place of ethics in medicine or of medical practitioners. For instance, you can discuss the prevalence of physician-assisted suicides in a named country. You may also talk about the ethicality of such a practice and whether it should be legal.
  • Explain how recent research breakthroughs have affected that particular field – for instance, how stem cell research has impacted the medical field.
  • Explain if and why people should be able to donate organs in exchange for money.
  • Discuss ethical behaviors in the workplace and (or) the educational sector. For example, talk about whether or not affirmative action is still important or necessary in education or the workplace.
  • Weigh the benefits and risks of vaccinating children and decide which one outweighs the other. Here, you might want to consider the different types of vaccinations and the nature and frequency of associated complications.
  • Investigate at least one of the health issues that currently pose a threat to humanity and which are under investigation. These issues can include Alzheimer’s, cancer, depression, autism, and HIV/AIDS. Research how these issues affect individuals and society and recommend solutions to alleviate cost and suffering.
  • Study some individuals suffering from and under treatment for depression. Then, investigate the common predictors of the disease and how this information can help prevent the issue.

Tip : To make this example of a research title more comprehensive, you can focus on a certain age range – say, teenagers.

  • Discuss whether or not free healthcare and medication should be available to people and the likely implications.
  • Identify and elucidate different methods or programs that have been most effective in preventing or reducing teen pregnancy.
  • Analyze different reasons and circumstances for genetic manipulation and the different perspectives of people on this matter. Then, discuss whether or not parents should be allowed to engineer designer babies.
  • Identify the types of immigration benefits, including financial, medical, and education, your country provides for refugees and immigrants. Then, discuss how these benefits have helped them in settling down and whether more or less should be provided.
  • Discuss the acceptance rate of the gay community in your country or a specific community. For example, consider whether or not gay marriage is permitted if they can adopt children, and if they are welcome in religious gatherings.
  • Explore and discuss if terrorism truly creates a fear culture that can become a society’s unintended terrorist.
  • Consider and discuss the different techniques one can use to identify pedophiles on social media.

Tip : Social issues research topics are interesting, but ensure you write formally and professionally.

  • Investigate the importance or lack of importance of art in primary or secondary education. You can also recommend whether or not it should be included in the curriculum and why.

Tip : You can write on this possible research title based on your experiences, whether positive or negative.

  • Discuss the role of illustration in children’s books and how it facilitates easy understanding in children. You may focus on one particular book or select a few examples and compare and contrast.
  • Should the use of art in books for adults be considered, and what are the likely benefits?
  • Compare and contrast the differences in art from two named cultural Renaissance – for instance, the Northern Renaissance and the Italian Renaissance.
  • Investigate how sexism is portrayed in different types of media, including video games, music, and film. You can also talk about whether or not the amount of sexism portrayed has reduced or increased over the years.
  • Explore different perspectives and views on dreams; are they meaningful or simply a game of the sleeping mind? You can also discuss the functions and causes of dreams, like sleeping with anxiety, eating before bed, and prophecies.
  • Investigate the main reasons why religious cults are powerful and appealing to the masses, referring to individual cases.
  • Investigate the impact of religion on the crime rate in a particular region.

Tip : Narrow down this research title by choosing to focus on a particular age group, say children or teenagers, or family. Alternatively, you can focus on a particular crime in the research to make the paper more extensive.

  • Explore reasons why Martin Luther decided to split with the Catholic church.
  • Discuss the circumstances in Siddhartha’s life that led to him becoming the Buddha.

Tip : It is important to remove sentiments from your research and base your points instead on clear evidence from a sound study. This ensures your title of research does not lead to unsubstantiated value judgments, which reduces the quality of the paper.

  • Discuss how the steel sword, gunpowder, biological warfare, longbow, or atomic bomb has changed the nature of warfare.

Tip : For this example of the research problem, choose only one of these technological developments or compare two or more to have a rich research paper.

  • Explore the changes computers, tablets, and smartphones have brought to human behaviors and culture, using published information and personal experience.

Tip : Approach each research study example in a research paper context or buy research paper online , giving a formal but objective view of the subject.

  • Are railroads and trains primary forces in the industrialization, exploitation, and settlement of your homeland or continent?
  • Discuss how the use of fossil fuels has changed or shaped the world.

Tip : Narrow down this title of the research study to focus on a local or particular area or one effect of fossil fuels, like oil spill pollution.

  • Discuss what progress countries have made with artificial intelligence. You can focus on one named country or compare the progress of one country with another.
  • Investigate the factual status of global warming – that is, is it a reality or a hoax? If it is a reality, explore the primary causes and how humanity can make a difference.
  • Conduct in-depth research on endangered wildlife species in your community and discuss why they have become endangered. You can also enumerate what steps the community can take to prevent these species from going extinct and increase their chances of survival.
  • Investigate the environmental soundness of the power sources in your country or community. Then, recommend alternative energy sources that might be best suited for the area and why.
  • Consider an area close to wildlife reserves and national parks, and see whether oil and mineral exploration has occurred there. Discuss whether this action should be allowed or not, with fact-backed reasons.
  • Investigate how the use and abolishment of DDT have affected the population of birds in your country.

Tip : Each example research title requires that you consult authoritative scientific reports to improve the quality of your paper. Furthermore, specificity and preciseness are required in each example of research title and problem, which only an authority source can provide.

  • Discuss the importance of a major historical event and why it was so important in the day. These events can include the assassination of John F. Kennedy or some revolutionary document like the Magna Carta.
  • Consider voyagers such as the Vikings, Chinese, as well as native populations and investigate whether Columbus discovered America first.
  • Choose a named historical group, family, or individual through their biographies, examining them for reader responses.
  • Research people of different cultural orientations and their responses to the acts of others who live around them.
  • Investigate natural disasters in a named country and how the government has responded to them. For example, explore how the response of the New Orleans government to natural disasters has changed since Hurricane Katrina.

Tip : Focus this research title sample on one particular country or natural disaster or compare the responses of two countries with each other.

  • Explore the educational policy, “no child left behind,” investigating its benefits and drawbacks.
  • Investigate the concept of plagiarism in the twenty-first century, its consequences, and its prevalence in modern universities. Take a step further to investigate how and why many students don’t understand the gravity of their errors.
  • Do in-depth research on bullying in schools, explaining the seriousness of the problem in your area in particular. Also, recommend actions schools, teachers, and parents can take to improve the situation if anything.
  • Explore the place of religion in public schools; if it has a place, explain why, and if it does not, explain why not.
  • Does a student’s financial background have any effect on his or her academic performance? In this sample research title, you can compare students from different financial backgrounds, from wealthy to average, and their scores on standardized tests.
  • Is spanking one’s child considered child abuse; if so, why? In this research problem example for students, consider whether or not parents should be able to spank their children.
  • Investigate the relationship between family health and nutrition, focusing on particular nutrition. This example of the title of the research study, for instance, can focus on the relationship between breastfeeding and baby health.
  • Elucidate on, if any, the benefits of having a home-cooked meal and sitting down as a family to eat together.
  • Explore the effect of fast-food restaurants on family health and nutrition, and whether or not they should be regulated.
  • Research local food producers and farms in your community, pinpointing how much of your diet is acquired from them.

Tip : These are great research titles from which you can coin research topics for STEM students .

  • Compare and contrast the two major operating systems: Mac and Windows, and discuss which one is better.

Tip : This title of the research study example can lead to strong uninformed opinions on the matter. However, it is important to investigate and discuss facts about the two operating systems, basing your conclusions on these.

  • Explain the effect of spell checkers, autocorrect functions, and grammar checkers on the writing skills of computer users. Have these tools improved users’ writing skills or weakened them?

Tip : For this example of title research, it is better to consider more than one of these tools to write a comprehensive paper.

  • Discuss the role(s) artificial intelligence is playing now or will likely play in the future as regards human evolution.
  • Identify and investigate the next groundbreaking development in computer science (like the metaverse), explaining why you believe it will be important.
  • Discuss a particular trendsetting technological tool, like blockchain technology, and how it has benefited different sectors.

Tip : For this research title example, you may want to focus on the effect of one tool on one particular sector. This way, you can investigate this example of research and thesis statement about social media more thoroughly and give as many details as possible.

  • Consider your personal experiences as well as close friends’ and families experiences. Then, determine how marketing has invaded your lives and whether these impersonal communications are more positive than negative or vice versa.
  • Investigate the regulations (or lack thereof) that apply to marketing items to children in your region. Do you think these regulations are unfounded, right, or inadequate?
  • Investigate the merits and demerits of outsourcing customer services; you can compare the views of businesses with those of their customers.
  • How has the communication we do through blog sites, messaging, social media, email, and other online platforms improved interpersonal communications if it has?
  • Can understanding culture change the way you do business? Discuss how.

Tip : Ensure you share your reasoning on this title of the research study example and provide evidence-backed information to support your points.

  • Learn everything you can about eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia, as well as their causes, and symptoms. Then, investigate and discuss the impact of its significance and recommend actions that might improve the situation.
  • Research a major development in women’s history, like the admission of women to higher institutions and the legalization of abortion. Discuss the short-term and (or) long-term implications of the named event or development.
  • Discuss gender inequality in the workplace – for instance, the fact that women tend to earn less than men for doing the same job. Provide specific real-life examples as you explain the reasons for this and recommend solutions to the problem.
  • How have beauty contests helped women: have they empowered them in society or objectified them?

Tip : You may shift the focus of this topic research example to female strippers or women who act in pornographic movies.

  • Investigate exceptional businesswomen in the 21st century; you can focus on one or compare two or more.

Tip : When writing on the title of a research example related to women, avoid using persuasion tactics; instead, be tactful and professional in presenting your points.

  • Discuss the unique nature and implications of Donald Trump’s presidency on the United States and the world.
  • Investigate the conditions and forces related to the advent and rise of Nazi Germany. Shift the focus of this title research example on major wars like WWI or the American Civil War.
  • Is the enormous amount of money spent during election campaigns a legitimate expense?
  • Investigate a named major political scandal that recently occurred in your region or country. Discuss how it started, how its news spread, and its impacts on individuals in that area.
  • Discuss the impacts British rule had on India.
  • Investigate the rate of incarceration in your region and compare it with that of other countries or other regions.
  • Is incarcerating criminals an effective solution in promoting the rehabilitation of criminals and controlling crime rates?
  • Consider various perspectives on the issue of gun control and coin several argumentative essay topics on the matter.
  • Why do drivers continue to text while driving despite legal implications and dire consequences?
  • Discuss the legality of people taking their own lives due to suffering from a debilitating terminal disease.

Each example of the research title provided in this article will make for a rich, information-dense research paper. However, you have a part to play in researching thoroughly on the example of the research study. To simplify the entire process for you, hiring our writing services is key as you wouldn’t have to worry about choosing topics. Our team of skilled writers knows the right subject that suits your research and how to readily get materials on them.

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COMMENTS

  1. 527 Relationship Essay Topics & Research Titles at StudyCorgi

    The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of divorce and separation on family relationships. The researcher will apply qualitative research approach to analyze data. Employee Burnout and Vacation Length Relationship. There is a problem with the workplace burnout rates in the organization.

  2. Love: What Is It, Why Does It Matter, and How Does It Operate?

    Abstract. Love is a perennial topic of fascination for scholars and laypersons alike. Whereas psychological science was slow to develop active interest in love, the past few decades have seen considerable growth in research on the subject, to the point where a uniquely psychological perspective on love can be identified.

  3. Valentine's Day: Research Topics on love, relationships ...

    This Valentine's Day we're falling for Research Topics. What's not to love about the hottest research edited by top scientists like you? With collective views of over 1.8 million, researchers explored topics spanning from digital intimacy and emotional intelligence to the evolution of monogamy and the role of trust in human interaction.

  4. (PDF) The concept of love: an exploratory study with a sample of young

    The concept of love: an exploratory study with a. sample of young Brazilians. 1. Thiago de Almeida, José Fernando Bittencourt Lo mônaco. Department of Psychology of Learning, Development and ...

  5. Regulation of Romantic Love Feelings: Preconceptions, Strategies ...

    Love feelings can be more intense than desired (e.g., after a break-up) or less intense than desired (e.g., in long-term relationships). If only we could control our love feelings! We present the concept of explicit love regulation, which we define as the use of behavioral and cognitive strategies to change the intensity of current feelings of romantic love. We present the first two studies on ...

  6. A decade of love: mapping the landscape of romantic love research

    The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships had published the most articles on romantic love research, while the most recent trends in romantic love-related keywords included "same-sex ...

  7. Well-Being and Romantic Relationships: A Systematic Review in

    Despite the fact that the wide range of aspects mentioned in the research makes it difficult to establish how direct an effect these relationships have on well-being, there is a broad consensus in the literature that love is one of the strengths most closely linked to personal happiness [41,42], and is associated with higher rates of self ...

  8. The Research on Love: A Psychological, Scientific Perspective on Love

    It is a systematic and seminal analysis whose major ideas. have probably influenced contemporary work on love more than all subsequent philosophical work combined. However, four major intellectual developments of the 19th and 20th centuries provided key insights that helped shape the agenda for current research and theory of love.

  9. Love Styles in Couple Relationships: A Literature Review

    When someone is involved in a love relationship, some love style will affect his or her feelings and behaviour towards the romantic relationship (Mridhula et al., 2018;Raffagnino & Puddu, 2018 ...

  10. What is love?

    What is love? Stanford researchers and scholars examine matters of the heart. From the fields of science to sociology, politics and philosophy, here is what Stanford research says about love and ...

  11. I love the way you love me: Responding to partner's love language

    Chapman's Love Languages hypothesis claims that (1) people vary in the ways they prefer to receive and express affection and (2) romantic partners who communicate their feelings congruent with their partner's preferences experience greater relationship quality. The author proposes five distinct preferences and tendencies for expressing love, including: Acts of Service, Physical Touch ...

  12. Proximate and Ultimate Perspectives on Romantic Love

    There have been a number of books (e.g., Jankowiak, 1995, 2008) and studies that shed light on the cross-cultural nature of romantic love. The sum of research indicates that romantic love is probably universal (although the research is yet to prove this unequivocally) with relatively few psychological differences found between cultures ...

  13. I love the way you love me: Responding to partner's love language

    The present study: Aims and hypotheses. Chapman's [] basic claim is that people who "talk" their partner's LL are more satisfied in their relationships, but empirical support for the LL hypothesis remains equivocal.In the present study, we aimed to extend previous findings [e.g. 31] by adopting a novel, continuous approach to measure match/mismatch between partners' LLs.

  14. Psychological Research on Love and Its Influence in Adult Human

    TO LOVE, OR NOT TO LOVE. Love Stories of Later Life: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Romance (Amanda Smith Barusch. Oxford University Press, 2008.) This book is a qualitative study employing in-depth interviews and an open-ended survey distributed on the Internet. Barusch (a professor of social work) focused her study on four research ...

  15. Love and Attraction

    In a nod to Valentine's Day, researchers including APS Fellows Lisa Diamond, Eli Finkel, Nickola Overall, and Harry Reis share discoveries, challenges, and new directions in the study of love, desire, dating, and commitment. Most of us see the connection between social and physical pain as a figurative one. But research is providing compelling ...

  16. 610 Relationship Topics to Write About

    610 Relationship Essay Topics and Examples. Relationships essays are essential for many different fields of study, especially the social sciences. Whether the topic is that of friendship, mothers, fathers, siblings, distant relatives, or life partners, there is a vast wealth of information titles you can explore.

  17. Composing Original Titles For A Research Paper About Love

    You would need to think about what questions would arise and what answers you might expect. Study what others have had to say about the bard's relation to romanticism. Think through as many questions that pertain to the theme as you can before plumping for your research paper's title. If you do choose a subject as well known and as much ...

  18. 6 of the Most Interesting Research Studies About Love and Marriage

    6. Stop nagging and improve the marriage. In 2010, the Journal of Family Psychology published a study based on research by Dr. Markman that indicates nagging can have a big negative impact on the marriage. The study states that couples who were unhappy with the relationship five years into their marriage had a 20% increase in negative ...

  19. Love Research Paper

    Love Research Paper. This sample love research paper features: 4400 words (approx. 15 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 48 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help.

  20. Research title examples for students—need inspiration!

    Here are some general tips and examples to help inspire you: 1. Start with a working title while you're researching and drafting, and refine it once your project is complete. 2. Make sure your title is specific, focused, and relevant to your research. 3. Use clear and straightforward language, avoiding jargon and acronyms.

  21. Essay on Love: Definition, Topic Ideas, 500 Words Examples

    A 500-word essay on why I love you. Trying to encapsulate why I love you in a mere 500 words is impossible. My love for you goes beyond the confines of language, transcending words and dwelling in the realm of emotions, connections, and shared experiences. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to express the depth and breadth of my affection for you.

  22. 55 Creative and Romantic Love Story Book Title Ideas

    Some great examples of love story book titles include: "The Kiss of Fate," "The Wedding Date," "Forever in Love," "Lost and Found Love," "Playing by Heart," "Twin Flame Reunion," and "Love Conquers All." Additionally, consider using lyrics from love songs or classic quotes as inspiration to create unique titles that ...

  23. 80+ Exceptional Research Titles Examples in Different Areas

    Examples of Research Topics on Ethics. Enumerate the different ways the government of the United States can reduce deaths arising from the unregulated use of guns. Analyze the place of ethics in medicine or of medical practitioners. For instance, you can discuss the prevalence of physician-assisted suicides in a named country.