Passionate and Companionate Love in Courting and Young Married Couples |
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| Authors: | Susan Sprecher Pamela C. Regan |
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| Affiliation: | Is an assistant professor of sociology at Brigham Young University. Her recent work addressing educational stratification among American Indian high school students in three schools serving the Northern Cheyenne reservation has been published in Family Perspectives (1993), Rural Sociology;(1993, and American Indian Development (the latter co-edited with C. Matthew Snipp;JAI Press, 1996). Her monograph, The Role of Native Capital in American Indian High School Completion: Culture, Structure and Community in Human Capital Development, is forthcoming Is an assistant professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1994. A statistician and experimental social psychologist, she teaches statistics, research methods, and social psychology. Her current research interests include romantic love and sexual attraction, mate selection preferences, seduction strategies, and sexual harassment, and she approaches these areas from both a social psychological and an evolutionary perspective. |
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| Abstract: | Sociological and social psychological discourse on love posits the existence of two distinct love types: passionate and companionate love. Little research, however, has been conducted to document the presumed theoretical differences between these two varieties of love. The primary purpose of this study was to examine empirically the extent to which passionate and companionate love differ on three major dimensions. Passionate love, to a greater degree than companionate love, was hypothesized (1) to be sexualized, (2) to be associated with intense positive and negative emotional experiences, and (3) to decline with the passage of time. These hypotheses were tested with data collected from a sample of 197 couples representing different stages of the courtship process and transition to marriage. Support was found for the first and third hypotheses; however, little support was found for the second. The degree to which passionate and companionate love were related to satisfaction and commitment were also examined. Passionate and companionate love were associated with satisfaction and commitment, although companionate love was more highly associated than passionate love with satisfaction. |
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