title: Multidimensional Architecture of Love: From Romantic Narratives to Psychometrics.
abstract: Romantic love has been explored by writers for centuries revealing multiple emotions and feelings related to this phenomenon. Scientific efforts to understand love began in the mid-twentieth century and greatly advanced the topic in the past few decades. Several instruments measuring love were developed. They are still, however, limited in their scope. The purpose of our study was to explore love's emotional complexity through discourse analysis of romantic narratives and apply the constructs identified in those narratives to the reality of love relationships. In the first study, the discourse analysis of quotes selected from a representative sample of romantic narratives lead to a comprehensive set of items measuring the variety of love constructs. Second and third studies, utilizing 498 participants of various ages, empirically explored the diversity of love constructs and their architecture. The study brought many constructs to the arena of love research. A hierarchical cluster analysis allowed depicting these dimensions in varying models. Mental representations of love structures varied depending on the participants' mental complexity and other factors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Aquinas College, 1607 Robinson Road, SE, Academic Building 23 E, Grand Rapids, MI, 49506, USA. vk001@aquinas.edu.
authors.forename: Victor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Karandashev
authors.affiliation: Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, MI, USA. stc001@aquinas.edu.
authors.forename: Stuart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Clapp
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008149:Love; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D063545:Personal Narratives as Topic; D011578:Psycholinguistics / Q000379:methods*; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000379:methods*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Discourse analysis; Emotional complexity of love; Love dimensions; Psychometrics of love; Romantic love; Romantic narratives
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