Simple minitheories of love.

Developed 2 causal models of love as alternatives to the A. Tesser and D. L. Paulhus (see record 1978-21448-001) theory. These models were tested for adequacy of fit using maximum-likelihood methods. While the Tesser-Paulhus models can be rejected empirically, the alternate models provide acceptable statistical representations of 4 variables measuring love at 2 times separated by 2 wks. One formulation is based on the idea of unidimensionality of interpersonal attraction. The 2nd formulation represents a refinement of the Tesser-Paulhus view of love. The formulation based on the idea that interpersonal attraction is primarily a unidimensional construct provides the more parsimonious and interpretable theory. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nature of love.

Infant monkeys were reared with the aid of a laboratory constructed mother-substitute. "We produced a perfectly proportioned streamlined body stripped of unnecessary bulges and appendices. Redundancy in the surrogate mother's system was avoided by reducing the number of breasts from two to one and placing this unibreast in an upper-thoracic, sagittal position, thus maximizing the natural and known perceptual-motor capabilities of the infant operator. The surrogate was made from a block of wood, covered with sponge rubber, and sheathed in tan cotton terry cloth. A light bulb behind her radiated heat. The result was a mother, soft, warm, and tender, a mother with infinite patience, a mother available twenty-four hours a day, a mother that never scolded her infant and never struck or bit her baby in anger." The data obtained "make it obvious that contact comfort is a variable of overwhelming importance in the development of affectional responses, whereas lactation is a variable of negligible importance." It is suggested that the primary function of nursing "is that of insuring frequent and intimate body contact of infant with mother." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correlates of romantic love.

Hypothesized the existence of relationships between internal-external control and romantic love, on the basis of a social influence interpretation and the view that romantic love is culturally stereotyped as an external force. Rotter's Internal-External Control Scale and a romantic-love questionnaire were administered to 243 undergraduates. Consistent with the hypothesis, proportionally fewer internals than externals reported having been romantically attached. Also as expected, internals reported experiencing romantic attraction as less mysterious and volatile and were more strongly opposed to an idealistic view of romantic love. In comparison to males, females were more likely to have experienced romantic attraction and were less idealistic and cynical about love but more pragmatically oriented toward it. These sex differences are accommodated within a functionalistic interpretation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nature of love.

Compared 3 alternative structural models of the nature of love, assessed the validity of each of these models for a variety of close relationships, and predicted success of close relationships on the basis of instruments used to assess love and other personal characteristics. The present study investigated whether love is better characterized as C. Spearman's (1927) unifactorial entity that is unitary and nondecomposable into underlying constituents; (2) G. H. Thomson's (1939) entity comprising a large number of affective, cognitive, and motivational bonds that, in the experience of love, are jointly sampled; or (3) L. L. Thurstone's (1938) entity comprising a small number of correlated primary factors of roughly equal importance and salience in the experience of love. 35 male and 50 female 18–70 yr olds completed psychometric instruments measuring their demographic backgrounds, personality characteristics, love history, and feelings of love in close relationships with mothers, fathers, siblings, same-sex best friends, and spouses or lovers. Factor analysis of the love scales suggested that love is best characterized in terms of the Thomsonian "bonds" model and that the structure of love is quite similar across the various close relationships in which one engages. It is concluded that success of close relationships can be predicted from a set of measures that includes a love scale and measures of personal attributes. (52 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Passionate love and the misattribution of arousal.

Two studies provide evidence that misattribution of arousal facilitates romantic attraction. In Exp I, arousal of 54 male undergraduates was manipulated through exercise. Arousal Ss liked an attractive female confederate more and an unattractive female less than did controls. In Exp II, arousal of 66 Ss was manipulated in a positive (comedy tape) or negative (mutilation tape) way; other Ss heard a nonarousing tape (textbook excerpt). Results replicate the interaction found in Exp I: Valence of initial arousal did not affect attraction to the confederate. Salience of plausible labels for arousal is hypothesized to mediate the misattribution effect. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A triangular theory of love.

Presents a triangular theory of love, which deals both with the nature of love and with loves in different kinds of relationships. It is suggested that there are 3 components: (a) intimacy encompassing the feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bondedness experienced in loving relationships; (b) passion encompassing the drives that lead to romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation; and (c) decision/commitment encompassing, in the short term, the decision that one loves another, and in the long term, the commitment to maintain that love. The amount of love one experiences depends on the absolute strength of the 3 components, and the kind of love one experiences depends on their strengths relative to each other. The components interact with each other and with the actions that they produce and that produce them so as to form a number of different kinds of loving experiences. The triangular theory of love subsumes other theories and can account for a number of empirical findings in the research literature, as well as for a number of experiences with which many are familiar firsthand. It is proposed that the triangular theory provides a comprehensive basis for understanding many aspects of the love that underlies close relationships. (53 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nature of love: Simplified.

Presents results of studies investigating the effects of lactation, facial, body surface, motion, and temperature variables upon infant attachment to surrogates. A simplified form of the cloth surrogate, easier to construct, more practical to maintain, and more efficient in elicitation of infant clinging than the original, is described. The role of the surrogate in current and proposed research is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intersubjective observations on transference love.

In this article, the clinical phenomenon of transference love is used to make 3 contributions: (a) to illustrate how the intersubjective field can encompass more than just patient and therapist, (b) to provide an intersubjective framework for understanding transference love, and (c) to demonstrate how selfobject and antidote functions of the therapeutic relationship can alternate within the same patient–therapist dyad as figure and ground. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A theory and method of love.

Previous work by the authors and colleagues (1984) extended J. A. Lee's (1973/1976) theory of 6 basic love styles: eros (passionate love); ludus (game-playing love); storge (friendship love); pragma (logical, "shopping list" love); mania (possessive, dependent love); and agape (all-giving, selfless love). In Study 1, 807 undergraduates completed a 42-item rating questionnaire, with 7 items measuring each of the love styles. Six love style scales emerged clearly from factor analysis. Internal reliability was shown for each scale, and the scales had low intercorrelations with each other. Significant relationships were found between love attitudes and several background variables, including gender, ethnicity, previous love experiences, current love status, and self-esteem. Study 2, with 567 Ss, replicated the factor structure, factor loadings, and reliability analyses of the 1st study. The significant relationships between love attitudes and gender, previous love experiences, current love status, and self-esteem were also consistent with the results of Study 1. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Paradoxical sadness or painful love.

Describes paradoxical sadness in terms of reaction, patient characteristics, and dynamics. Paradoxical sadness seems to represent exposure of a sealed-off depressive core, bringing the tip of depression close to consciousness by dislocating one's defenses. When this subtle, emotional reaction is acknowledged, the therapist must communicate that emotions are acceptable and valuable parts of the self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of conceptual behavior.

110 clinical psychologists rated 36 Object Sorting Test responses on 2 conceptual dimensions: open-closed and public-private. Results of 2 scaling methods were very similar, but did not agree closely with L. S. McGaughran and L. J. Moran's (31:2) classification of the responses into 4 conceptual areas. The interjudge reliability was much lower than those reported by previous investigators. Direction scores, which reflect the classification of the responses as open or closed, public or private, accounted for much more of the variance of the mean ratings than did extremeness scores, which involve quantification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of career indecision.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 37(2) of Journal of Counseling Psychology (see record 2008-10626-001). Editorial error resulted in several misstatements. On page 98, second column, in the 11th line of the second paragraph, the word students ought to read studies; on page 101, in the 9th line, the word Behaviors ought to read Barriers. On page 102, in line 5 of the first paragraph, the reference ought to be to the top left panel of Figure 2. The second paragraph ought to begin with the reference to the top right panel of Figure 2. Also on page 102, the sentence that begins on line 5 of the first paragraph was intended to read, as follows: Two of the groups of girls changed significantly in the expected direction: Group 2 (decided-undecided) significantly increased and Group 3 (undecided-decided) significantly decreased over time.] Recent studies have clarified the factor structure of the Career Decision Scale (CDS), thereby permitting the construction of 4 linearly independent scales to measure dimensions of career indecision. The CDS was administered to 465 junior and senior high school students. The study examined whether the CDS total score and the 4 subscales were related to the students' career decision status, grade level, and gender. Data were collected twice, 6 months apart, to study whether changes in decision status were accompanied by changes in the CDS total score and the 4 subscales and whether these changes differed according to gender or grade level. In addition, a subsample was followed for 3 years to examine long-term change. The results demonstrated the utility of using factor-based subscales to create a typology of career indecision. Many significant differences on the various indecision scales were found to be due to gender and to career decision status but not to grade level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of psychological theory.

Examines historical and covariational trends which are independent of time in psychological theory by analyzing rated variables applied to 54 psychological theorists who were rated on the importance of their contributions to psychological theory. For each theorist, ratings from different correspondents were averaged, and a basic score matrix of order 54 * 34 was obtained. Factor-pattern and factor-structure matrices were derived, and a set of factor scores for every theorist was obtained by multiple-regression procedures. The advantages and disadvantages of applying multivariate methods to problems in the history of psychological theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of Folk Psychiatry.

This article presents a social-cognitive model of laypeople's thinking about mental disorder, dubbed "folk psychiatry." The author proposes that there are 4 dimensions along which laypeople conceptualize mental disorders and that these dimensions have distinct cognitive underpinnings. Pathologizing represents the judgment that a form of behavior or experience is abnormal or deviant and reflects availability and simulation heuristics, internal attribution, and reification. Moralizing--the judgment that individuals are morally accountable for their abnormality--reflects a form of intentional explanation grounded in everyday folk psychology. Medicalizing represents the judgment that abnormality has a somatic basis and reflects an essentialist mode of thinking. Psychologizing--ascribing abnormality to psychological dysfunction--reflects an emergent form of mentalistic explanation that is neither essentialist nor intentional. Implications for psychiatric stigma and for cross-cultural variations in understandings of the psychiatric domain are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of favorable self-presentation.

Conducted 2 studies to examine the importance of the tactic used in presenting a favorable self-image (denying negative characteristics vs attributing positive characteristics) and to examine the perceived audience of the self-presentation (internal vs external) on responses to self-report personality items. In Study 1, 60 items were administered under low or high conditions of identifiability to 244 undergraduates. None of the items were found to be sensitive to the identifiability manipulation, which suggested that none of these items could be identified as being particularly sensitive to external audience concerns. In Study 2 with 156 undergraduates, confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the process of attributing positive characteristics to the self is somewhat independent from the process of denying negative characteristics. Self-esteem was positively correlated with the tendency to unrealistically attribute positive traits to the self, and self-conscious persons were less likely to unrealistically deny negative characteristics. Findings suggest that the process of attributing positive characteristics to the self is different from the process of denying negative traits. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of teacher behavior.

Modified the Leadership Opinion Questionnaire for use in a school context. A stratified random sample of 1,500 teachers was chosen to complete the questionnaire anonymously. Of the 1,500 questionnaires mailed, 544 were returned. Analysis of the response indicated that 3 factors could be used to describe variation in responses. These factors were labeled Consideration, Initiating Structure, and Rigidity–Flexibility. Factor scores were shown to be affected differentially by level of grade assignment and experience. The impact of situational factors on the development of teacher orientations is discussed. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of stimulus complexity.

Animal reaming research has increasingly used complex stimuli that approximate natural objects, events, and locations, a trend that has accompanied a resurgence of interest in the role of cognitive factors in reaming. Accounts of complex stimulus control have focused mainly on cognitive mechanisms and largely ignored the contribution of stimulus information to perception and memory for complex events. It is argued here that research on animal reaming stands to benefit from a more detailed consideration of the stimulus and that James Gibson's stimulus-centered theory of perception serves as a useful framework for analyses of complex stimuli. Several issues in the field of animal reaming and cognition are considered from the Gibsonian perspective on stimuli, including the fundamental problem of defining the effective stimulus. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of subjective adjustment.

"A representative sample of the resident population of adults in the United States was interviewed about their feelings of distress in different life areas: perceptions of the self; symptoms of distress; adjustment in marriage parenthood, and work." Factor analysis of these data revealed the presence of 5 separate dimensions through which distress may be expressed: anxiety, unhappiness, sense of social inadequacy, lack of identity, and physical ill health. Men and women were distinguished by distress being expressed through physical ill health for men, psychological symptoms for women. The study indicates that psychological adjustment is multi-rather than unidimensional. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of sensation seeking.

Tested 63 new items for the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) in an attempt to develop new scales representative of hypothesized dimensions of sensation seeking. An experimental form was given to 332 and 92 undergraduates at 2 universities. Data from the 1st university was factor analyzed separately for males and females. Besides the general factor running through diverse items, 4 factors were extracted from the rotated factor loadings: thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition, and boredom susceptibility. The 1st 3 factors showed good factor and internal scale reliability in both sexes and samples. Since boredom susceptibility was not well defined in females and was of minimal reliability, it was retained as a subscale for males only. (24 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)