Definition

Love is often thought of as an intense and positive emotion that can be experienced for a variety of close others, including a romantic partner or spouse, close friends, children, parents, and other relatives. For more than three decades, social psychologists and other social scientists have been studying love. The type of love that has been most frequently measured and studied is the love experienced for a romantic partner. However, when social scientists began measuring love, they realized that there were many different types or subtypes, even in regard to a romantic partner.

Types

An initial distinction was made between liking and love. One of the first psychologists to study love, Zick Rubin, discovered that people could distinguish between attitude statements that measured liking (items that referred ...

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