Various physical characteristics of a partner-visual, auditory, tactile and kinetic, olfactory, and gustatory-can affect human mate choice and romantic attraction. Evolutionary factors, as well as socioeconomic and cultural parameters play their role in these sensory preferences. A series of studies in societies varying in social, economic, and cultural parameters (10 samples in six countries with 2740 participants in total) explored cross-cultural similarities and differences of sensory preferences that people have in their romantic attraction. The results revealed that social development of countries and their cultural parameters allow prediction of preferences of certain sensory parameters in one's romantic partner's appearance. The most general distinctions of sensory preferences are in the societies with different degree of modernization, along with corresponding social and cultural parameters. The stable biologically and evolutionarily determined characteristics of physical appearance, such as smell, skin, body, etc., are important for one's sensory preferences in romantic attraction in less modernized societies, which are characterized by greater power distance, lower individualism, indulgence, and emancipative values. On the other hand, the characteristics of romantic partner's appearance, which are more flexible and easier to change, such as expressive behavior, dress, dance, etc., are more important in more modernized societies with lower Power Distance, high value of Individualism, Indulgence, and Emancipation.
The series of studies explored the role of visual, auditory, tactile-kinesthetic, and olfactory modalities in physical attraction toward a romantic partner in four cultures. Participants ( N = 1,330) from four European countries, Russia ( n = 433), Portugal ( n = 248), Georgia ( n = 436), and France ( n = 213) completed the surveys rating the degree of their physical attraction and how important the various sensory modalities are in their romantic attraction to a partner. Factor analysis revealed 13 sensory factors, among those are expressive behavior, dancing, singing, facial structure, body characteristics, hair and eye features, voice, expressive manner of speaking, skin, dressing, and lips. ANOVA showed cross-culturally common and most prevalent sensory factors of romantic attraction as well as differences among cultures. These differences are explained by climate variations, cultural values, and traditions.
Physical attraction is an important dimension of both romantic and companionate relationship of partners. This article presents a comprehensive cross-cultural validation of the short version of the Physical Attraction Scale (PAS-S) scale — the first and only multidimensional measure of physical attraction available for research and practice. The initial development of the scale was completed in a multisite study conducted with a large sample of university students, largely from the midwest and southeast of the United States. Results demonstrated a two-dimensional factor structure, excellent reliability, and evidence of content, convergent and discriminant validity. The following cross-cultural studies, which used the PAS-S, confirmed its robust factor structure, validity and reliability in the samples from 10 cultural regions in six countries. Therefore, this short version of the PAS-S can be recommended for cross-cultural practice and research. The versions of the scale in English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Georgian are provided in appendices. Based on the results of cross-cultural validation, authors recommend the PAS-S for research purposes and practical use in counselling and therapy. The scale provides a short and informative measure of (1) how a person feels attraction to their partner in close relationships and (2) which aspects of attraction are problematic.
This article reports new methodology for cross-cultural exploration of psychometric properties of a four-dimensional hierarchical love scale. We collected data from 2831 participants from nine regional locations from six countries and assessed their responses to the love scale as well as several other love feelings. We applied a new methodological approach using recently advanced statistical methods to the comparison of forty love attitudes underscoring four distinct latent attitudes associated with love to another person in romantic relationships across these samples. The results demonstrate the importance of measurement invariance tests for cross-cultural comparison of scores on love scales. To properly assess measurement invariance, we suggest five statistical procedures, which we investigated in this study: (1) making corrections for acquiescence and extreme response biases; (2) taking into consideration cultural uniqueness in how participants respond to the measures, which may contribute to poor model fit; (3) accounting for such cultural uniqueness to make cross-cultural comparisons more valid; (4) removing items, which substantially contribute to poor model fit; and (5) shortening the subscales when scoring and analyzing the data. The results of the studies propose two shortened versions (33 and 30 items) of the love scale as two cross-culturally valid and invariant alternatives to the original 40-item scale.
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