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This research was part of a larger research program on love and sex attitudes. Earlier work on love was reported in Hendrick, Hendrick, Foote, and Slapion-Foote (1984). The work on love extends Lee's (1973Lee's ( /1976) theory of six 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). Theory development has proceeded concurrently with the development of measurement scales. Study I (N = 807) used 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. Confirmatory Study II (N = 567) replicated factor structure, factor loadings, and reliability analyses of the first study. In addition, 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 I. The love scale shows considerable promise as an instrument for future research on love.During the past decade, love has become respectable as an area for study by psychologists (e.g., Rubin, 1984). Several theories oflove have been proposed (e.g., readings by Cook & Wilson, 1979;Kelley, 1983). Early theories that used global concepts of love are being replaced by theories that use multidimensional constructs that promise greater yields in knowledge. Theories of LoveBlau (1964) proposed an exchange theory oflove that characterized the development oflove as requiring a nicely balanced degree of mutuality and the consistent exchange of rewards between partners. More recently, Clark and Mills (1979) attempted to differentiate "exchange" from "communal" (e.g., altruistic) relationships by showing that a "tit for tat" approach may be accepted in an exchange relationship, but such an approach may actually damage a communal relationship. Berscheid and Walster (1974) proposed an approach to love which described romantic, passionate love as physiological arousal accompanied by appropriate cognitive cues such that "passionate love" is the appropriate label for the arousal. From this essentially labeling approach, Walster and Walster (1978) proposed two general kinds of love: passionate love and companionate love, with the former nearly always evolving to the latter in an enduring close relationship.Moving counter to the increasing emphasis on love as multidimensional, Sternberg and Grajek (1984) proposed that there is a "general factor" of love which is quite consistent across romantic, familial, and friendship relationships. However, the authors note that although the various love experiences may be similar, the "concomitants" of the exper...

This paper offers new information on the reliability and validity of the Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS; Hendrick, 1988), a seven-item generic measure of relationship satisfaction. The RAS shows moderate to high correlations with measures of marital satisfaction, good test-retest reliability and consistent measurement properties across samples of ethnically diverse and age-diverse couples, as well as partners seeking marital and family therapy. The RAS is an appropriate, useful and brief measure for partnered love relationships in a wide variety of research settings.

Fifty-seven dating couples were studied on a variety of relationship measures. The interrelations among love attitudes and relationship satisfaction were of primary interest. However, for one subsample of couples, sexual attitudes, self-esteem, self-disclosure, commitment, investment, and relation, ship continuation/termination were also studied. Partners displayed similarity on a variety of measures, including several love attitudes, disclosure, investment, commitment, and relationship satisfaction. Some of the love attitudes were related to satisfaction, but several other measures (e,g., commitment, investment, self-esteem, and self-disclosure) were also important correlates of satisfaction. A follow up of 30 couples at 2 months after initial data collection assessed the variables that differentiated continuing and terminating couples. Implications of this set of results for other theories and for future research are discussed.

. The measures were given to 391 unmarried college students. Correlations revealed predictable relations among the subscales; however, psychometric analyses revealed problems in some of the measures. Factor analysis yielded 6 factors for the Love Attitudes Scale and 1 for the Passionate Love Scale, similar to previous research. Results for the Triangular Theory of Love Scale and for the Relationship Rating Form suggest strong interdependency among each measure's subscales. Factor analysis of all subscales together yielded 5 distinct factors, reflecting themes of passionate love, closeness, ambivalence, secure attachment, and practicality.Research on romantic love has increased markedly in the past few years, undoubtedly stimulated by the widespread interest in close relationships. Rich theorizing and the development of several measurement approaches have characterized recent studies of love.The purpose of the present research was to compare and contrast these new measurement approaches. Each measurement approach is based on a scale designed to measure one or more aspects of love as postulated by an associated theory. However, empirical judgments about theory cannot reasonably be made until the concepts of the theories can be reliably measured. Therefore, this research focused on evaluations of the scales and comparisons among them. Such comparisons required a single data set in which all participants completed all of the relevant scales. Recent Research on LoveWe examined five different measurement approaches to love, including those of