Core and Peripheral Features of the Cross-Cultural Model of Romantic Love

Abstract

Ethnological studies point to candidates for culturally universal and variable characteristics of romantic love models. However, only recently have these hypotheses begun to be tested through primary data collection intended for cross-cultural comparison. This study builds on two such efforts covering the United States, Russia, Lithuania, and China by adapting their methods to South Korea. We found support for the core features of romantic love identified in these studies (sexual attraction, altruism, intrusive thinking, emotional fulfillment, and idealization). We also explain peripheral meanings of love, including its association with sex, irrationality, and material considerations. In our discussion of East Asian models of romantic love, we argue that the apparently less altruistic attitudes of East Asian women toward their lovers are attributable to the deterioration of structural support for institutions that enforced the ideal of female sacrifice previously valorized in their family relations, and women’s backlash against these continued expectations.

“A question of bank notes, cars, and houses!” Matchmaking and the Moral Economy of Love in Urban China

“…These different arguments began to be tested through comparative analyses of conceptual understandings of love across cultures and histories (Beall and Sternberg 1995; de Munck, Korotayev, and Khaltourina 2009; de Munck et al 2011; Jankowiak 1995; Jankowiak et al 2015; Nelson and Yon 2018). That said, one generally acknowledged dimension of romantic love is that it is linked to the reproduction of social groups (Kalmijn 1998).…”