Male-Female Similarities and Differences in Conceptualizing Love

Gender and Ethnocultural Comparisons in Styles of Love

“…When comparing women and men in our ethnically heterogeneous sample of university students, women reported being more storgic, more pragmatic, and less ludic in their characteristic love styles than men. These gender differences parallel similar previous findings of several studies of American college undergraduates by different investigators (Hatkoff & Lasswell, 1979;Hendrick et al, 1984;Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986).…”

“…In general, the typical result appears to be that of no gender difference in eros (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1988, 1991, as was obtained in the present study. Also, the absence of a gender difference in manic love in the present study is consistent with a recent study by Hendrick and Hendrick (1991) using a composite measure of manic love but contrasts with other previous studies (Hatkoff & Lasswell, 1979;Hendrick et al, 1984;Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986) that suggested that women score higher than men on manic love style. Neither we nor others have found evidence of a gender difference in the agapic or altruistic love style.…”

“…Gender differences in eros have been inconsistent in previous studies with American college student samples. In some studies, men scored higher than women on eros (Hatkoff & Lasswell, 1979;Hendrick et al, 1984), and in others, women scored higher than men on eros (as in Study 11, Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986) or on a composite measure of eros (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1991). In general, the typical result appears to be that of no gender difference in eros (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1988, 1991, as was obtained in the present study.…”

“…Using Lee's typology, Lasswell and Lasswell (1976) were first to develop questionnaire scales to assess a respondent's style of love. Hatkoff and Lasswell (1979) subsequently tested a large sample of respondents from two California universities and from other contexts with their love styles questionnaire and reported a number of gender differences. Most notably, men were more ludic and erotic than women, whereas women were described as more manic, storgic, and pragmatic than the men.…”

Close Relationships Research: A Resource for Couple and Family Therapists

“…Building on Lee's theory and an initial scale developed to assess it (Hatkoff & Lasswell, 1979;Lasswell & Lasswell, 1976), we developed and refined a 42-item measure of the six major love styles, with seven items measuring each of the six love styles on a Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree metric. A first significant scaling article was published in 1986 (C. .…”