What does it mean to feel loved: Cultural consensus and individual differences in felt love

Abstract

Cultural consensus theory is a statistical framework (CCT) for the study of individual differences in the knowledge of culturally shared opinions. In this article, we demonstrate how a CCT analysis can be used to study individual differences and cultural consensus on what makes people feel loved, or more generally any social behaviors that are governed by cognitive schemata. To highlight the advantages of the method, we describe a study in which people reported on their everyday experiences of feeling loved. Our unique approach to understanding this topic is to focus on people's cognitive evaluations on what feeling loved (both romantically and nonromantically) entails by exploring the shared agreement regarding when one is most likely to feel loved and the individual differences that influence knowledge of these shared agreements. Our results reveal that people converge on a consensus about indicators of expressed love and that these scenarios are both romantic and nonromantic. Moreover, people show individual differences in (1) the amount of knowledge they have about this consensus and (2) their guessing biases in responding to items on love scenarios, depending on personality and demographics-all conclusions made possible by the CCT method.

Sex and Relationship Differences on the Short Love Attitude Scale: Insights from the Hungarian Adaptation

“…In other words, relationship type has an impact on partners' feelings of love. This is in line with previous findings (e.g., Dush and Amato 2005;Heshmati et al 2019;Richardson et al 1988).…”

Testing the theory of resilience and relational load in dual career families: relationship maintenance as stress management

“…Families who are already busy might think it is a daunting task to do 'yet another thing' at home by maintaining their relationship. Instead of thinking of relationship maintenance as another large task to add to their busy workday, family members should think of small, easy behaviors and actions they can become a routine part of their day (see also Heshmati et al, 2017). For example, partners might bring each other coffee in the morning, give each other a hug at the end of the day, and hold each other's hand while watching television.…”

A joint process model of consensus and longitudinal dynamics

“…The first instances of cognitive psychometrics (Batchelder, 1998;Batchelder & Riefer, 1999) involved multinomial processing tree models-often with a focus on consensus analysis-where individual differences in competencies need to be taken into account when deriving unknown correct answers, or "cultural consensus", on a set of knowledge or belief items. Batchelder, Anders, and Oravecz (2018) summarize the mathematical formulations and implementations of Cultural Consensus Theory (CCT) modelsthese have been applied to various problems including extracting shared information from eyewitness reports (Waubert de Puiseau, Aßfalg, Erdfelder, & Bernstein, 2012), perceived personality traits in social networks (Agrawal & Batchelder, 2012), defining psychological concepts (Oravecz, Faust, Levitis, & Batchelder, 2015), and what makes people feel loved (Heshmati et al, 2019). Weller (2007) provides a summary of various application in the field of cultural anthropology.…”

“…During an introductory session participants completed a battery of demographic items and psychological tests, including the evaluation of 60 everyday life scenarios in which people could potentially feel loved ('Felt love scenarios'; see Heshmati et al, 2019). Starting the next day, participants started to receive text messages to complete short web-based surveys via their smart phones.…”