A social categorical approach to a question about love

Abstract

AbstractAlthough scholars' interest in love phenomena has continued to increase in recent years, a common conceptual language for the study of love has not yet emerged, as is evidenced by the large number of love taxonomies and associated vocabularies that have been advocated. A promising avenue for the development of a common scientific vocabulary of love lies in the systematic examination of the love vocabularies of laypersons to identify what varieties of love, if any, their lexicon reflects. Several means by which love researchers have attempted such examinations are described and illustrated with reference to the linguistic expressions “love” and “in love.” These methods include direct questioning, autobiographical reports, inferential studies, and the prototype approach, which introduces the probabilistic view of cognitive categorization structure and process to the study of love. Several of the underlying assumptions of the prototype approach are discussed and contrasted to those of the social categorical approach we present here. The social categorical method is described in this approach, respondents place persons in their actual social worlds into social categories, and the associations among the memberships of those categories are examined. Finally, the implications of some of the findings derived from this method for a taxonomy of love and for the study of interpersonal relationships are discussed.