Abstract
The study compared the way Mozambican and French people conceptualize romantic love. Two subsamples of 238 Mozambican adults and 250 French adults were presented with 27 cards containing vignettes (scenarios) that described the characteristics of someone’s relationship regarding degree of passion, the degree of intimacy, and degree of commitment. Participants assessed the intensity of romantic love experienced by the characters in the scenarios using a continuous scale. The way people from both cultures conceptualized romantic love was not entirely similar, but the differences were very subtle. The impact of each component on the judged intensity of love was similar. In both samples, passion and intimacy explained most of the variance. The algebraic structure of the judgment rule was, however, different. Among French participants, the findings were consistent with an equal-weight averaging rule as suggested by previous authors. Among Mozambican participants, the patterns of rating were, however, consistent with a more complex judgment rule. In this rule, the impact of each factor depended on the level of the other factors: A differential weight averaging rule was proposed that can be written Love = wic Passion + w’pc Intimacy + w”pi Commitment / wic + w’pc + w”pi
Highlights
The study compared the way Mozambican and French people conceptualize romantic love
The first subsample was composed of 238 Mozambican adults aged 18–61 (M = 29.7; SD = 14.7; 123 men and 127 women)
Ratings were lower among Mozambican participants (M = 4.71) than among French participants (M = 5.58)
Summary
The study compared the way Mozambican and French people conceptualize romantic love. Two subsamples of 238 Mozambican adults and 250 French adults were presented with 27 cards containing vignettes (scenarios) that described the characteristics of someone’s relationship regarding degree of passion, the degree of intimacy, and degree of commitment. Among Mozambican participants, the patterns of rating were, consistent with a more complex judgment rule In this rule, the impact of each factor depended on the level of the other factors: A differential weight averaging rule was proposed that can be written Love = w ic Passion + w’pc Intimacy + w”pi Commitment / w ic + w’pc + w”pi. Studies conducted among West-Europeans, CentralAmericans, and Southern Africans have shown that passion was, from people’s perspective, the most important component of the love schema, followed by intimacy and by commitment (Falconi & Mullet, 2003; Marston, Hecht, Manke, McDaniel & Reeder, 1998; Morales et al, 2015; Vera Cruz, 2015, 2017) They have shown that adults with learning disabilities have the same love schema as typical adults, which is unsurprising since love is a fundamental human emotion, which is possibly human but common to many primates, at least as an affect such as attachment or connection
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
