Love Style: Comparison of African and American Attitudes

Abstract

Through increasing research on love, information is being obtained about attitudes toward love among various American populations-what is termed American Style ( 2 ) . However, a review of the literature of cross-cultural psychology suggests an absence of data on attitudes toward love in African culture, African Style. The present study sought preliminary data on attitudes toward love in Africa and made crosscultural comparisons between the present data and those obtained in America. Recent reports (2, 3 ) provided validity and reliabiliry information on a new instrument, the Munro-Adarns Love Attitude Scale, and its three subscales; Romantic Idealism, Romantic Power, and Conjugal Love. Its psychometric properties made this scale the one of choice here; it was administered to 25 male and 25 female universiry students at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda. The subjects, representing a diversity of tribal groups, had a mean age of 19.7 yr. and were enrolled in a variety of academic majors. Scores for the African sample ranged from 63 to 116, indicating a wide range of beliefs about love and its components. The mean was 93.34 and the SD ? 10.52, which closely approximates the reported mean for a comparable university group in America of 101.37, but no SD was reported ( 2 ) . On Romantic Idealism, our African sample obtained a mean of 33.28 (SD f 5.54) as compared to a mean of 36.45 ( S D f 9.54) for the American university group. Higher mean scores were obtained by African subjects on Romantic Power; Africans had a mean of 28.62 ( S D ? 5.72) and Americans a mean of 26.58 ( S D ? 10.53). The largest difference becween African and American samples was on Conjugal Love; Africans had a mean of 31.52 ( S D & 4.27) and Americans a mean of 38.34 ( S D & 5.72). Although slighrly lower than the Munro-Adams sample, our African group scored in the upper range of norms on attitudes toward love. These findings suggest a relatively strong endorsement of the notion of the Power of Love and of the belief in Conjugal Love, as well as a moderate endorsement of Romantic Idealism when results are compared with other norms ( 3 ) . It is remarkable that subjects from an African culture, which has been relatively free from the influence of Western notions of Romantic Love, tend to endorse so strongly so many of the attitudes essential to this phenomenon. Additional cross-cultural research on love attitudes is needed to ascertain how universal these components of Romantic Love are among other populations.