Abstract
Although passionate or erotic love continues to receive the most attention from relationship scholars, there is a growing interest in a variety of love variously referred to as altruistic, compassionate, self-giving, or agapic love. Because this type of unconditional, other-oriented love appears to have important implications for the interpersonal dynamics and overall quality of close romantic relationships, there has been increased interest in delineating its correlates and possible causal antecedents. The goal of the present empirical investigation was to explore three potential demographic correlates of unconditional or agapic love – age, gender, and ethnicity. A large, multi-ethnic community sample of adult men and women (N = 697) individually completed the 7-item Agapic subscale of the Love Attitudes Scale (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1990). Although age was not associated with agapic love scores, a significant overall gender difference was obtained such that men scored higher than women. Ethnic differences also were found. Specifically, African American participants reported lower levels of agapic love than did Latino/a, Asian/Pacific Islander, and non-Hispanic White participants.
Highlights
Passionate or erotic love continues to receive the most attention from relationship scholars, there is a growing interest in a variety of love variously referred to as altruistic, compassionate, self-giving, or agapic love
A growing body of research suggests that this type of self-giving, other-oriented love has important implications for the interpersonal dynamics and quality of close romantic relationships
The results revealed that age was not significantly associated with agapic love scores (r = -0.01, p ns)
Summary
Participants included 697 adults (348 women, 349 men) from a large urban city in the United States. They comprised four ethnic groups: 60.4% Latino/a, 14.2% non-Hispanic White, 11.8% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 10.6% African American. An additional 3.0% of participants self-identified as Mixed Race or Other. Most participants were heterosexual (90.1%), with an additional 4.4% identifying as homosexual, 4.4% identifying as bisexual, and 1.0% identifying as “other.” Participants ranged in age from 18 to 65 (M age = 23.3 years, SD = 5.9 years)
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