Cultural Impact on Romantic Love

Cultural Impact on Love

• Culture impacts how love is experienced and expressed.
• Love is considered a universal emotion felt across cultures and time, but it is manifested in many different ways.
• Romantic love has been a subject of exploration by writers, philosophers, artists, and musicians for centuries

Research into Romantic Love

• Social scientists began systematically studying romantic love in the mid-20th century.
• Scholars have advanced the theory of love and identified major love constructs.
• In the 1980s, researchers from various countries explored love from evolutionary and cultural angles
• Researches wanted to know if romantic love is a universal emotion and how attitudes and experiences differ across cultures and time.
• Research by individuals such as David Buss, Helen Fisher, Ellen Hatfield, and others has broadened the understanding of cross-cultural variations in love.

Defining Romantic Love

• Romantic love is likely a universal, biologically based emotion felt instinctively, regardless of culture or language.
• People are curious about how to express "I Love You" in different languages, such as "Je t'aime" (French) and "Ti amo" (Italian).
• Other language examples include Ich liebe Dich (German), "wo ai ni" (Chinese), and Mahal kita (Tagalog).
• The term "romantic love" was created by Gaston Paris, a 19th-century literary critic.
• Romantic love describes attitudes and behaviors in literature from 12th-century Provence.
• Amour courtois (Courtly love) elevated women, involved suffering from attraction and separation, and transformed lovers.
• Courtly love was initially seen as uniquely European but has precursors in Plato's dialogues, Islamic culture, and ancient Indian writings.
• Romantic love can be replaced with passionate love and sexual attraction

Romantic vs Platonic Love

• Romantic love mixes sexual desire and affection, with Havelock Ellis viewing it as a blend of lust and friendship with tenderness. -Romantic love involves emotional highs, exhilaration, passion, and elation, emphasizing emotions over physical pleasure.
• Romantic love features strong affection, preoccupation, unrealistic views of a partner, and the idea of love forever.
• Platonic love is close affection without sexual intimacy.
• Platonic love/friendship is a nonromantic relationship lacking courtship rights and physical desire
• Although platonic love is purely spiritual and emotional can lack emotional closeness sometimes.
• Passion, fascination, and exclusiveness differentiate romantic relationships from platonic friendships, where sexual overtones are minimal
• Both partners in a platonic friendship can engage in other cross-sex or romantic relationships, with the possibility of the relationship changing from platonic to romantic.

Historical Views on Love

• Passion is a main feature of romantic love that historians contend has always existed.
• Passionate attitudes and behaviors have varied across cultures and time.
• Vatsayana (3rd century CE) advised marrying for love, the Medieval church condemned it.
• Early Egyptians practiced birth control, Classical Greeks rewarded couples who conceived.
• Muslims locked wives in harems, Sumerians had temple prostitutes, and ancient Hebrews stoned "godless" prostitutes.
• Society's views on love have changed and will be shown in China and Europe.

Love in China

• Attitudes toward passionate love and sexual desire were positive in early Chinese history but changed over time.
• Texts from 168 B.C.E. show ancients believed love and sexual pleasure were great joys.
• During the Late Empire (1,000 years ago), Neo-Confucianists gained power, making Chinese attitudes more sexually restrictive
• Erotic art and literature were burned, and marital sexual attraction was unimportant.
• Procreation was the primary marital duty, with husbands biologically destined to seek satisfaction with other women.
• Concubinage was common among the wealthy, while wives were expected to remain faithful.
• Chinese people saw sex as natural, so husbands could have concubines
• Wives weren't considered for lovers and concubine status varied.
• Displays of affection outside marriage were restricted; public affection was discouraged.
• The Confucian model was not as relevant to the peasant class.
• People's Republic of China imposed tighter controls on love and sexual activity, establishing puritanical "primness."
• This suppressed romantic love and favored collectivism.
• Chinese distinguished between free choice and free love with casual flirtation being gauche.
• Spousal physical attractiveness was immaterial along with love being viewed negatively.
• Chinese saw the marriage bed as slavery, and physical love was a negative.
• The Great Leap Forward called for "renunciation of the heart," prioritizing collective welfare over individual happiness.
• The 1990s saw a shift with globalization, cinema, the Internet, and travel leading to more liberal views on love, sex and diversity.

Views on Love in Europe

• European love also shows diverse historical attitudes.
• In Medieval England, Christianity viewed love as self-sacrificing and unselfish
• Love was seen as a compassionate relationship, not necessarily romantic, possibly including sexual attraction
• Friendship was related to love.
• With affection and Amor entering English in the 13th century, the meaning of passion/attraction was achieved
• Amor also meant love, affection and friendship to the opposite sex.
• English literature became less religious.
• Courtly love rose where romantic feelings began to be discussed intensely
• New expressions for love and tenderness entered, mainly from French literature, where courtly love developed.
• Courtly love idealized women and was devotional, key features were suffering and longing for the loved one.
• Love was described as a force in the 16th-17th centuries and romantic imagination rose
• Romantic love was spiritual, the antithesis of animal lust in the Victorian era.
• Courtly love spread in Western and Northern Europe, but Russia still influenced by Christian faith until the 18th century.
• Attitudes to romantic love changed after Peter the Great's reforms in the 18th/19th centuries.
• Sexual morals relaxed and a sexual revolution occurred in the 20th century in Europe.
• Expressions of love started referring to sexual desire.
• People embraced various attitudes to love and ascribed meanings with love being in flux

Anthropological Views on Love

• Romantic love is a Western invention not found in other cultures according to some scholars.
• Western societies idealize love.
• Stone (1989) suggests romantic love doesn't exist in non-Western countries, except among the elite.
• Others claim romantic love is unknown in countries such as China and Japan.
• Recent studies show romantic/passionate love is a universal.
• Several societies see passionate love being experienced widely.
• Evolutionary psychologists say that passionate love is innate with a biological basis.
• Jankowiak and Fischer (1992) explored love in 166 cultures by looking at lovers talking, tales, singing, and longing
• Romantic love occurred in 147/166 surveyed.
• Romantic love is nearly universal even if not every person feels it.
• Romantic love is culturally controlled.
• People can fall in love often depending on social organization.
• Falling in love can depend on whether the society disapproves of the love.
• The historical research presented provides some proof.
• Anthropologists studied love in China, Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, Trinidad, Morocco, and the Fulbe of North Cameroun, with the Mangaia in the Cook Islands, Palau, and the Taita of Kenya.
• Conceptions of passionate love are similar within society, although culture impacts definitions which influences thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in romantic settings

Culture vs Biology

• Culture is a main factor transforming passionate love into romantic love.
• Passion is universal in biology for sexual selection.
• Romance is based on history, culture, and cultural traditions.
• Universal features relate to mate selection that's important for survival.
• Buss (1994) notes that men and women wanted someone who's dependable
• Wallen (1989) gender impacts mate preferences.
• Men look at physical appearance while women look at high status to protect them and their children
• Cultural values impacts expressions/experiences of love while transferring passionate love as a sexual attraction.
• Culturally influence rituals.
• Culture has much impact as evolutionary heritage in understanding mate selection
• Buss (1994) found that culture impacts mate preferences, such as chastity and ambition.
• Wallen (1989) found origin impacts preferences with western countries judging chastity to be unimportant.

Biology's impact on Romantic Love

• Love is a universal human emotion with cultural forms of expression.
• The cultures differ according to concept: collectivism vs. individualism, interdependence vs. independence, modern vs. traditional
• Factors affects expression.
• Disagreement exists on cross-cultural passionate love with Chinese Americans' results being higher than European Americans' results
• Other studies show European Americans have more intense passionate love than Chinese Americans (Gao, 2001).
• Evolutionary psychology/neuroscience explain universal/intense nature.

Studies on the Brains of Lovers

• Neuroscience indicates a biological basis.
• Bartels and Zeki (2000) interviewed subjects from 11 countries by using fMRI.
• Passionate love reduces activity in critical thinking areas, increases activity in euphoria/reward areas.
• Passion reduces depression and causes activity to be restricted to foci in certain regions.
• Deactivations were observed in Posterior cingulated gyrus in amygdala and and prefrontal, parietal, middle cortices
• The researchers do not report any cross-cultural differences.
• Maternal love provides similar activation.
• Bartels believes the core regions are modulated by love and will be preserved across species.
• Ortigue et al. (2010) found the deep biological foundation of romantic love located in our brains with brain scans finding small variations in stimulation with cultures like America and China.
• Brain regions are primitive, so the scholars say that love feelings were always present in evolution
• Lucy brown said brains are activated with primitive areas.
• People in love thinking of beloved show ventral tegmental area activity, associated with euphoria/addiction.
• There is also activity in prefrontal cortex with thinking/reward.
• The findings confirm passionate love's evolutionary roots; passionate love helps pick mates, form relationships, and ensures survival of species.

Impacts of Culture

• Culture dictates the link between sex/love.
• Men separate sex from love, while women were taught to combine two
• Culture's collectivism/individualism affects romantic subjectiveness.
• Individualistic cultures focus on self-interest and independence.
• Collectivist societies subordinate self for the to be loyal
• Triandis said that individualists do their own thing, while collectivist prioritize the group first.
• Romantic love should be experienced more in individualistic countries and traditions.
• Individualism values self-sufficiency, causing ambivalence in dependency.
• In individualistic cultures, love-based marriage is ideal.
• Independence can conflict the need for a partner and relationships overall.
• Dion (1991) individualism affects love.

Collectivism

• Greater individualism decreased perceptions of relationships being less rewarding and with individualism lowering experience quality.
• Dion found individualists tended to be less happy in marriages.
• Collectivist societies embed dependencies of lives with close friends.
• Decisions consider themselves and how it affects relationships.
• Collectivism is love based on pragmatism, friendship, altruism.
• Individualism/collectivism conceptualize themselves differently, impacting experiences.
• Self-perception leads to love being break to loneliness, with collectivism emphasizing existing bonds.
• From a collectivistic view, people emphasize the bonds while making commitments
• Expressions of love are more based on action, not words.

Experiencing Love

• Cross-cultural studies explore romantic love features impacting individualism/collectivism
• De Munck compared The U.S., Lithuania, and Russia and found all agreed on eros, altruistism, and transcendence being love related but that lovers trend to have intrusive thought.
• Love is seen to be a strong emotion, but only altruism was considered important from US to Lithuania.
• The U.S., Lithuania, and Russia differed where Lithuanians and Russians find love to be unreal and expect the relationship to transfer or end while Americans perceived love to be realistic and included friendship
• Lithuanians and Russians fall in love faster than Americans.
• Russians were the people to be found most in love (67%), Americans were in the middle (58%), and the Japanese were in love (52%).
• Intimacy in the U.S. marriages, couples try to keep relationship intact while marriages in Japan are obligation based at start.
• Intimacy comes when family members die and the husband is more willing to share the affection with the wife.

Emotional Investment and Expression

• Schmitt explored emotional investment as a dimension with that included core features .
• This links engaging in love.
• U.S. level of investment was significantly higher than elsewhere with Asia having lower investment
• Countries such as Tanzania, Hong Kong, and Japan had the lowest scores with the U.S., Slovenia, and Cyprus having the highest.
• People show love explicitly or implicitly.
• Latin lovers more passionate and explicit.
• Implicitly express it through actions.
• Americans show verbally love.
• People need to be implicit because somethings are interpreted through words.
• Expression is reserved.
• Love is expressed with Mahal in actions with Filipino family
• Love is sometimes omnipotent, understood, and had no need to be flaunt.

Conclusion

• Love emotions are displayed across the world in different culture and periods were people feel, think, and behave differently.
• Love is thus universal but culturally specific.
• Passion changes across time.
• European and China provide examples of diversity of love attitudes and history.
• Culture transfers passionate love based on a sexual attraction to romantic love in its idealized version.
• Factors is culture, traditions with rituals etc.
• Evolutionary psychology and neuroscience explains that passionate love is universal but that romantic love is where culture is demonstrated.
• Research is influenced by how well a culture influence things like expression.
• People express love with emphasis by which other on implicit/indirect ways.