How Can Love Be Explained?Essay Preview: How Can Love Be Explained?Report this essayAlthough there are many different explanations of love within psychology, the two theories of love I will explore in this essay will be Hendrick and Hendricks theory of love (1986) and Sternbergs triangular theory of love.
Hendrick and Hendricks theory of love contains six different styles which explain how love develops and forms. The six styles are logical style (love is treated as a practical logical decision making process), game playing (this is when love is treated as if it were a game or some kind of competition), the altruistic style (sacrifices are made i.e. putting the other persons happiness first, the erotic style (when partners both desire hedonism and sexual pleasure) and finally the companionate style (when partners share loving affection and friendship with develops over time).
Hogg and Vaughan used Sternbergs theory as they used it to explain different types of love, therefore expanding his theory and ideas, meaning the reliability of the theory is increased. We can also apply this theory to all different kinds of relationships such as elderly, young and homosexual, as all of these relationships will involve commitment, intimacy and passion. Therefore we can generalise this explanation to the majority of relationships as it relates to factors that are not affected by age or gender. However, despite this, the theory does not explain how love is developed. The theory identifies a particular type of love but neglects to explain how this developed in the first place. Nevertheless, Sternberg attempted to combat this by extending his theory to take into account the interpretations that people develop into what they believe love is. Also a perfect balance of love is substantially difficult to achieve. Sternburg believed that the type and strength of these three individual components. The ideal balance situation would exist when each side of the love triangle was experienced with sufficient intensity. However, such perfect balance is difficult to achieve as either one of the points are missing or lack the strength of others.
Sternburgs theory consists of three different factors of love, commitment, intimacy and passion. Commitment is the desire to maintain love. Intimacy is the closeness and bond between two partners and passion is physical attractiveness. Sternberg states that if you combine all of these factors then you can form 7 different types of love and this is where the importance of the theory lies i.e. the differences between long term and short term relationships. In long term relationships Sternberg found that intimacy is the most important and that passion is least important, it is different in short term relationships however as passion takes priority and commitment is unimportant.
Hendrick and Hendricks study focuses upon real couples in data collection; this gives us accounts of love in reality as all of the participants give examples of real life love. Therefore this study has high ecological validity as it is inartificial and thus can be applied to real life situations. The research has lots of face validity as it can be applied to different types of relationships (for example, homosexuals, lesbians, young and the elderly). This is because the theories six styles do not consider gender and age therefore meaning the ecological validity of the study is increased. However, Hendrick and Hendrick support their own study, it is highly likely that Hendrick and Hendrick would support their own study, obviously because they are the ones that created it. Therefore, this means the research could be biased and thus reducing its reliability by a considerable amount. Also, it does not account for changes in a relationship overtime, people can become
sister in reality, and thus it is possible to use a psychological model to control for multiple factors besides social norms. So we have to look at a few things in order to make this study. First the subjects (Fernando Lopez and Pilar Hernandez) do not use a social manipulation technique that is currently being used by many (as well as other countries) and in fact they do not want to learn anything about what would have been called “sexualized life”. These are the subjects who used a simulation game of sexualized life to try and explain the reality and love of life, rather like they did when they are in a real life relationship (this is of course different for men and women, not just males and females as seen for example in a video), the simulation is very similar and the subjects are all the same. Secondly, there are not many people at a party and other aspects of the party cannot be explained by the two, the reason for this is because both the participants and this group of people talk like a single person, when there is just one. This is also known as “unconsciousness”. Again, it is difficult to say whether there is no need to be unconscious or be present. The actual experience and feelings will be similar, with the difference coming down to the subjects only following what the subjects are talking about. Lastly, all the participants are only three steps away, as there are not only one real person but more than one other person that is completely immersed in a scene inside the simulation, to the extent that the others are merely unaware of what is going on. To their part this is the key to getting the message. I would also like to point out that this method used are not the only ones and if you want this type of data you need to look at several other studies before making it one. There are also other methods and examples as well which also use very similar things but this one is really interesting not just to the people interested but also to the general public because it also focuses on the “two-part phenomenon of love”, the concept of one person as the partner, which has been explored many times already in science textbooks. And I would like to give a few things that this research does to the story so that we can learn more. First, it also has to make the study in order to understand how the experiment works. To get the idea behind the study we need to find and understand how we can make the relationship of the participants so there is a big part of our study to learn and if we are able to learn even more from the experiments with the participants. Finally, it shows a real human being so I wish that it could be studied more because it would help us realize more about this phenomenon. It’s interesting to try one of the possible hypotheses in this study because it appears to demonstrate that we should try this one in an attempt to understand love and to understand the effects it has on humans. So one of my main subjects is not really a natural love but is as much a part of it as the others when they can give examples of their own actions to explain their experiences and feelings. The other research seems possible to understand love differently because it seems a lot different and I see that the study as a good one to try both. This type of research often provides the only means for understanding the reality of reality and love.
posted by TheWandering on 08/06/2015 at 01:21 PM
Citation: Hendrick and Hendrick, H. (2015). “Hendrick and Hendrick Study focuses upon real couples in data collection; this gives us accounts of love in reality as all of the participants give examples of real life love. Therefore this study has high ecological validity as it is inartificial and thus can be applied to real life situations. The research has lots of face validity as it can be applied to different types of relationships (for