The Importance of Love as a Basis of Marriage

Abstract

This study extended prior research on attitudes about the importance of love as a basis for marriage. With data from a sample of 4,245 college students, obtained over a 16-year period, we found that both men and women, but women to a slightly greater degree than men, rated love as important for entering marriage. Over the 16-year period of the study, the importance of love as a prerequisite for marriage decreased slightly for men. Other individual difference variables (beyond gender) that were found to be associated positively with viewing love as an important basis for marriage included being White (vs. Black), high self-esteem, restrictedness in sociosexuality (true for women only), and a secure attachment style. Participants were more undecided or ambivalent about whether love is necessary to maintain a marriage. The importance of love for maintaining marriage was rated slightly higher by women (than by men), less religious participants, those whose parents had divorced, and those who were unrestricted in their sociosexuality; this belief was not found to change over time.

Keywords

love beliefs love as a basis for marriage sociohistorical change union formation mate selection gender

Most adults in the United States and other countries have positive attitudes about the institution of marriage and associate love and intimacy with marriage (Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). Empirical evidence for the importance of romantic love as a prerequisite for marriage, particularly for men, was demonstrated in a classic study conducted in the mid-1960s by Kephart (1967), who asked more than 1,000 college students whether they would marry someone with whom they were not in love if that person had all other qualities they desired. Men were found to consider love to be essential; 65% said no to Kephart’s question, whereas only 12% said yes (24% were undecided). Women were more undecided, which was interpreted as less concern about love as the basis for marriage. Seventy-two percent of women replied with the undecided response; 24% said no and 4% said yes. This gender difference was attributed to women’s more pragmatic view of marriage during that era, which likely would have arisen from their lack of educational and economic opportunities relative to men (e.g., Simpson, Campbell, & Berscheid, 1986).

Kephart’s (1967) findings continue to be discussed in recent family and relationship textbooks (e.g., Bradbury & Karney, 2014; Coltrane, 1998; Miller, 2012; Regan, 2008) and treatises on love (e.g., Berscheid, 1988; Hatfield & Lieberman, 2006). The purpose of this study was to update our knowledge about young adults’ beliefs about the connection of love and marriage, including gender differences in those beliefs. We also extended prior research by examining the associations of other individual difference variables (e.g., attachment orientation) with the love–marriage connection and by investigating how men’s and women’s beliefs may have changed over a 16-year period.

Changes in Men’s and Women’s Attitudes About the Importance of Love for Marriage

Simpson et al. (1986) collected data approximately 10 and 20 years after Kephart’s (1967) study to examine whether changes had occurred in college students’ love beliefs. They asked two samples of college students, in 1976 and 1984, to respond to Kephart’s question about love as a prerequisite for entering marriage, and predicted that they would not find the large gender difference obtained by Kephart because of dramatic social changes in the 1960s and 1970s. The changes included increasing economic and educational opportunities for women, which likely would have reduced their need to be pragmatic in marriage choices. In support of their prediction, Simpson et al. found that an approximately equal (and high) proportion of both men and women in their samples said no to Kephart’s question (i.e., said that they would not marry without love); the percentages ranged from 80% to 86%. Simpson et al. also included questions that assessed the participants’ views about love as essential for maintaining marriage (e.g., “If love has completely disappeared from a marriage, I think it is probably best for the couple to make a clean break and start new lives.”). A slight majority of the 1976 sample and just slightly less than a majority of the 1984 sample believed that love was an important condition for remaining in a marriage. The importance of love for the maintenance of marriage was stronger in 1976 than in 1984 (i.e., the 1984 sample was less likely than the 1976 sample to believe that it would be appropriate to divorce if love had disappeared). In neither sample was a gender difference found in beliefs about love for maintenance of marriage, however.

The Kephart (1967) question has also been included in cross-cultural research, conducted primarily in the 1990s. This research found that love was viewed as an important basis for marriage worldwide, although with slightly lesser importance expressed in countries with lower economic standing (e.g., Levine, Sato, Hashimoto, & Verma, 1995; Sprecher et al., 1994; Sprecher & Toro-Morn, 2002). Gender differences in the importance of love for marriage were small in the studies conducted in the 1990s, and when found, were in the direction of women rating love as more important than did men as a basis of marriage (e.g., Sprecher & Toro-Morn, 2002).

Could attitudes about love as a basis for marriage continue to be in flux? To our knowledge, there has not been a recent examination of young adults’ views of the importance of love as a basis of marriage; nor has there been a multiyear (cohort) comparison of love beliefs on a college campus since Simpson et al.’s (1986) study. Yet American society has continued to change during the past two decades in ways that could lead to changes in young adults’ views about the importance of love for marriage. For example, the average length of time between first entry into romantic relationships and entry into marriage has lengthened for many young adults (Rauer, Pettit, Lansford, Bates, & Dodge, 2013). When there is not an urgency to find a marriage partner, there could be an enhanced belief that love and all other desirable qualities are essential for marriage. Today, men and women have the choice of marrying for love or not marrying at all if they wish. Social pressure to marry has also decreased, and there is a greater acceptance of alternative intimate partnership forms including cohabitation (e.g., Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001), which likely has further removed economic and social constraints from the need to get or stay married. Such changes could result in love now being viewed as more important than at an earlier time as a basis for both entering and maintaining marriage. In addition, the changes may be more pronounced for women. As noted by Hatfield and Rapson (2005), women’s opportunities have increased dramatically. Recent meta-analyses on a variety of psychological variables have suggested that gender differences have diminished over the past decades, leading Hyde (2005) to propose a gender similarity hypothesis—that males and females are similar on most psychological variables.

The first purpose of our study, then, was to examine the overall degree of gender differences in beliefs about love as a basis for marriage and to examine whether attitudes about love as a basis of marriage among men versus women have changed over an almost two-decade period. Next, we turn to a discussion of the second purpose of our study—to examine other individual difference correlates of beliefs about love as a basis for marriage.

Individual Differences in Beliefs About the Importance of Love for Marriage

Although Kephart (1967) and follow-up studies (e.g., Simpson et al., 1986) focused primarily on how gender was associated with beliefs about the importance of love as a basis for marriage, beliefs about the love–marriage connection are likely to vary based on other individual characteristics, both demographic and personality. Our data allowed us to examine other individual difference correlates (beyond gender) of beliefs about the love–marriage association.

Sociodemographic Variables

As already noted, cultural differences have been found in the beliefs about love (e.g., Levine et al., 1995). Furthermore, Sprecher and Toro-Morn (2002) examined demographic differences in love attitudes within their U.S. subsample. In a comparison of Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, the researchers found no race differences in the importance of love as a basis of marriage. However, they found that those who classified themselves as middle/upper classes were more likely to believe that passionate love was necessary for entering marriage than were those from the lower class (this question was a variation of the original Kephart question and asked specifically about the importance of passionate love for entering marriage). Sprecher and Toro-Morn (2002) suggested that their findings on social class differences in the importance of passionate love may indicate that financial stability contributes to freedom to emphasize love when entering marriage. In the present study, and with a much larger sample (>4,000), we also consider race and social class differences in beliefs about love as a basis for marriage.

Religiosity is another sociodemographic variable likely to be associated with beliefs about the importance of love for marriage. We would expect that people who are religious, compared with their less religious counterparts, should value love for entering marriage, but at the same time, may feel less strongly that love is necessary to maintain marriage. Most religious institutions connect love and marriage and also emphasize the stability of marriage. Past research has found religiosity to be associated with positive attitudes toward the institution of marriage (e.g., Ellison, Wolfinger, & Ramos-Wada, 2013; Sullivan, 2001).

Family structure (e.g., parental marital status) is also likely to influence young adults’ attitudes about the importance of love for marriage. Although most young adults, regardless of their parents’ marital status, may insist on love for entering marriage, those who have experienced family divorce may be more likely to believe that it is all right to divorce when love disappears from the marriage. This is suggested by research examining other types of attitudes toward divorce; for example, people from divorced families have more accepting attitudes toward divorce (Kapinus, 2004; Miles & Servaty-Seib, 2010).

Personality Variables

Personality and self variables are also likely to be associated with views about the importance of love for marriage. We focus on three that have been examined frequently in the close relationships field—self-esteem, sociosexuality, and attachment orientations (Miller, 2012). Below, we discuss how each of these individual difference variables is likely to be related to attitudes about the importance of love for marriage.

Self-Esteem

How highly people regard themselves can influence many aspects of their relationships, including their beliefs about how essential love would be as a basis for marriage. According to sociometer theory (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995), self-esteem is a barometer of one’s value to others. We speculate that those who assume that they are valued more and have more regard for themselves will likely insist on having love in a marriage. This speculation would be consistent with other research that has shown that those with high self-esteem have more positive descriptions of an ideal partner than those with low self-esteem (e.g., Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that those who are high in self-esteem would rate love as more important for both the entrance and the continuation of marriage than would those who possess lower self-esteem.

Sociosexuality

Sociosexuality refers to the degree to which a person is comfortable having sex without love and commitment, and is frequently measured with Simpson and Gangestad’s (1991) Sociosexual Orientation Inventory. Research has explored how sociosexuality is associated with mate selection issues, including preferences for traits in a partner. For example, Simpson and Gangestad (1992) found that restricted individuals (those who score low on sociosexuality) placed more importance on qualities that reflect good personal and parenting qualities, whereas unrestricted individuals (those who score high on sociosexuality) emphasized physical attractiveness and sex appeal. In addition, Fletcher, Simpson, Thomas, and Giles (1999) found that restricted individuals emphasized warmth/trustworthiness and intimacy/loyalty in a partner more than did unrestricted individuals. Because unrestricted individuals believe that love is not necessary for sex, it would stand to reason that such individuals might also believe that love is not necessary for entering marriage. Furthermore, because restricted individuals have been found to remain committed to relationships (for a review, see Simpson, Wilson, & Winterheld, 2004), we might expect that those who are more restricted would view love as less necessary for maintaining marriage.

Attachment Styles

According to attachment theory (e.g., Shaver, Hazan, & Bradshaw, 1988), people possess working models (i.e., positive or negative beliefs) about themselves and others. These working models develop based on early childhood experiences and also influence and are influenced by current relationships. If parents or other important attachment figures are available and responsive, working models are likely to be positive and allow a sense of security to develop. Beginning with Hazan and Shaver’s (1987) extension of attachment theory to adult relationships, the identification of variations in relationship phenomena based on individuals’ attachment orientations has become one of the most prolific areas of research in relationship science (for reviews, see Hatfield & Rapson, 2010; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). It would stand to reason that secure individuals would insist that love be present for both the establishment and maintenance of marriage, whereas people with insecure attachment styles (particularly those who are avoidant) would be less likely to insist on love.

Summary of the Purposes of the Present Study

In sum, with data collected over a 16-year period at a U.S. Midwest university, we provide updated knowledge about young adults’ beliefs about love as a basis for marriage. Our first purpose was to revisit gender differences. The weight of the empirical evidence (with the exception of the Kephart’s, 1967 original study) suggests that we will not find a large gender difference; furthermore, if a gender difference is found, more recent studies (e.g., Sprecher & Toro-Morn, 2002) suggest that it would be in the direction of females rating love as more important for marriage than males, the opposite of what was found originally by Kephart (1967). Second, we explore other individual difference variables (demographic and personality) of beliefs about love as a basis of marriage, and expect to find certain characteristics (e.g., high self-esteem, attachment security) to be associated with a greater importance of love for the basis of marriage. Third, we examine how beliefs about love as basis of marriage, including gender differences in these beliefs, have changed over a 16-year period. Because of the increasing delay in marriage and the acceptance of alternative forms of marriage (e.g., Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001), we expect more recent cohorts to rate love as more important for marriage than earlier cohorts.

Method

Sample

The sample was obtained over a 16-year period (1997-2012) from a sociology class at a U.S. Midwestern university.¹ The final sample, after eliminating some participants due to their incorrect completion of an OpScan, missing responses to the love attitude items, or not completing the gender question, was N = 4,245 (1,511 or 35.6% were males and 2,734 or 64.4% were females). The modal age of the participants was 20 years; the majority was between the ages of 18 and 22 years. Eighty-five percent (n = 3,579) were White, 9.5% (n = 404) were Black, 3.1% (n = 132) were Hispanic, 1.3% (n = 55) were Asian, and the other participants indicated American Indian, other, or did not respond.

Procedure

Participants completed a voluntary and anonymous survey during class time. The survey was described as being conducted for both research and instructional purposes, and was administered early in each semester so that the findings could be presented to the class later in the semester and also so that participants’ responses would not be affected by course content. Students placed their answers on machine-readable OpScan sheets.

Measurement of Love Attitudes

Two items asked about love as a basis for entering marriage, and three items asked about love as a basis for the maintenance of marriage. The items are described in more detail below.

Love as a Basis for Entering Marriage

The first attitude item was Kephart’s (1967) question about love as a basis of marriage: “If a man (woman) had all the other qualities you desired, would you marry this person if you were not in love with him (her)?” The second question asked about the importance specifically of passionate love for entering marriage: “If a man (woman) had all the other qualities you desired and you experienced a friendship/companionate love but not a sexual attraction or passionate love for him (her), would you marry him or her?” Each item was followed by the options: 1 = strongly no, 2 = moderately no, 3 = undecided, 4 = moderately yes, 5 = strongly yes.² The responses for each item were recoded so that the higher number indicated a more positive belief that love should be the basis for marriage (i.e., a “no” response). Because the two items were conceptually similar and correlated, r(4245) = .41, p < .001, a mean composite score was created to represent the importance of love for entering marriage.

Love as a Basis for the Maintenance of Marriage

We included the two items from Simpson et al. (1986) that measure the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage: “If love has completely disappeared from marriage, do you think it is probably best for the couple to make a clean break and start new lives?” and “In your opinion, is the disappearance of love a sufficient reason for ending a marriage?” An additional item asked specifically about the importance of passionate love for the maintenance of marriage (from Sprecher & Toro-Morn, 2002): “In your opinion, if passionate love or sexual attraction has disappeared from a marriage, but the two still love each other in a companionate/friendship way, is it probably best for the couple to make a clean break and start new lives?”³ Each item was followed by a 5-point response scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Therefore, the higher the score, the greater the degree that the participants believed that love should be the basis for the maintenance of marriage (i.e., divorce was acceptable in the absence of love). The three items, which were highly correlated (r = .47 to .63, p < .001), were combined in a composite to represent the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage (Cronbach’s α = .77).

Predictor Variables: Sociodemographic and Family Variables

Gender and ethnicity were assessed through one-item standard measures. Family social class was assessed by a combination of three questions: (a) father’s highest level of education (eight options were provided that ranged from less than 12 years to PhD, MD, law degree, or other advanced degree); (b) mother’s highest level of education (same options); and (c) the perceived social class of parental family during adolescent and teenage years (six options were provided that ranged from lower class to upper class). The last item was multiplied by a factor of 1.33 in order that it had the same weight as the parental education items. The mean of the three items represented family social class, with higher scores indicating higher social class. Although the composite had a relatively low reliability (α = .58), causal indicator theory (e.g., Streiner, 2003) provides justification for creating a total index when the scale indicators influence the construct even if the indicators are not highly correlated. The correlations among the three items ranged from .20 to .43 (p < .001).

Religiosity was represented by the mean of two items. One item asked, “How religious do you consider yourself?” (options were coded from 1 = not religious to 4 = very religious). The second item asked about attendance at church, synagogue, or a spiritually based program (options ranged from 1 = 0 to 5 = 4 or more times a month). Cronbach’s alpha for this two-item index was .71.

To measure parental marital status, participants were asked: “What is the current status of your parents’ marriage (or what was it when they were both alive)?” The options provided were (1) they are (were) happily married; (b) they are (were) married, but not very happily; (c) they are (were) separated; and (d) they are (were) divorced. The four responses were recoded to two categories: (a) married versus (b) separated/divorced.

Predictor Variables: Personality Variables

Self-Esteem

Seven items were included that assessed the participants’ self-evaluations. The response scale that followed each item ranged from 1 = not at all characteristic of me to 5 = very characteristic of me. Two of the items were from the Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem scale: “I feel that I have a number of good qualities” and “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.” Items were also included that assessed two domain-specific types of esteem, relationship esteem and physical esteem, issues of concern to young adults. Relationship esteem was assessed by two items adapted from the Snell and Finney (1983) Relationship-Esteem scale (i.e., “I am a good partner for an intimate relationship,” “I am confident about myself as a relationship partner.”) and a third item written specifically for the survey, “I feel that I make a good sexual partner.” Two items, designed to have high face validity, focused on physical esteem: “I am a physically attractive person” and “I am happy with my overall physical attractiveness.” Cronbach’s alpha was .84 for the total score.

Sociosexuality

Sociosexuality was measured with the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI; Simpson & Gangestad, 1991). The scale consists of seven items assessing an individual’s sexual behaviors (e.g., number of sexual partners within the last year) and attitudes (e.g., “Sex without love is okay.”). Following one of Simpson and Gangestad’s (1991) recommended aggregation procedures, we first created a mean of the three attitudinal items, and then applied their recommended weighting to create a total score. Higher SOI scores reflect greater unrestrictedness. Cronbach’s alpha for the individual (unweighted) items of SOI with this sample was .83.

Adult Attachment Style

Participants were given the four descriptions of attachment styles from Bartholomew and Horowitz’s (1991) model, and asked to select the option that best described them. The paragraphs referred to fearful, preoccupied, dismissing, and secure attachment styles.

Predictor Variable: Year of Data Collection

A variable was created that represented the particular year in which the questionnaire was completed, ranging from 1997 to 2012. For some of the analyses, the data were divided into four cohorts of four years each (1997-2000, 2001-2004, 2005-2008, and 2009-2012).

Results

Overview to Analyses

Below, we first present descriptive data on overall responses, including comparing the importance of love for entering marriage and the importance of love for maintaining marriage. Second, we present a comparison of men versus women, overall, on their beliefs about the importance of love. Third, we provide analyses on other sociodemographic and personality predictors of love beliefs. In our analyses of the other predictors, we consider the moderating influence of gender, that is, whether the effect of other predictor variables depend on gender. In our final analyses, we consider how the love beliefs have changed over time (16-year period) and for men versus women.

Overall Responses

The scores on the two-item index of the importance of love as a basis of marriage were high (M = 4.34; SD = 0.76; range = 1-5), indicating that the participants would not marry without love. Participants had a significantly stronger “no” response to the original Kephart (1967) question (M = 4.53, SD = 0.83; range = 1-5) than to the item that referred to friendship/companionate love being present but not passionate love/sexual attraction (M = 4.16, SD = 0.98; range = 1-5), paired t(4244) = 24.51, p < .001. The modal response to both items, however, was strongly no. For example, 86.8% responded either “strongly no” or “moderately no” to the original Kephart question (the same percentage for the second item was 76.8%).

The participants felt less strongly about the importance of love for maintaining marriage. The mean for the three-item index of the importance of love for maintaining marriage was 2.70 (SD = 0.95; range = 1-5), which was at the midpoint response of “neutral.” The degree of endorsement of the item that asked whether marriage should end if passionate love had disappeared but companionate love still existed was particularly low (M = 2.20, SD = 1.04; range = 1-5).

The two indices were only slightly correlated, r(4245) = .12, p < .001. This modest correlation suggests that beliefs about love for entering marriage are conceptually distinct from beliefs about love for the maintenance of marriage.

Gender Differences

In the total sample, men and women were compared on the two composite scores (importance of love for entering marriage and importance of love for the maintenance of marriage), via independent t tests. For these analyses and all other analyses reported below, significance was set to p < .01 (rather than the standard p < .05) because of the large sample and therefore to reduce the likelihood of making a Type I error. Women had higher scores than men on the index of the importance of love for entering marriage, M_females = 4.40 (SD = 0.73) versus M_males = 4.26 (SD = 0.79), t(4113) = 5.54, p < .001, d = .18. Women also had higher scores than men on the index of the importance of love for maintaining marriage, M_females = 2.74 (SD = 0.95) versus M_males = 2.64 (SD = 0.94), t(4113) = 3.42, p = .001, d = .11. Thus, these results indicate that women felt more strongly than men that love should be the basis of entering marriage, and also that the disappearance of love from marriage would justify a divorce.

Other Sociodemographic/Family Predictors

Race and Social Class

Next, we examined whether there were race differences in views about the importance of love for marriage. We included gender in the analysis to examine whether the race differences were the same for men and women, and we also included social class as a control variable. Therefore, we conducted a 3 (race: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics) × 2 (gender) analysis of variance (ANOVA), which included family social class as a covariate. For each index, the race × gender interaction was not significant. In addition, family social class was not significant,⁴ and therefore social class will not be considered further. A significant main effect of race was found for the index of the importance of love for entering marriage, F(2, 4109) = 11.70, p < .001; partial η² = .006. Whites scored the highest (M = 4.37, SD = 0.73); Bonferroni follow-up comparisons indicated their scores were significantly higher (p < .001) than the scores for Blacks (M = 4.18, SD = 0.87) although not than for Hispanics (M = 4.23, SD = 0.84). Furthermore, no significant difference was found between Blacks and Hispanics.

Religiosity

For neither gender was religiosity related to the importance of love for entering marriage. Religiosity was, however, significantly associated for both genders with the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage and the association was negative (r = −.26, p < .001, for each gender). Men and women who were more religious were less likely to believe that the disappearance of love would justify ending the relationship.

Parental Marital Status

To examine whether young adults’ beliefs about love vary as a function of parental marital status and whether the effect of marital status depends on gender, we conducted a 2 (parental marital status: together vs. separated/divorced) × 2 (gender) ANOVA for the two composite scores on the love–marriage link. In the total sample, 3,040 participants reported that their parents were still together and 1,148 participants reported that their parents were separated or divorced (57 were missing on this item and therefore not included in this analysis). No significant effect was found for parental marital status for the importance of love for entering marriage. However, a significant effect of parental marital status, F(1, 4194) = 20.47, p < .001 partial η² = .006, was found for the importance of love for maintaining marriage. Those whose parents were separated/divorced had higher agreement scores (M = 2.82, SD = 1.00) than those whose parents were still together (M = 2.66, SD = 0.93). That is, young adults from separated/divorced families were more likely to agree that it was all right if a marriage ended if love had disappeared. For neither index was the parental marital status × gender interaction significant.⁵

Personality Predictors

Self-esteem was associated positively with the importance of love for entering marriage; r(1509) = .18, p < .001, for men and, r(2731) = .12, p < .001, for women. Self-esteem was not associated with the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage.

Sociosexuality was also found to be associated with attitudes about love and marriage. For women only, sociosexuality was associated negatively with the importance of love for entering marriage, r(2667) = −.08, p < .001. That is, women who were restricted in their sociosexuality were more likely to insist on love for entering marriage than were less restricted women. For both genders, sociosexuality was correlated positively with the importance of love for maintaining marriage, r = .13, p < .001, for each gender. Those who were high in sociosexuality were more likely to agree that love is necessary to maintain marriage, that is, divorce is acceptable in the absence of love.

Next, we examined whether people with different attachment orientations differ in their love beliefs. We first conducted an attachment orientation × gender ANOVA for each index (gender was included to see if the interaction effect was significant, which would indicate whether the effect of attachment orientation was the same for men and women). The interaction was not significant for either index, indicating that the effect of attachment orientation was the same for both genders. Table 1 presents the results of a one-way ANOVA, conducted with men and women combined. Participants with a secure attachment style were more likely than participants with an insecure attachment style to view love as important for entering marriage. No difference, however, was found in the importance of love for maintaining marriage based on attachment orientation.

Table 1.

Differences in Love Attitudes as a Function of Attachment Style.

	Secure (n = 1,573)	Fearful (n = 1,194)	Preoccupied (n = 795)	Dismissive–avoidant (n = 655)	F (one-way)	Partial η²
Index of the importance of love for entering marriage	4.46 (0.69)^a,b,c	4.27 (0.79)^a	4.28 (0.78)^b	4.27 (0.80)^c	20.02***	.014
Index of importance of love for maintaining marriage	2.65 (0.96)	2.76 (0.94)	2.70 (0.97)	2.71 (0.92)	2.73	.002

Note. Identical superscripts in a row indicate a significant difference.

***

p < .001.

Has the Love–Marriage Connection Changed Over Time?

To examine whether beliefs about love as a basis for marriage have changed over time (i.e., over cohorts of students) and whether the changes are the same for men and women, we conducted a 4 (cohort: 1997-2000, 2001-2004, 2005-2008, 2009-2012) × 2 (gender) ANOVA for each composite score. The main effect for time (cohort) was not significant for either index. However, a significant cohort × gender interaction was found for the index of love as a basis for entering marriage, F(3, 4237) = 7.30, p < .001, partial η² = .005. A follow-up one-way ANOVA trend analysis was conducted for each gender separately to interpret the interaction. As the results in Table 2 show, men’s scores decreased over time (love became less important for entering marriage), whereas women’s scores increased slightly over time (love became more important for entering marriage). The linear change was significant for men, L_inear(1, 1507) = 17.13, p < .001, but was not significant for women, L_inear(1, 2730) = 3.53, p = .06. A second analysis was conducted correlating the individual year (i.e., 1997-2012) with the scores on the two indices. For men, the correlation between year and beliefs about the importance of love for entering marriage was negative, r(1511) = −.11, p < .001. No other correlation was significant.

Table 2.

Changes Over Time in Love Attitudes.

	1997-2000 (M = 505, F = 825)	2001-2004 (M = 472, F = 938)	2005-2008 (M = 299, F = 554)	2009-2012 (M = 235, F = 417)	F (one-way)	Partial η²
Index of importance of love for entering marriage
Men	4.34 (0.77)^a	4.28 (0.75)	4.19 (0.83)	4.10 (0.82)^a	5.84***	.012
Women	4.35 (0.78)	4.41 (0.73)	4.38 (0.74)	4.45 (0.64)	2.18	.002
Index of importance of love for maintaining marriage
Men	2.66 (0.94)	2.52 (0.94)	2.75 (0.95)	2.65 (0.91)	3.40	.008
Women	2.73 (0.93)	2.72 (0.96)	2.74 (0.98)	2.81 (0.99)	0.93	.001

Note. M = males; F = females. Identical superscripts in a row indicate a significant difference.

***

p < .001.

Finally, we also conducted an analysis referred to as cross-temporal meta-analysis (Wells & Twenge, 2005), in which a new data matrix is created that has each individual year (from 1997 to 2012) as the case and men’s and women’s mean scores for the index of the importance of love for entering marriage and the index of the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage as the data. This type of analysis is similar to conducting a meta-analysis with the 16 samples. For women, year in this meta-analysis was not correlated with either the importance of love for entering marriage, r(16) = .42, ns, or the importance of love for maintaining marriage, r(16) = .27, ns. For men, year was negatively correlated with the importance of love for entering marriage, r(16) = −.77, p = .001, but unrelated to the importance of love for maintaining marriage, r(16) = .12, ns.

In sum, the analyses converged on the finding that the belief about the importance of love for entering marriage had decreased over time for men. No reliable changes were found in love beliefs for women, although the change found was an increase, opposite of that for men. The result of this differential change over time for men versus women is that there was no significant difference between men and women’s scores on the importance of love for entering marriage in our first cohort, t(1328) = .05, ns, but a difference (women rating love as more important than men) in the most recent cohort, t(650) = 5.51, p < .001.

Discussion

In this research, we gained a new understanding of the impact that gender and other individual difference variables have on young Americans’ beliefs as to the importance of love for both entering and maintaining (vs. leaving) a marriage. We also examined whether men and women’s attitudes as to the necessity of love in marriage have changed (in the wake of social changes) since Kephart’s (1967) study and over the 16 years of this study.

Gender Differences in Love as a Prerequisite for Marriage

As we discussed earlier, in the half century since Kephart’s (1967) original study (which found that women were less likely than men to insist that love must be the basis of marriage), society has changed markedly. In other studies conducted since Kephart’s (1967) original study, researchers have found that most American men and women would refuse to marry without love (Allgeier & Wiederman, 1991; Levine et al., 1995; Simpson et al., 1986; Sprecher & Toro-Morn, 2002). In the present study, we secured similar results—most men and women insisted on love as a basis of marriage.

When comparing our data with those of Kephart’s (1967), we found that men’s preferences about love as a basis of marriage (compared with women’s) appeared to have remained relatively stable. However, today’s women were much more likely than women in Kephart’s day to say “no,” they would not marry without love. In fact, in the most recent cohorts of our student sample, women were found to be more concerned about love as a basis of marriage than were men. Kephart (1967) argued that women were less likely than men to insist that love be critically important when contemplating a marriage because women were likely forced at the time to be more pragmatic than men when making marital decisions. In that era, husbands were still more likely than wives to determine a family’s social and financial status. Simpson et al. (1986), in attempting to explain why they found no gender differences in the samples they obtained from college students in 1976 and 1984, pointed out that there had been enormous changes in society since the mid-1960s, including greater proportions of women seeking college education and entering the workforce than ever before. Sprecher and Toro-Morn (2002) used similar explanations in interpreting their (similar) data. The cohorts of young adults represented in our study not only possessed opportunities that women in the 1960s did not have, but they also were socialized by mothers who possessed these opportunities. Thus, it is possible that when women are unconstrained by practical considerations, they actually emphasize love as a prerequisite for marriage to a greater degree than do men. Other theorists have offered additional explanations for men and women’s increasing similarity in matters of the heart. The erotic plasticity theory (Baumeister, 2000) argues that due to evolutionary pressures, women’s attitudes toward love and sex are more susceptible to cultural influences and opportunities than are men’s.

In this study, in the time frame (16 years) of the survey, we found few changes in attitudes. We did find, though, that the degree to which men found it important that love be a basis of marriage decreased over the 16 years of our study while women’s beliefs about love’s importance for marriage increased (albeit not significantly so; the changes since Kephart’s (1967) study in women’s desires are marked, however). The result, as discussed above, is that no gender difference was found in beliefs about the importance of love in our earliest cohort of students, but within the most recent one, women actually had a stronger love–marriage belief than men. This was found, however, only for love as a basis for entering marriage, and not for love as a basis for the maintenance (vs. the ending) of marriage.

Although a comparison of Kephart’s (1967) study with research conducted more recently (e.g., Simpson et al., 1986) and with the findings of our study would suggest that love as a basis for marriage has become more important over time, especially for women, it is also possible that Kephart’s findings are the isolated, aberrant findings. In fact, a rarely cited observation comes from the authors of a classic 1950s text in marriage and family (Burgess & Wallin, 1953). As cited in Berscheid and Walster (1978), Burgess and Wallin (1953) proclaimed: “The expected, approved, and sanctioned precondition to marriage in American society is falling in love. According to our mores, love is the only right basis for marriage.” Burgess and Wallin (1953) backed this observation up with data. Similar to Kephart, they asked college students about love as a basis for marriage. Their question was: “Do you think a person should ever marry one whom he or she does not love?” As reported in Berscheid and Walster (1978), a similar percent of men (82%) and women (80%) said no in response to the question, percentages more in line with those from Simpson et al. (1986) and our study than those from Kephart (1967).

Other Individual Difference Predictors of Love as a Prerequisite for Marriage

This study goes beyond past research by examining other individual difference predictors of love–marriage beliefs. Among the demographic variables considered in this study, only race had an effect on the importance of love for entering marriage. Whites were more likely than Blacks to indicate that love should be the prerequisite for marriage. These results were obtained controlling for social class; social class, however, was not found to be associated with beliefs about the importance of love for entering marriage. There is a race gap in marriage in the United States, with Blacks marrying at a lower rate than Whites (Goldstein & Kenney, 2001). Our results, however, indicate that the gap is not due to Blacks’ lack of interest in marriage; Blacks were actually more willing (than Whites) to marry without love. These results suggest that Blacks may be more pragmatic about entering marriage and more likely to consider the value of other factors beyond love in their decision to marry.

We also found evidence that self-esteem, sociosexuality, and attachment style were each associated with the importance of love for entering marriage. First, among both men and women, those who had higher self-esteem were more likely to believe that love is necessary for entering marriage. These results are consistent with other findings that indicate that higher self-esteem and self-worth are associated with optimism about relationships and mate selection preferences for more desirable traits in a partner (e.g., Murray et al., 1996). Second, sociosexuality was found to be associated with a lesser likelihood of insisting on love for the entrance to marriage, although for women only. We suspect that the social changes that we discussed earlier in this article will increase the number of young people who consider themselves to be unrestricted (at least during their college days) and thus may increase the importance of sociosexuality for predicting men’s and women’s attitudes toward love and marriage. Third, those who possessed a secure attachment style (compared with those who had an insecure attachment style) were more likely to insist on love for the entrance to marriage. This finding is consistent with previous research on other beliefs and patterns of behavior that have been associated with people with a secure attachment style, including the emphasis on love, commitment, and comfort with intimate relationships (e.g., Hatfield & Rapson, 2010).

Beliefs About the Importance of Love for the Maintenance of Marriage

We also examined young adults’ beliefs about the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage. Although Kephart (1967) had not asked about the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage, Simpson et al. (1986) had included questions on this topic, and similar questions have been used in other research (e.g., Sprecher & Toro-Morn, 2002). Similar to the prior research, we found that young adults were less insistent that love be present to maintain a marriage than to enter marriage.

We also found in the present study that women, to a greater degree than men, believed that love was important for the maintenance of marriage. Furthermore, this gender difference was consistent across the 16 years of data collection (i.e., no differences were found over time in this belief for either men or women). Although Simpson et al. (1986) did not find a gender difference in the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage, the social changes we referred to above may have also given women the freedom to emphasize love for the maintenance of marriage and the willingness to abandon a loveless marriage. Our results are consistent with Sprecher and Toro-Morn (2002), who found a similar gender difference.

Other individual difference variables that were found in the present study to be associated with viewing love as important for the maintenance of marriage were having parents who were divorced, being less religious, and being unrestricted in sociosexuality. That is, this constellation of traits was associated with the belief that it was okay to end a marriage if love has disappeared, which reflects a view of the importance of love for marriage but also a tolerant attitude toward divorce. Indeed, because of the way that the items on the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage were worded, the items likely assessed not only the importance of love but also willingness to divorce. It is difficult to know from our data whether, for example, those who had parents who divorced, those who were less religious, and those who were unrestricted in their sexuality were really less likely than their counterparts to view love as important in marriage, or simply that they had more tolerant attitudes about divorce. Further examination of this issue could be a topic for future research.

Strengths, Limitations, and Future Directions

As is true of all studies, however, there are limitations to the study. The sample was a convenient one, obtained from one university setting. More specifically, the data were obtained from predominantly White, Midwestern, middle-class college students in a sociology class. A sample from a more diverse population would, of course, have been desirable. With greater variability, we might have secured more powerful effects of the variables we considered. In fact, with the exception of that for gender, the effect sizes for our significant results were modest. Second, some of the measures could be improved, for both the criterion variables and the predictor variables. For example, although categorical ways of measuring attachment was popular when the study began, a dimension approach is more common today (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). As another example, our social class measure did not include any questions about parents’ occupations or family income, although both are components of social class and could be associated with the importance of love for marriage versus marrying for other practical reasons. In terms of the criterion variable, more questions could have been asked about love as a basis of marriage and about love for the maintenance of marriage. In particular, when asking about love as a basis for marriage, it might be useful to not only ask about willingness to marry with the absence of passionate love and the presence of companionate love, but the reverse as well. In regard to measuring the importance of love for the maintenance of marriage, it would be important to separate the importance of love for marriage from willingness to divorce.

Despite the above limitations, this study possessed many strengths. The major strength was 16 years of data collection. This allowed us to examine whether there were changes in gender differences in love as a basis for marriage over many years. The exceptionally large sample also made it possible to examine certain predictors of love attitudes that might not be possible to examine in typical smaller, college samples (e.g., our race comparisons). Another strength of this study is that we considered how several individual difference variables were associated with beliefs about the connection of love with marriage (very little past research has considered individual differences beyond gender).

We encourage additional research on love attitudes, including how they change over time. In considering how love attitudes and beliefs change over cohorts of students, researchers may consider other types of love as well. Several typologies of love have been developed in the field of relationships. For example, future research could consider the impact of historical time (as well as other factors, such as culture) on the prevalence of different love styles (e.g., Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986), on different components of love including trust, passion, and commitment (Sternberg, 1986), and on nonromantic types of love such as friendship love and compassionate love (Sprecher & Fehr, 2005). In addition, longitudinal research could be conducted with a sample of participants throughout young adulthood to examine how their love attitudes change as they approach marriage.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

References

Allgeier

E. R.

Wiederman

N. W.

(1991). Love and mate selection in the 1990s. Free Inquiry, 11, 25-27.

Bartholomew

Horowitz

L. M.

(1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 226-244.

Baumeister

R. F.

(2000). Gender differences in erotic plasticity: The female sex drive as socially flexible and responsive. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 347-374.

Berscheid

(1988). Some comments on love’s anatomy or whatever happened to old-fashioned lust? In Sternberg

R. J.

Barnes

M. L.

(Eds.), The psychology of love (pp. 359-374). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Berscheid

Walster

H. E.

(1978). Interpersonal attraction (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Bradbury

T. N.

Karney

B. R.

(2014). Intimate relationships (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Burgess

E. W.

Wallin

(1953). Engagement and marriage. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott.

Coltrane

(1998). Gender and families. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.

Ellison

C. G.

Wolfinger

N. H.

Ramos-Wada

A. I.

(2013). Attitudes toward marriage, divorce, cohabitation, and casual sex among working-age Latinos: Does religion matter? Journal of Family Issues, 34, 295-322.

10.

Fletcher

G. J. O.

Simpson

J. A.

Thomas

Giles

(1999). Ideals in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 72-89.

11.

Goldstein

J. R.

Kenney

C. T.

(2001). Marriage delayed or marriage foregone? New cohort forecasts of first marriage for U.S. women. American Sociological Review, 66, 506-519.

12.

Hatfield

Lieberman

(2006). Lust and disgust: Cross-cultural and evolutionary perspectives. In Sternberg

R. J.

Weis

(Eds.), The new psychology of love (pp. 274-297). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

13.

Hatfield

Rapson

(2005). Love and sex: Cross-cultural perspectives. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

14.

Hatfield

Rapson

R. L.

(2010). Culture, attachment style, and romantic relationships. In Erdman

K-M.

(Eds.), Attachment: Expanding the cultural connections (pp. 227-242). London, England: Routledge/Taylor and Francis.

15.

Hazan

Shaver

P. R.

(1987). Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 511-524.

16.

Hendrick

S. S.

(1986). A theory and method of love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 392-402.

17.

Hyde

J. S.

(2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60, 581-592.

18.

Kapinus

C. A.

(2004). The effect of parents’ attitudes toward divorce on offspring’s attitudes: Gender and parental divorce as mediating factors. Journal of Family Issues, 25, 112-135.

19.

Kephart

W. M.

(1967). Some correlates of romantic love. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 29, 470-479.

20.

Leary

M. R.

Tambor

E. S.

Terdal

S. K.

Downs

D. L.

(1995). Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 518-530.

21.

Levine

Sato

Hashimoto

Verma

(1995). Love and marriage in eleven cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 26, 554-571.

22.

Mikulincer

Shaver

P. R.

(2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

23.

Miles

N. J.

Servaty-Seib

H. L.

(2010). Parental marital status and young adult offspring’s attitudes about marriage and divorce. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 51, 209-220.

24.

Miller

R. S.

(2012). Intimate relationships. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

25.

Murray

S. L.

Holmes

J. G.

Griffin

D. W.

(1996). The benefits of positive illusions: Idealization and the construction of satisfaction in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 79-98.

26.

Rauer

A. J.

Pettit

G. S.

Lansford

J. E.

Bates

J. E.

Dodge

K. A.

(2013). Romantic relationship patterns in young adulthood and their developmental antecedents. Developmental Psychology, 49, 2159-2171.

27.

Regan

P. C.

(2008). The mating game: A primer on love, sex, and marriage (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

28.

Rosenberg

(1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

29.

Shaver

P. R.

Hazan

Bradshaw

(1988). Love as attachment: The integration of three behavioral systems. In Sternberg

R. J.

Barnes

(Eds.), The psychology of love (pp. 68-99). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

30.

Simpson

J. A.

Campbell

Berscheid

(1986). The association between romantic love and marriage: Kephart (1967) twice revisited. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 12, 363-372.

31.

Simpson

J. A.

Gangestad

S. W.

(1991). Individual differences in sociosexuality: Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 870-883.

32.

Simpson

J. A.

Gangestad

S. W.

(1992). Sociosexuality and romantic partner choice. Journal of Personality, 60, 31-51.

33.

Simpson

J. A.

Wilson

C. L.

Winterheld

H. A.

(2004). Sociosexuality and romantic relationships. In Harvey

J. H.

Wenzel

Sprecher

(Eds.), The handbook of sexuality in close relationships (pp. 87-112). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

34.

Snell

W. E.

Jr. Finney

P. P.

(1983). Measuring relational aspects of the self: Relational-esteem, relational-depression, and relational-preoccupation. Contemporary Social Psychology, 17, 44-55.

35.

Sprecher

Aron

Hatfield

Cortese

Potapova

Levitskaya

(1994). Love: American style, Russian style, and Japanese style. Personal Relationships, 1, 349-369.

36.

Sprecher

Fehr

(2005). Compassionate love for close others and humanity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 629-652.

37.

Sprecher

Toro-Morn

(2002). A study of men and women from different sides of earth to determine if men are from Mars and women are from Venus in their beliefs about love and romantic relationships. Sex Roles, 46, 131-147.

38.

Sternberg

R. J.

(1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review, 93, 119-135.

39.

Streiner

D. L.

(2003). Being inconsistent about consistency: When coefficient alpha does and doesn’t matter. Journal of Personality Assessment, 80, 217-222.

40.

Sullivan

K. T.

(2001). Understanding the relationship between religiosity and marriage: An investigation of the immediate and longitudinal effects of religiosity on newlywed couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 15, 610-626.

41.

Thornton

Young-DeMarco

(2001). Four decades of trends in attitudes toward family issues in the United States: The 1960s through the 1990s. Journal of Marriage and Family, 63, 1009-1037.

42.

Wells

B. E.

Twenge

J. M.

(2005). Changes in young people’s sexual behavior and attitudes, 1943-1999: A cross-temporal meta-analysis. Review of General Psychology, 9, 249-261.