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Category: Project

Description: We present new evidence on the prevalence, dynamics, and hedonic correlates of experienced love from data describing the emotion, well-being, and time-use of a diverse sample of 3,867 US adults every half-hour for ten days (N=1.12 million) supplemented by a hedonic snapshot from an additional 7,255 adults. The findings allude to the seemingly functional and adaptive nature of love and to similarities across binary gender—men and women report comparable degrees of (passionate) partner love overall, elevated partner love after prolonged same-day separations, substantially elevated well-being in love’s presence, and reduced—but not extinguished— partner love in more mature marital cohorts. The gender differences we do find—women report more child love than men and men exhibit a less pronounced reduction in partner love across cohorts—are also consistent with functional accounts of love that recognize the varying role of men and women in the formation and sustenance of relationships.