Article2001

Love and the commitment problem in romantic relations and friendship.

Gian C. Gonzaga · Dacher J. Keltner · Esme A. Londahl · Michael D. Smith

321 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Personality and Social Psychology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Attachment and Relationship Dynamics Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion

Abstract

On the basis of the proposition that love promotes commitment, the authors predicted that love would motivate approach, have a distinct signal, and correlate with commitment-enhancing processes when relationships are threatened. The authors studied romantic partners and adolescent opposite-sex friends during interactions that elicited love and threatened the bond. As expected, the experience of love correlated with approach-related states (desire, sympathy). Providing evidence for a nonverbal display of love, four affiliation cues (head nods, Duchenne smiles, gesticulation, forward leans) correlated with self-reports and partner estimates of love. Finally, the experience and display of love correlated with commitment-enhancing processes (e.g., constructive conflict resolution, perceived trust) when the relationship was threatened. Discussion focused on love, positive emotion, and relationships.

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 321 citations exist upstream.

References

1992A power primer.1969Attachment and Loss 1872The expression of the emotions in man and animals.1987Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process.1998What Good Are Positive Emotions?2008Social psychology: handbook of basic principles 1989A secure base: parent-child attachment and healthy human development 1993Sexual Strategies Theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating.

Cited by

2008Signs of Socioeconomic Status 2007The effects of message recipients' power before and after persuasion: A self-validation analysis.2012To have and to hold: Gratitude promotes relationship maintenance in intimate bonds.2012What is shared, what is different? Core relational themes and expressive displays of eight positive emotions 2014The Sociocultural Appraisals, Values, and Emotions (SAVE) Framework of Prosociality: Core Processes from Gene to Meme 2006Romantic love and sexual desire in close relationships.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.