Evaluating Love Languages From a Relationship Science Perspective

Empirical Review of Love Languages

• Chapman (2015) posits systematic differences in expressing/receiving love, labeled love languages.

• Three core assumptions:

  • Each person has a primary love language.

  • There are five love languages: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, physical touch.

  • Relationship problems stem from partners speaking different love languages.

• The key to happy relationships is discovering and speaking each other’s primary love language.

• Chapman (2015) developed the Love Language Personal Profile (LLPP), a measure to identify primary love languages.

Assumption 1: Primary Love Language

• Studies contradict the idea of a primary love language.

• People endorse all five love languages as meaningful.

• Ratings on Likert-type measures are highly skewed, with most ratings above the midpoint for all five love languages.

• A person’s primary love language, as identified by the forced-choice LLPP measure, is not reliably associated with their scores on continuous measures.

• People value all five love languages, possibly in different contexts.

Assumption 2: Five Love Languages

• Studies found substantial positive correlations (rs = .54–.75) among ratings of all five love languages.

• Results across studies are inconsistent, finding support for three-factor, four-factor, and five-factor structures, deviating from the proposed five-love-languages structure.

• The five love languages may not encompass all meaningful ways people express and feel love.

• Research identified seven distinct relationship maintenance behaviors, some overlapping with Chapman’s but others not captured (e.g., integrating a partner into one’s social network).

• The love languages do not include support for a partner’s autonomy or personal goals.

Assumption 3: Speaking Each Other’s Love Language

• No empirical support for couples matching in primary love language reporting higher relationship satisfaction.

• Expressions of all love languages were positively associated with relationship satisfaction regardless of a person’s preference, with very little evidence of matching effects (Chopik et al., 2023).

Insights From Relationship Science: Love as a Nutritionally Balanced Diet

• The love languages' popularity stems from a quick diagnostic tool for self-reflection and a straightforward way to improve relationships.

• The love-languages metaphor could be replaced with another simple, intuitive metaphor: The process of maintaining successful, loving relationships is akin to keeping a healthy, balanced diet.

• The healthy-diet metaphor suggests that people need multiple essential nutrients to maintain satisfying relationships.

• The best relationships involve partners spending time together, expressing appreciation, showing affection, helping and supporting each other, and making each other feel special.

• People should ensure they have a nutritionally balanced relationship and discuss any imbalances with their partner.

• Successful relationships require partners to have a comprehensive understanding of one another’s needs and put in the effort to respond to those needs.

• Researchers need to communicate science in a language that the public can more readily connect with and understand.

The method described in the notes involves an empirical review of the love languages framework, which includes examining studies and research related to its core assumptions. This involves:

1. Investigating whether people truly have a primary love language.

2. Analyzing if there is evidence supporting the existence of five distinct love languages.

3. Determining if couples matching in primary love language report higher relationship satisfaction.

The review also proposes an alternative metaphor—comparing successful relationships to a balanced diet—to better explain the complexities of maintaining satisfying relationships.