Although the original typology of love relationships in Steinberg's theory was developed as a result of interviews with students at the university in which he worked, external support was gained by Fehr (1988), who used qualitative methods to ask participants to describe love. According to Aron & Westbay (1996), the categories that emerged from this study were very similar to those in Sternberg's (1986) original theory. Therefore, the typology can be commended for being reliable even when different research methods are used on different populations.
The triangular love theory also has the avantage of having shed light on gender differences. When relationships are starting out women typically endorse a different 'story' to men. Women are more likely to see a relationship as an exciting and challenging journey, whereas men are more likely to place more expectation on physical and sexual factors in the relationship (Sternberg, 1998).
Another advantage of this theory is that it offers a more complex explanation of love than other theories, such as the three-factor theory proposed by Hatfield & Walster (1981) which only distinguishes between companionate and passionate love.
Love can also be described as an attachment process. Bowlby's (1969) theory of attachment suggests that infants' personalities are determined by how they are treated by their caregivers, and Ainsworth (1967) produced from her Strange Situation research three attachment styles: secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant. These, according to Bowlby's (1969) theory, are likely to affect how the infants relate with others later in life, as the mother's behaviour creates an internal working model of relationships which the infants will then use as a foundation for future relationships.
Hazan & Shaver (1987) extended Bowlby's continuity hypothesis, predicting that attachment types early in life affect how love is experienced as an adult, how adults view relationships and what memories the adults have of their childhood relationship with their mothers. For example securely attached people are hypothesised to have positive relationships and to have a positive image of their mother-child relationship as a child, but insecure-avoidant adults will be fearful of proximity and view their childhood relationship with their mother as being cold and lonely. This is supported by the 'love quiz' (Hazan & Shaver, 1987), a questionnaire designed to find links between childhood attachment type and current love experiences. It was found that there was indeed a link between the two, and in such a way that supported the hypothesised links. Furthermore, a number of other studies have supported the idea of attachments determining later relationships, such as Feeney & Noller (1990), who found that securely attached people had the most long-term enduring romantic relationships.
In addition, Shaver et al. (1988) claimed that what we describe as 'love' is actually an integration of attachment, caregiving and sexuality, the first two of which are developed in infancy. Sexuality is described as knowledge about how to care for others, indicating that avoidant individuals are more prone to the belief that sex without love is pleasurable, and resistant individuals are likely to be determined to cling onto their partners and be possessive.
Research such as the love quiz can be criticised for being retrospective, and therefore for being flawed. However, findings from McCarthy (1999) suggest that the theory holds using longitudinal data as well: he found that women who had been classified as avoidant in infancy had the greatest amount of hardship in forming and maintaining relationships, wereas securely attached women had the greatest success.
Another methodological criticism of such research is that it is largely correlational, so it is impossible to deduce what causes what. Kagan (1984) suggests that attachment type (and subsequently love experiences) are not determined by childhood treatment by caregivers, but instead by one's innate temperament. Kagan's temperament hypothesis suggests that we gain our personality type, attachment type and our reaction to love and relationships as a result of our temperament, and that this is a predisposing factor present before birth. This is acceptable as an explanation as it explains why there is a continuity of behaviour throughout a person's life with regard to relationship behaviours. This view is nonetheless deterministic, and cannot explain how differences occur.
All of these explanations offer an account for how we experience love and how this develops and progresses: both use methods of classification of love (i.e. typology and attachment types, respectively) and both provide explanations (i.e. stories and an internal working model). This may, however, be a reductionist view, as it may not be possible to categorise love in such a manner, as it is largely understood to be a qualitative phenomenon (e.g. Rubin, 1974).
