Dutton and Aron (1974) conducted an experiment that supports the three-factor of love theory. Participants were interviewed about scenic attractions whilst at a park. An attractive woman interviewed the participants; half of which were on a high suspension bridge and half of which were on a low bridge. Dutton and Aron predicted that the men on the high suspension bridge would be in a state of high physiological arousal and so might think they were sexually aroused, whereas those on the low bridge were less likely to feel sexual attraction due to low physiological arousal. To assess sexual attraction, they were asked to describe a picture where people’s feelings are unconsciously expressed through it. This is criticised because the men may have given socially desirable answers or have had experimenter bias. Therefore they may have said something that is unrelated to sexual attraction and the results may not be valid. They found that men on the high suspension bridge showed greater attraction than those on the low bridge. However, this study is criticised because the sample group is biased as it was only based on men. It therefore cannot be generalised to women because they have different views about love. Women may not see the interviewer as a possible relationship like men and therefore would not assume the physiological arousal was sexual attraction. It is also not a naturalistic study therefore it lacks ecological validity. Measuring physiological arousal through the means of a high suspension bridge is unreliable and not valid, and if the experiment was undertaken in a natural way then the results may be different.
Sternberg devised the triangular theory love (1986), which suggests that there are three things needed for a complete relationship, these being passion, which relates to intensity and physical attraction. Intimacy refers to the warmth, closeness, caring and support the partners share. Last is commitment where the person makes decisions about staying with someone. If any one of these three is less than the others, than the relationship moves into companionate, fatuous or romantic. This theory is criticised because it suggests that there should be equal weighting between the items for a good relationship. However this is not necessarily true as relationships such as arranged marriages perhaps do not have as much passion or intimacy as commitment. Therefore it has cultural bias. Another criticism is that some of the components of the theory are vague. For example, the theory doesn’t state what the commitment is, i.e. for financial reasons or due to their children involved.
According to Rubin’s love-scale and liking-scale, love is made up of three elements. The first is attachment i.e. the physical and emotional bond between the couple. The other two are caring and intimacy. Rubin wrote a lot of questions based on his understanding of the terms ‘love’ and ‘like’. He asked participants to sort the items into ‘love’ and ‘liking’ sets. He then picked 70 items and gave them to 200 undergraduate students. The students were asked to answer in terms of how they felt towards their partner and towards a friend of the opposite sex. Using a statistical analysis, Rubin picked 13 items measuring love, and 13 items measuring liking. Items from the love scale included “I feel very possessive towards [partner]”, to measure attachment. Items from the liking scale included “I would highly recommend [friend] for a responsible job”. This theory is good because the sample group was based on a large number of people; therefore it has high validity. However, the fact that the research was only undertaken on undergraduate students means that the sample group cannot be generalised to the whole population as students may have different views on love. For example, most students are young and will therefore see love as having lower investment and being more of a short-term thing rather than long-term. Rubin’s scale is good because it can be applied to same-sex friendships, unlike most other love theories. However, it doesn’t clearly define the difference between love and liking. Sternberg and Grajek (1984) found that there were high correlations between love and liking and therefore this means that Rubin’s scale doesn’t discriminate very well between love and liking. There are also gender differences – women liked men more than men liked women. A general criticism of all of the theories mentioned is that they don’t take into account individual differences. For example, everyone has different views about love and so people might not stick to the same things that the theories mention.
