Did you know that love languages aren’t scientific or based in empiricism?
The author who conceptualized the five love languages was a pastor who noticed patterns in interactions he had during counseling sessions with couples in his church. He noticed that individuals in relationships behaved in ways that they felt demonstrated their care for their partner and the relationship, and similarly, that individuals found particiular behaviors enacted by their partner as making them feel more loved or cared for.
In his book, the author inappropriately generalizes his insights and specifies several unfounded principles regarding the implementation of love languages:
💕 People have one primary and one secondary love language for how they prefer to receive love.
🚫 Post hoc research on the subject found that people typically report the desire to experience love in all five ways equally.
💕 Speaking your partner’s love language will substantially improve the quality of your relationship.
🚫 Studies have failed to show support for the idea that demonstrating love in your partner’s love language is associated with improvements in perceptions of the relationship.
💕 You can identify a persons preferred love language by seeing how they show love to others.
🚫 Research has not found an association between how a person gives love and how they prefer to receive love.
Love languages are pseudoscience, and yet, they have invaded the lexicon of society, potentially to the detriment of relationships. In addition, this theory is being utilized by practitioners—but the tenets of theory are unfounded and inconsistent posing a potential risk to couples.
They can be a fun way to start needs-based conversations in our relationships, but we should not be held to this “theory” in our personal relationships. It is a demonstration of the dangers of inappropriately assessing data and making broad recommendations based on niche, small samples without subsequent repeated, quantitative validation.
#research #lovelanguages #relationships #interpersonalcommunication
Thanks Utah Tech University for the awesome video! It was a blast recording it with you all!
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