Los Angeles, CA (AUGUST 17, 2011) The importance of friendship in romantic love and the time it takes to perceive falling in love are two key differences in how residents in the US, Lithuania and Russia see romantic love, according to a study recently published in Cross-Cultural Research, a SAGE journal.
The study examined how men and women defined romantic love through the use of surveys and used the results to find some commonalities and differences among the countries. Researchers found that residents of all three countries listed "being together" as their top requirement of romantic love. From there, the notion of romantic love seemed to diverge with the US respondents having different views than Lithuanian and Russian counterparts.
"The idea that romantic love was temporary and inconsequential was frequently cited by Lithuanian and Russian informants," wrote authors Victor C. de Munck, Andrey Korotayev, Janina de Munck and Darya Khaltourina. "but not by U.S. informants. Furthermore, we noted that expressions of 'comfort /love' and 'friendship' were frequently cited by the U.S. informants and seldom to never by our Eastern European informants."
Additionally, the data looked at how long it took before respondents fell in love. Americans took longer than their Eastern European counterparts with more than 58 percent saying it look two months to a year. On the contrary, more than 90 percent of Lithuanians report falling in love within a month.
Find out more by reading the article, "Cross-Cultural Analysis of Models of Romantic Love Among U.S. Residents, Russians, and Lithuanians," in Cross-Cultural Research. The article is available free for a limited time at: http://ccr.sagepub.com/content/45/2/128.full.pdf+html .
Cross-Cultural Research (CCR) publishes peer-reviewed articles that describe cross-cultural and comparative studies in all human sciences. Each issue, published quarterly, examines topics that span societies, nations and cultures, providing strategies for the systematic testing of theories about human society and behavior.
Impact Factor: 0.641
Ranked: 43 out of 83 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary
Source: 2010 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2011)
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com
Journal
Cross-Cultural Research