DOCUMENT RESUME ED 386 676 CG 026 559 AUTHOR Arnold, Margery E.; Thompson, Bruce TITLE Love Style Perceptions in Relation to Personality Function: Implications for Counseling and Assessment. PUB DATE Nov 95 NOTE 25p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association (Biloxi, MS, November 9, 1995). PUB TYPE Reports - Research/Technical (143) -- Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Attitude Measures; Counseling; Evaluation; *Love; *Personality; Social Cognition; Validity IDENTIFIERS *Hendrick Hendrick Love Attitudes Scale; Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory ABSTRACT Issues involving love often arise in counseling, because love is so fundamental to the experience of our humanity. But theories of love and related assessments are only at a primitive stage of development. The present study explored the construct validity of scores on a popular measure of love styles, by examining relationships between love styles and scores on a measure of personality dysfunction. Data was collected from 144 graduate and undergraduate students who completed the Hendrick-Hendrick Love Attitudes Scale and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II. Results suggest that the Love Attitudes Scale used to score the subjects' perception of love style may be construct valid. Results also indicate that counselors must possess an understanding of love, if they are to facilitate the healthy functioning of their clients. Also included in this document are tables and appendices that display the results of the subjects scores of love style perception. Contains 28 references. (Author/SR) lovems95.wp1 10/20/95 LOVE STYLE PERCEPTIONS IN RELATION TO PERSONALITY FUNCTION: IMPLICATIONS FOR COUNSELING AND ASSESSMENT Margery E. Arnold Bruce Thompson Texas A&M University Texas A&M University 77843-4225 and Baylor College of Medicine RUNNING HEAD: Love Styles Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association, Biloxi, MS, November 9, 1995. We appreciate the assistance of Tammi Vacha-Haase, Kavita Murthy, Andrea Rotzein, and Steve Sivo in collecting these data. Abstract Issues involving love often arise in counseling, because love is so fundamental to the experience of our humanity. But theories of love and related assessments are only at a primitive stage of development. The present study explored the construct validity of scores on a popular measure of love styles, by examining relationships between love styles and scores on a measure of personality dysfunction. Love is among the most fundamental aspects of the experience of being human, and thus frequently becomes an issue during counseling. Freud (1924) himself decades ago argued that, "A strong ego is protection against disease, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill, and we must fall ill if, in consequence of frustration, we cannot love" (p. 42). Similarly, Sternberg and Grajek (1984) noted that Love can be among the most intense of human emotions, and is certainly one of the most sought after. People have been known to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill in its name, yet no one knows quite what it is. (p. 320) The nature of love also interests persons other than academics, counselors, and counselors' clients, if the popular press is any indication (cf. "Finding Out", 1992; Gray, 1993). Unfortunately, previous empirical research has provided counselors with little empirical basis for either understanding or assessing love phenomena, because historically researchers have presumed that love is too mysterious and too intangible for scientific study (Wrightsman & Deaux, 1981). However, more recently love has again become respectable as an area of study (C. Hendrick & S. Hendrick, 1986). Work by Rubin (1984) and by Tennov (1979) illustrates efforts to develop science in this area of inquiry. Two distinct traditions have emerged in contemporary research regarding love phenomena, as summarized by Thompson and Borrello (1992a). The first series of studies is inductive and includes attempts to generate new theory about the nature of love. The second series of studies was of interest in the present inquiry; this series involves the deductively-grounded work (Borrello & Thompson, 1990a, 1990b; C. Hendrick & S. Hendrick, 1989; S. Hendrick & C. Hendrick, 1987a, 1987b; Murthy, Rotzein & Vacha- Haase, in press; Rotzien, Vacha-Haase, Murthy, Davenport, & Thompson, 1994; Thompson & Borrello, 1987, 1992b) that invokes a theoretical typology of love styles. These studies have employed one of the versions of the Love Attitudes Scale developed by the Hendricks. The Hendrick-Hendrick assessment measures attitudes regarding each of the six love styles conceptualized by Lee (1973/1976). Lee's theory posits three primary love styles: (a) erns, which is romantic or passionate love, (b) ludus, which is game playing love, and (c) storge, which is friendship love. Lee suggested that three secondary styles are formed as compounds of the primary styles, but still have their own unique properties and characters: (d) mania, which is a compound of ludus and eros, (e) pragma, which is a compound of storge and ludus, and (f) agape, which is a compound of eros and storge.' One important counseling-related controversy involves whether lovers can be so enmeshed or co-dependent that their love is dysfunctional (cf. Thompson & Borrello, 1987). The relationships between love styles and personality dysfunction also warrant exploration, for example, to test Freud's theoretical proposition that dysfunctional personalities do not love or love dysfunctionally. In addition to providing insight regarding love phenomena, studies of these relationships also shed light on the construct validity of scores from the Hendrick-Hendrick assessment. Of course, studying substantive phenomena and the measurement integrity of assessment scores are mutually reinforcing, because "theory building and construct measurement are [invariably] joint bootstrap operations" (C. Hendrick & S. Hendrick, 1986, p. 393). Method Subjects In the present study we used data provided by 144 graduate and undergraduate students enrolled at a large university. The sample was predominantly white (90.3%). There were more women (80.6%) than men in the sample. The mean age was 21.24 (SD=3.59). We considered our sample size to be somewhat small, but sufficient for a preliminary investigation of relationships between perceptions of love styles and personality dysfunction scores. One consideration in selecting the sample was cost. The personality assessment we employed was both relatively time-consuming and expensive to purchase and score. It was our view that interesting results in our initial study might then warrant additional resources being expended in related future work. Instruments The Hendrick-Hendrick assessment (C. Hendrick & S. Hendrick, 1990) measures attitudes regarding each of the six love styles conceptualized by Lee (1973/1976). Specifically, the instrument evaluates agreement/disagreement with seven items measuring each love style, using a 1 to 7 Likert-scale format. For example, one Ludus item asserts, "I try to keep my lover a little uncertain about my commitment to him/her." Total scale scores are then computed for each style by summing responses to each of the seven items on a given scale. The six scores on this measure constituted one variable set in our study. Personality function was measured using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (Millon, 1990). This widely-used and respected instrument yields scores on each of 25 clinical scales (e.g., dependent, schizoid, borderline, narcissistic, bipolar). The measure also includes scales that can be used to detect invalid protocols. The 144 subjects employed in the present analysis all provided usable data, according to protocol validity criteria presented within the manual. Scores of an additional four subjects (a = 148-4 = 144) had already been previously excluded for failure to meet these criteria. Results We conducted two analyses in our exploratory examinations of relationships between personality disorder scores and love-styles perception scores. First, we examined the bivariate product-moment correlations coefficients between perceptions of the six love styles and scores on the 25 MCMI-II scales. These coefficients are reported in Table 1. INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE. We also conducted multiple regression analyses using the 25 MCMI-II scores to predict scores on perceptions of the six love styles. We declined to succumb to the temptation to conduct stepwise regression analyses, arising from the fact that the number of predictor variables was 25, because the deleterious, evil effects of stepwise analyses are now so well documented (Snyder, 1991; Thompson, 1989, 1995), and we knew better. Instead, we conducted all-possible-subsets analyses to determine the R2 for each possible combination of the variables for all possible sizes of predictor variable sets (i.e., 1, 2, 3, ...25). Figure 1 presents a line graph of the largest R2 values for each of the 25 predictor-variable set-sizes when predicting each of the six love styles. INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE. Since our primary interest was in generally describing the most noteworthy relationships, we decided a priori to conduct and report complete regression analyses for each of the six love styles only for the best variable set of the size, four predictor variables. The beta weights, structure coefficients (Thompson & Borrello,