Ethnicity Effect on Romance

 

         Theorist have begun to speculate on how culture and ethnicity affect love. The vote is split. The evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist believe that love is a cultural universal. Historians theorized on the socio-evolution of the concept of love. Cross-cultural theorist believe that culture and ethnicity heavily impact how men and women deal with love and emotions. So to test their theory, they sampled 124 men and 184 women from the University of Hawaii with various relationship statuses, educational backgrounds, and ethnic backgrounds. They were tasked to complete a questionnaire assessing individualism/collectivism, attachment style, likelihood of being in love, passionate love, and companionate love.

          Ethnicity did have a significant effect on individualism/collectivism where European-American was the most individualistic and Chinese-Americans were the most collective. Ethnicity also had a significant effect on the likelihood of being in love with Pacific Islanders having the highest chance and European-Americans having the lowest. There were negligible differences in passionate and companionate love and the theory of different attachment styles was disproved.

       I agree with that ethnicity does play a major role in how love is viewed and approached. I expected that there could be differences in the I/C and minimal differences in passionate and companionate love. However, I was quite surprised that there were difference in the likelihood of being in love and minimal difference in the attachment style of love. So we saw the effects of ethnicity on love. But as they said, it was a limited sample. Do you think the fact that the students were all English speaking had any effect on the results? How about Westernization? Then there’s also those that didn’t participate in the sample. How would they be ranked in this? That’s the problem with samples. They were too small to be conclusive and they aren’t representative of every ethnicity, religion, and culture in the world. There are around 7 billion people in the world right now and 300 people is less than even a percent. But it is worth mentioning that they determined the yes or no question.

Doherty, R. William, Elaine Hatfield, Kari Thompson, and Patricia Choo. "Cultural and Ethnic Influences on Love and Attachment." Personal Relationships 1.4 (1994): 391-98. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.