Speaking the Language of Love: On Whether Chapman’s (1992) Claims Stand Up to Empirical Testing

ABSTRACT

This paper explores and tests the claims made by Chapman (1992) in his popular press book, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to your Mate. One of Chapman's fundamental claims is that couples where partners receive their respective preferred love languages experience higher quality relationships than couples who do not. Couples (N = 83) reported their preferences for and tendencies to demonstrate Chapman's five love languages. They also completed measures of relational quality. Descriptive results revealed different potential couple combinations in terms of feeling and giving preferred love languages, and suggest that few couples meet Chapman's criteria for high relational quality. After collapsing couple combinations to reflect matched, mismatched, or partially matched couples (in terms of feeling and giving their love language preferences), a significant result surfaced regarding assessments of relational quality. More specifically, matched and mismatched couples’ reports of relational quality exhibited less discrepancy than partially matched couples. Other results from tests of ANOVA and MANOVA provided little empirical support for Chapman’s notions of love languages.

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