Category Archives: language of Love

What Love Languages Are and Whether We Should Know Them

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Over 30 years ago, Baptist pastor Gary Chapman introduced a theory of love languages, suggesting five typical ways people express and perceive love. His book “The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts” has become very popular since that time in many countries around the world. Chapman’s theory suggests that love means different things to different people. The author identified 5 different meanings and corresponding ways of expressing love. These languages of love are

  • words of affirmation (giving compliments),
  • gifts (presents big and small),
  • acts of service (helping your partner with chores or in other ways),
  • quality time (doing things together) or
  • physical touch (such as hugs, kisses or sex).

Gary Chapman claims that understanding your partner’s love language is the key to a good relationship. Many people who read his book have found it to be helpful in their relationship with a partner. This competency can have a tremendous positive impact on romantic and marital relationships.

Is the Theory of Love Languages Science or Pop Culture?

A neuroscientist and journalist, Richard Sima, discusses this question in a recent article in the Washington Post, January 15, 2024. Let’s consider some evidence.

Chapman strongly believes that almost everyone has a primary love language. And this language “tends to stay with us throughout a lifetime,” he said. According to his opinion, the only people he has encountered who say all five are equally important are those who either were always loved or never loved.

Chapman admits, “I’m not a researcher.” He said that some researchers criticizing his theory of 5 love languages interpret his work too strictly.

“I was never dogmatic to say that there’s only five love languages. I’m still open, but I’m a little more confident that these(five)are pretty much fundamental to human nature.”

Chapman said.

Some researchers, however, question the scientific validity of the concept of 5 love languages. Emily Impett, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, Canada, and her co-authors Haeyoung Gideon Park and Amy Muise  recently published an article in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science presenting an extensive review of the scientific literature on the topic (Impett et al., 2024). They concluded that core assumptions about love languages stand on shaky ground, unsupported by empirical evidence.

Their analysis of scientific publications has shown that there is no strong empirical support for the book’s three central assumptions that

  • (a) each person has a preferred love language,
  • (b) there are five love languages,
  • (c) couples are more satisfied when partners speak one another’s preferred language. 

Here are the main points of critiques:

1. Do People Have a Primary Love Language?

The existence of the person’s “primary” love language is a cornerstone of love language advice. So, a key assumption of Chapman’s book is that you need to know the primary love language your partner speaks. Researchers found that people tend to connect with several love languages, not one.

“In real life, we know that people often don’t need to make these kinds of trade-offs between do you want a partner who is going to touch you versus express love in some other way,”

Impett said.

“If that’s the core assumption, then everything that follows kind of falls apart in a lot of different ways,”

said Sara Algoe.

2. People Have More Than 5 Love Languages

Researchers show that people experience and express love in more than the five ways, or five key love languages, as defined by Chapman.

Other expressions of love are possible, such as the support of a partner’s autonomy and personal growth.

“We know that these things are really key for relationship satisfaction and might be more meaningful to couples with more egalitarian values,”

Impett said. 

“Just being nice to your mother-in-law, being on time for the opera, creating interests together, learning things together, doing novel things together. It’s a little different than just spending time together.”

said Helen Fisher

3. Having the Same Love Language May Not Lead to Relationship Satisfaction

Chapman’s theory of love languages implies that learning the love language of a partner and speaking the same love language as your partner’s would lead to a successful relationship.

However, studies show that partners who have the same primary love languages do not necessarily have higher relationship satisfaction compared to those who have different love languages.

According to Emily Impett, research suggests that perceiving expressions of love in any form leads to high relationship satisfaction.

Family therapist Dr. Gottman, co-founder with his wife Julie Gottman of the Gottman Institute, is renowned for scientific relationship research. He expressed his doubts that learning your partner’s love language is a key to relationship happiness.

“My general conclusion is that these dimensions are not very distinct conceptually, nor are they very important in terms of accounting for variation in marital happiness and sexual satisfaction,”

said Dr. Gottman.

Gottman believes that the idea of love languages focuses on the important question of partners’ needs and their satisfaction in a relationship:

“What can I do to make you feel more loved now, and help me understand where you are right now?”

Responding to all criticism, Chapman said that

“He understands that love languages aren’t “the answer to everything in marriage, for sure. But I think it could be a helpful tool for any individual or any couple that wants to enhance their relationship and especially meet each other’s need to feel loved.”

Love Songs Are Not Universal Across Cultures

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Music seems a universal language of love, and love songs are cross-culturally recognizable and understandable. The writer John Anderer illustrates that it might be right to refer to the iconic song “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” a song by English rock band Joy Division, released in June 1980.

Is Music a Universal Language Across Cultures?

Researchers from Yale University generally agree with the statement that music is universal. Their research revealed that, with the notable exception of love songs, people all over the world can recognize the themes found in songs and music regardless of national boundaries or cultural backgrounds.

As Samuel Mehr, an assistant professor adjunct at the Yale Child Study Center and a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Auckland, says:

All around the world, people sing in similar ways. Music is deeply rooted in human social interaction.

Researchers studied over 5,000 people from 49 nations, asking them to listen to 14-second snippets of vocals from songs originating from many cultures around the world. The participants were people from a variety of cultures around the world, including individuals from relatively small cultural communities.

Researchers asked participants to listen to the songs in 31 various languages. Then they asked to rank how likely it is that each sample of music belongs to one of four musical types: lullabies, dance, “healing” music, or love music.

The authors conclude that listeners’ ratings were largely accurate, consistent with one another, and not explained by their linguistic or geographical proximity to the singer. This result showed that musical diversity is underlain by universal psychological phenomena.”

The lead author, Lidya Yurdum, explains that

“Our minds have evolved to listen to music. It is not a recent invention. But if we only study songs from the western world and listeners from the western world, we can only draw conclusions about the western world — not humans in general.”

What Kind of Music Do People Easier Recognize?

Results of the study showed that people from various cultures around the world relatively easily recognize lullabies and dance music and, to a lesser degree, “healing” music. However, they showed the least ability to identify love songs.

These are surprising results. Lidya Yurdum, a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam who works as a research assistant at the Yale Child Study Center, explains the results this way:

“One reason for this could be that love songs may be a particularly fuzzy category that includes songs that express happiness and attraction, but also sadness and jealousy. Listeners who heard love songs from neighboring countries and in languages related to their own actually did a little better, likely because of the familiar linguistic and cultural clues.”

What Can Our Body Language Tell Us About Love and Relationship?

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The popular scientific and self-help publications widely advise us about our body language and what it tells us about our feelings, attitudes, and love. How valid are all these advices?

Subtle facial and bodily movements are often cited as giveaways in today’s media, whether it’s the tabloids or social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. They claim that our body language says a lot about us, our partner, and our relationships.

Do these pop media messages about body language have any basis in reality or the science of nonverbal communication?

What the Science of Nonverbal Communication Reveals About Body Language

The group of researchers from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and their colleagues from other universities, YALAN J. FRIDLUND, MILES L. PATTERSON, AND CARLOS CRIVELLI, say about several misconceptions about nonverbal communication.

The authors summarize these misconceptions in their recent blog on the Character and Context Blog.

They say that unfortunately, distinguishing between science and pseudoscience can be challenging at times, and it is frequently the latter that garners greater attention and clicks. So, they used their discretion to rectify the situation.

The Concept of “Body Language” Lacks Empirical Evidence and Scientific Support

Are people’s true thoughts and feelings conveyed through their posture, gaze, touch, tone of voice, and faces? There is an entire industry that promotes the notion that “you can see it in their body language,” but “it” can refer to a variety of things, such as whether someone loves or hates us, whether they are potential clients, innocent defendants, or foreign terrorists.

Are there any reliable indicators? If there was true body language, it would function like a language! Words in language have fairly precise meanings. “Lava” refers to molten rock emitted by volcanoes, and “eat” refers to putting food in our mouths. The words can also be combined to form sentences, such as “Aardvarks are quadrupeds.”

However, things are different in the science of nonverbal communication. There aren’t the kinds of precise meanings we see in language outside of gestures like OK signs and extended third fingers. If you ask a friend about the weather outside and she scowls, it could mean one of three things:

  • (a) It’s lousy outside;
  • (b) It’s so lousy outside that it’s ridiculous to ask; or
  • (c) She’s still upset from the argument yesterday and doesn’t want to talk to you, especially about the weather.

Which of these is it? We could look for other nonverbal cues, but the kicker is that we almost always have to use language—real language—to be sure: “Hey, what’s with the face?”

Our Personal Space Is Not Stable Across Time and Situations

It irritates us when people don’t “give us our space.” It’s a comforting notion that we have a secure, insulating personal space that we guard against outsiders, but we constantly violate it! Friends are allowed to be closer than strangers, and children are allowed to be closer than friends. It’s common to want no space at all with romantic partners. In some situations, a near approach can be intimate, but in others, it can be sexual harassment. You love being close to your children, but you’re also content to have them out of sight for a while when they misbehave. Furthermore, the boundaries established with other people are influenced by their gaze, posture, body orientation, and facial expressions, as well as their distance from you.

Electronic media makes it clear that emotional closeness does not imply physical closeness. What do you think of two individuals who are having video calls with people who are halfway across the world while seated a short distance apart in a coffee shop? To whom is closer?

Our Faces Do Not Reveal Our Inner Emotions

What about the posters on every preschool wall that show cartoonish faces with words like “Happy,” “Sad,” “Angry,” and “Scared” underneath? Everyone has been taught that certain expressions indicate that the people making them are experiencing specific emotions. But is that correct? Obviously not. It makes a difference whether the big smile is from a child at a birthday party or from a scammer looking for money. A person who approaches you with a tearful pouty face to announce, “My child has cancer,” may make the same face the following week and say, “She doesn’t have cancer after all!”

What do faces do if they don’t generally express inner emotion? If you ask someone, “How was the movie?” and he smiles, it is because of the movie. Faces are usually about things—things you know, things you want, and things you want from others. The “angry” face on the posters signals others to confess or leave; the “sad” face receives sympathy and hugs; and the “scared” face declares, “I give up.” People in different societies make different faces in ways that are very different from the preschool posters.

People’s Bodies and Faces Cannot Reveal Whether or Not They Are Lying

We’ve heard the expression “the body never lies”? That, of course, is a lie, but one reason people cling to it is that the truth about lies makes them feel so vulnerable. There are no telltale nonverbal signs of lying, as non-verbal communication research has demonstrated for decades. People may fidget, blink more or less, avert their gaze, twitch their lips or noses, stammer, and make fleeting facial “microexpressions,” but these are all symptoms of stress, not deception. People may exhibit these symptoms while lying, but it is not because of it.

And, contrary to popular belief, guilty people are often less stressed than innocent people. A habitual liar may be far less concerned about being accused again. Innocent people may experience overwhelming stress not because they are lying but because they are afraid of being wrongfully accused of it, resent the fact that they are suspected of it, or are simply nervous about being confronted with it.

In Real Life, Context and Culture Matter

So, what does nonverbal behavior indicate? It depends, as we hope we’ve made clear. You can only understand people’s nonverbal behavior if you know who the interactants are, where they are, what they’re saying to each other, and what culture they come from. When people succumb to the simplistic pseudoscience of “body language,” the stakes are high—in relationships, in the boardroom and courtroom, and in international affairs.

So, the reality of nonverbal communication is not so easy. It is more complex. It depends on the content, context, and culture in which people communicate their emotions and relationships.

How Affectionate Touch Influences Our Romantic Relationships

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Men and women express their love for a partner in a relationship in a variety of verbal and nonverbal ways. Affectionate touch of various kinds is among the important nonverbal channels for lovers to express love in the intimate relationships. The previous article explained how affectionate touch in a relationship expresses our love for the loved one. Now we are talking about how interpersonal touch influences our romantic relationships.

What Affectionate Touch Tells Us About Love

Partners in romantic relationships often use touch to express their affection and intimacy. Touching various parts of the body, such as the abdomen and thighs, can evoke pleasurable feelings in both those who touch them and those who are touched.

A recent cross-cultural study found that touching behaviors like embraces, caresses, kisses, and hugs are universally present in various cultures around the world. Cultural differences, however, exist in how and when men and women affectionately touch each other. Even when lovers imagine a partner’s touch, they experience pleasurable and erogenous feelings.

Strangers can’t touch as much of your body as your romantic partner. Most people don’t mind when their partner touches their stomach and thighs, but they don’t like it when other people do. There are also more ways to show affection for a partner than in other social situations. A slow stroke is given to a romantic partner.

What Is Affection Exchange Theory?

Researchers employ the Affection Exchange Theory (AET) to understand the important effects and implications of affectionate touch in a relationship. The theory says that affectionate communication promotes the formation and maintenance of strong human pair bonds.

Expressions of affection are especially common in romantic couples. Such expressions affect the quality of a romantic relationship. Partners who are highly committed in a relationship often express various kinds of affection, including physical affection. Physical affection also positively affects relationships and partner satisfaction. However, partners with attachment insecurity less often use affectionate touch.

Most studies refer to affectionate communication as an array of behaviors and verbal displays of affection. For example, hugging was the only behavior explicitly related to touch among several affection communication domains which Horan and Booth-Butterfield’s study components examined.

How Touch Affects Our Relationships and Well-Being

In the study that specifically examined touch in romantic relationships, researchers found that the desire for touch is positively correlated with relationship quality. However, when partners experience attachment avoidance, they feel less desire for touch.

These promising results and the obvious value of touch in close interpersonal relationships encourage us to better understand the role of affectionate touch in romantic relationships.

Also, there appears to be a paucity of research on the psychological factors that influence the use of affectionate touch between partners. It is logical to assume, for instance, that loving partners would touch each other in their relationships. This would enhance communication and bring the benefits commonly associated with affectionate touch. In accordance with a study indicating that one’s own and one’s partner’s approach motives for touch predict greater daily relationship well-being, touch may also promote love between partners.

In an older study, Dainton, Stafford, and Canary found that physical affection (including touch behaviors) performed by a romantic partner and satisfaction with physical affection displays were positively associated with self-assessed love levels.

Thus, we see that our affectionate touch substantially influences our romantic relationships. How does our partner feel when we touch him or her? The previous article explained how affectionately touching the loved one lets him or her know about our love for them.

Surprisingly, however, little we know about the direct relationship between interpersonal touch and love, one of the most essential components of human romantic relationships, outside of this study.

In their recent study, Agnieszka Sorokowska and her colleagues investigated how affectionate touch influences romantic relationships across various cultures.

How Affectionate Touch Expresses Love to a Romantic Partner

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Men and women use many verbal and nonverbal ways to express their love for a partner in a relationship. Affectionate touch of various kinds is among the major nonverbal channels to express romantic love that lovers use in their intimate relationships.

Agnieszka Sorokowska and her colleagues explain the role of affectionate touch in romantic relationships.

What Is Affectionate Touch?

In romantic relationships, touch is the most common means of expressing intimacy. Loving partners touch each other significantly more frequently than other individuals. Those in romantic relationships show significantly more intimate touch with each other than those who are single. Even imagining a partner’s touch can evoke pleasurable and erogenous feelings.

Romantic partners are typically permitted to touch many more parts of the body than strangers or acquaintances. For instance, most people feel comfortable when their partner touches them in the abdomen and thighs, but not when other people do so. Moreover, affectionate touch in partnerships is more diverse than in other social interactions. When directed towards a romantic partner, a stroke, for example, is performed with a particularly low velocity.

In line with this, a recent cross-cultural study revealed that, despite significant intercultural differences, affectionate touch behaviors such as an embrace, caress, kiss, and hug are universally present in partnerships across the globe.

Why Touch Deprivation Is Bad

The tendency to use affectionate touch in romantic relationships seems natural. The negative effects of touch deprivation stand in stark contrast to the many advantages of affectionate touch in close relationships.

Touch deprivation is associated with anxiety, depression, and somatization. On the other hand, the higher prevalence of partner touch leads to better psychological well-being. Furthermore, interpersonal touch contributes to a lowered stress response by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol production. Touch can also reduce pain.

However, touching might not always be beneficial. Some people dislike touching. They may avoid touching others. Or have negative reactions to touching others. Such aspects of the relationship with a partner as low familiarity or a condition can make one feel a negative reaction to touch, such as disgust.

Why Affectionate Touch is Good in Close Relationships

Researchers use Affection Exchange Theory (AET) to interpret the significant implications and consequences of affectionate touch. According to this theory, affectionate communication is essential for “fostering the formation and maintenance of significant human pair bonds.” (Floyd, 2006, p. 165).

Expressions of affection are common among couples and related to the quality of romantic relationships. Men and women with higher levels of commitment in relationships usually physically display their affection toward their partners. The level of physical affection is also positively associated with relationship satisfaction and partner satisfaction while being negatively associated with attachment insecurity.

Affectionate communication typically includes multiple types of behaviors and verbal displays of affection. Men and women feel the desire for touch when their relationship quality is good.

Touch is strongly related to attachment patterns. When partners experience attachment avoidance, they are less likely to experience a desire for touch.

Why Do We Need Laughter and Smiles?

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Smiling and laughing are the natural expressions of human emotions in relationships with others. The cultural norms regarding their expressions, however, vary across cultures. People in some Western cultures, such as the European-American one, commonly use them. People in other cultures, such as Eastern Asians, are more reserved in their expressions of laughter and smile much less frequently (Karandashev, 2021).

The question of research interest is “Why do we need laughter and smiles?”

Researchers most often conduct scientific studies of laughter and smiles in Western cultures, such as England and the USA.

Here is one example of a study that British anthropologist Robin Dunbar and Austrian psychologist Marc Mehu conducted in 2008 (Dunbar & Mehu, 2008). They found that strangers who were talking to each other smiled and laughed more than once every two minutes.

When Do We Laugh and Smile? 

We smile when we’re happy, excited, shy, confused, recognizing someone we don’t know, winning, or losing. We laugh when we are amused, nervous, angry, greeting a puppy, teasing, or just don’t know what to say.

Men and women usually smile and laugh when they are with other people. They intuitively anticipate that others can see their smiles and laughter. And they expect, either implicitly or explicitly, that their smile and laughter will influence other people who see and hear these emotional expressions.

Why Do We Laugh and Smile? An Evolutionary Perspective

Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, Adrienne Wood, and her colleagues are investigating how smiling and laughing can be viewed as evolutionarily ancient behaviors conveying a wide range of messages (Wood et al., 2018; 2022). They propose that smiles and laughs can serve three functions:

(1) reward,

(2) convey affiliative intentions,

(3) assert dominance.

The Rewarding Function of Laughter and Smiling

These are the smiles and laughs that make you feel good. They show how happy the smiling and laughing person is. They also thank the other person for making this person happy. It’s nice when people smile and laugh with us, especially when we know it’s because of something we did.

This is why marketing companies put happy faces on ads for everything from car insurance to toilet paper: they want people to think well of their products.

Laughter also makes people feel good, which is why laugh tracks are used in comedies.

The Evolutionary Origins of Smiling and Laughing

These gratifying smiles and laughs could evolve from mammalian “play signals.” The animals’ play signals make it clear that they mean no harm. One can see that in some ways, smiles and laughter serve the same purpose. And these signals are rewarding—they make the recipient feel good. So, they help extend the playful interaction.

The Affiliative Function of Laughter and Smiling

Yet, most smiles and laughter are not rewarding expressions of happiness. This could be our quick, closed-lip expression when greeting a passing stranger or expressing sympathy to a friend. Or, we could use the polite laugh to ease awkward tension in a group meeting.

These expressions are the shadows of those big, happy smiles and laughs. They borrow the message of friendly, harmless intentions from reward signals. Therefore, we may call these smiles and laughs “affiliation signals.” Smiles and laughter, elicited by nervousness, embarrassment, sexual attraction, friendliness, and politeness, all have the common goal of increasing affiliation.

Do All Smiles and Laughter Make People Feel Good?

Some smiles and laughter, however, are far from making the recipients feel good. They can make them feel rather bad.

We all know how it feels when people laugh at us instead of with us. People sometimes tease, mock, make fun of, or criticize someone while smiling and laughing. One may call these smiles and laughter “dominance,” because they show that someone is better than someone else.

At first glance, it seems strange to think that a play signal that means nothing bad could be changed into something not so good. But when people smile and laugh like this, they are saying,

“I think you are completely harmless and not serious.”

There may not be a better way to show that you are in charge than to act like you don’t care about someone.

Many men and women believe that smiling and laughing improve their interpersonal relationships. Others believe they should be more reserved in their emotional expressions and not smile as much. In this regard, people from different cultures may have different explanations and cultural stereotypes.

Sexual Love in Cultural Contexts

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As I explained in another article, many scholars and laypeople equate sex, sexual love, and erotic love. However, I believe researchers should distinguish between these concepts because they mean somewhat different things (Karandashev, 2022). Sexual love is

  • intense feelings of sexual desire, interest, and attraction;
  • various sexual emotions and feelings;
  • various sexual acts between two individuals.

Sexual love is biologically rooted and, therefore, cross-culturally universal. Nevertheless, its cultural understanding can be specific. People in different societies deem sexual love in their cultural contexts.

What Does “Coitus” Mean for Sexual Love?

The roots of the word “coitus” convey the meaning of “a coming together.” So, the broader meaning of coitus extends beyond physical satisfaction. For men and women, the intimacy of intercourse is more important than the intensity of masturbation (Hite, 1976/2004, pp. 61-78; 1981/1987, pp. 485-502).

The Greek and Latin Origins of the Western Lexicon of Sexual Love

The Latin word “libido” and the Greek word “epithymia” conveyed the meaning of sexual love in Western cultures. Their meanings include yearning, longing, and the desire for sensual self-fulfillment. The sexual love in the words “epithymia” and “libido” conveys the meaning of the desire for sensual pleasure of the body and the gratifying release of sexual energy. All other feelings and emotions of love are of secondary importance in the case of sexual love (Tillich, 1954; Larson, 1983).

What Is the Greek “Epithymia”?

The term “epithymia” refers to “the longing for coitus, the hungering and thirsting for sexual closeness and union with a partner” (Karandashev, 2022). The general physical attraction to a partner is essential in this case. A lover centers his or her emotions not only on sexual desire and the partner’s body but also on the person as a whole. Coitus gives not only physical but also emotional satisfaction (Larson, 1983; Lomas, 2018; Tillich, 1954).

The Sexual Love of “Epithymia” in Other Cultures

Many other cultures of the world express the term “sexual love” in a way that is similar to the Greek word “epithymia.” For instance, Eastern cultures have their own lexical equivalents for sex and sexual love. Some of them appear surprisingly similar.

The Arabic Origins of the Sexual Lexicon

Professor of Linguistics Zaidan Ali Jassem discovered that the “love and sexual terms” in English, French, German, Greek, and Latin could have Arabic origins (Jassem, 2013). For example,

“English, French, Greek and Latin erotic (Eros) comes from Arabic ‘arr ‘intercourse, making love’; English, French, and Latin abhor obtains from Arabic kariha/’akrah, kurh (n) ‘hate’ via /k & h/-merger; English and German love/lieben derives from Arabic labba (‘alabba) ‘to love, live/stay’, turning /b/ into /v/; English hope (hobby) and German hoffen is from Arabic 2ubb ‘love, hope’, turning /2/ into /h/ and /b/ into /f/ in the latter”.

(Jassem, 2013, p. 97).

The modern Arabic terms for sex and sexual love are الجنس والحب الجنسي (aljins walhubu aljinsiu).

The Sexual Love Lexicon from Other Cultures of the World

Here are several other examples from other cultures around the world.

In the Philippines, the word “kilig” refers to the subjective experience of butterflies in the stomach when a person thinks of or interacts with someone sexually attractive and desired.

In the indigenous language of Yagán (Chile), the term “mamihlapinatapai” refers to the way people express unspoken mutual desire through their appearance.

According to American historian and ethnologist Daniel Brinton (1837–1899), several American languages have their own special lexicon of sexual love, which is different from the words for sex and other forms of love (Brinton, 1886).

Emoji Love and Other Emotions in the Virtual World

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In modern culture, it seems easy to guess what “heart” and especially “red heart” mean. Guess what? Love! So, the corresponding symbols are common in modern virtual world. The emoji ❤️ adopted the same meaning social media messages. The red heart emoji is a classic image to express love and romance. The read heart ❤️ and two hearts 💕 are among the popular heart emoji used on Twitter (What Every Heart Emoji Really Means by Keith Broni, Jeremy Burge, Feb 11, 2021).

What is the best emoji for love? It depends on personal preferences. Nevertheless, some believe that among the most popular are

  •  ❤️: Red Heart. …
  • 😻: Smiling Cat with Heart Eyes. …
  • 😍: Smiling Face with Heart Eyes. …
  • 😘: Face Blowing a Kiss. …
  • 💕: Two Hearts. …

What Emoji Are Used for Love Across Cultures?

In a survey for World Emoji Day, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Duolingo and Slack, researchers showed respondents various emoji and asked what meaning they were most likely to associate with them. The survey also investigated how emoji usage and meaning differ across countries. It was discovered that emoji can mean different things in different cultures around the world.

Chris Melore presented an interesting review of this international survey.

For example, let us look at how the “face throwing a kiss” (😘) is used. For “romantic love” or “platonic love”?

It was found that this emoji is popular among U.S. Americans, Indians, and Japanese people in different ways.

Indians prefer to use it more frequently for romantic love than for platonic love (52% vs. 27%).

Americans are also slightly more likely to use it as a sign of romantic love than of platonic love (34% vs. 26%).

However, Japanese preferences are the opposite. They tend to use the kissy face less frequently for romantic love than for platonic love (16% vs. 30%).

It is worthy of note that the “slightly smiling face” (🙂) frequently expresses “general positivity” (39%) and “feeling happy” (38%). These meanings are among the top uses for this emoji globally. However, this emoji may express less positive emotions than one may think.

Emoji are also frequently used to express sentiments of care and support. It was especially noticeable during the recent COVID-19 pandemic times. People often use the heart (❤️) and similar emoji to show love and support. Globally, differences between age groups exist in this regard. Across many cultures, younger generations mention that the emoji they send to someone are often misunderstood by the recipients. Young people of Gen Z mentioned this more frequently, at 31% among all respondents, than millennials, at 24% of respondents.

What Is Erotic Love?

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What is love? What is sex? What is sexual love? And what is erotic love?

For love studies to be truly scientific, there are a lot of scholarly questions that need to be answered. As I noted in another article, love and sex are inextricably linked to one another. Yet, there are several concepts related to these two that researchers should distinguish in this field of research. One of those is the concept of “erotic love.”

What is “sex” and what is “sexual love”?

The concepts of “sex” and “sexual love” have different phenomenology. Even though they may have behaviorally similar forms and expressions, they play their distinct psychological roles and associated with difference experiences (Karandashev, 2022a). How different are they?

“Sexual desire” is easily aroused, fleeting, and short-lived. Any sexually attractive individual is capable of satisfying sexual desire.”

“Sexual love” is a collection of more intimate and complicated feelings related to a certain other person. Only a specific individual can fulfill a person’s sexual urge.”

What is “love,” what is “eros,” and what is “erotic love”?

Love is directly yet intricately connected with sexual and erotic feelings. According to numerous stories, novels, and movies, both men and women have a preference for the beautiful and handsome. Such expectations are in their romantic dreams. Love and eroticism in life are tied to each other in many different ways (Featherstone, 1998).

The word “erotic” originates from the Greek word eros (érōs). The ancient Greek “eros” first emerged in the sense of aesthetic appreciation and yearning for beauty (Lomas, 2018). In modern scholarship and public opinion, however, this word often takes a different twist of meaning, associated with sexual and passionate connotations (see for review, Karandashev, 2019).

In ancient Greek origins, the concept of érōs is intimately linked with epithymia (as sexual love). However, both describe different emotional experiences. The word érōs conveys meaning beyond physical sexual desire. The word érōs implies a broader meaning—an appreciation of beauty.

Because the attractive appearance of a man or a woman easily triggers these feelings, the word certainly conveys connotations with emotions of passionate love (Tillich, 1954). Other subtle differences which scholars convince us to make are (1) the difference between elation of romantic sex-esthetic attraction and sexual arousal of sexual desire, and (2) the difference between non-sexual affectionate sexual love (Grant, 1976).

The Love of Beauty Is Erotic

“Erotic love” means that a lover perceives his or her beloved as a beautiful object worthy of aesthetic admiration. “Erotic love is about aesthetic pleasure, while sexual love is about sensual (sexual) pleasure.” (Karandashev, 2022a).

Both are certainly closely intertwined. In sexually stimulating situations, erotic can easily transition to sensual and sexual experiences. People frequently perceive erotic love as inextricably linked to sexual and passionate love. Such a mixing of these experiences is natural for complex human emotions. However, some people consider a partner’s attractive body, face, expressions, and other appearances to be “sexy,” while others consider them to be “beautiful.” It is an individual yet culturally determined experience associated with personal dominant motivations that the lover has in mind at the time. It can be a strong or moderate sexual drive. It can be the cultural values of a society that stress being “sexy” or being “beautiful.”

Multisensory Erotic Attraction

When a man or a woman experiences erotic love, the lover admires the beloved for his or her attractive physical appearance as perceived through various sensory impressions: visual, auditory, tactile-kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory. Interpersonal perception of lovers involves multisensory processes and several sensory impressions that are inextricably linked with each other (Karandashev et al., 2016, 2020). The dynamics of interaction are also involved. Men and women not only passively admire their partners, but also approach them, speak, sing, dance, touch each other, smile, hug, cuddle, kiss, and so on. Such dynamic expressive behavior often tells them more about erotic attractiveness than static body and facial appearance.

All of these perceptions and aesthetic qualities merge to produce what we call “erotic attraction” and “erotic love.” A lover admires his or her beloved for having attractive erotic impressions (Karandashev, 2022a).

Can you recognize erotic love from the facial expression of another person?

According to studies, people generally distinguish the faces of people experiencing love from those experiencing other emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, and fear. They can also recognize specific types of love, such as erotic love and tender love experienced by another person. Both erotic love and tender love have different facial expressions from joy and each other. A person expresses erotic love in semi-closed eyes, while tender love is expressed through a slight head tilt and a slight smile (Bloch, Orthous, & Santibanez, 1987; Hatfield & Rapson, 1993).

What Is the Brazilian Lexicon of Love?

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Love and marriage in Brazil have a fascinating history that has been influenced by conquest and slavery during the early European settlements. Following European connections had a substantial impact on the development of Brazilian society, communities, and families. Being a former Portuguese colony, Brazil has had a significant influence of Portuguese culture and language.

Brazilian Portuguese is a Portuguese language that has a substantial regionally and culturally specific lexicon. The vocabulary of love is also interesting to know from a cultural perspective. It has a rich and multifaceted lexicon with multiple meanings and connotations.

What Is Love in the Minds of Brazilians?

In Brazil, the concept of “love” (in Portuguese, “amor”) encompasses a wide range of beliefs, feelings, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors characterizing gender relations, sexual encounters, and emotional connections. The meanings and emotions associated with the word “amor” are ephemeral, ambiguous, variable, and transient.

Brazilians are frequently unaware of their own feelings. When they try to understand and explain what they and others feel in relationships, they are often unclear, elusive, and figurative in their verbal expressions.

As a popular Brazilian saying states, “o coração é terra desconhecida”, that literally means “the heart is an unknown land.“

Varieties of Brazilian Love Words

Brazilians utilize various words when they refer to different kinds of love, relationships, and emotions. Among those are, for example, amor (love), paixão (passion, infatuation), amor verdadeira (true love), amor da mãe (mother love), and consideração (consideration). In recent decades, the Brazilian love lexicon has been enriched by new love words, such as “lόvi,” in the meaning of modern love, and “amor da novela,” in the meaning of “soap opera love.”

The Modern Lexicon of Brazilian Romantic love

Nowadays, the social life of Brazil, North American mass media, and Brazilian soap operas (telenovelas in Portuguese) have introduced people to the new realities and vocabulary of love. Due to the popularity of the Brazilian amorous telenovelas, the language of love today is more romantic than it used to be.

The romantic telenovelas portray the beautiful situations when loving couples look passionately and deeply into each other’s eyes, sentimentally declaring, “Ai lόvi iú.” This English saying is now everywhere in Brazil. This way, the new term “lόvi” came into the lives of Brazilians, enriching their emotional experiences. In other words, this kind of love is called “amor da novela”, whichin English means “soap opera love.”

The lόvi kind of love describes a mixture of Brazilian amor and paixão that is characterized by emotional interdependence, the verbal declaration of affection and tenderness. The lόvi embodies the magnificent images of the merging souls and bodies of lovers (Botas, 1987).

The lόvi, as a mixture of amor and paixão, brings together several love feelings. This kind of love includes the romantic emotional experiences of paixao with its passion and infatuation. It also embodies the wonderful fusion of two hearts. It represents the selfless devotion and self-abnegation of lovers and the adoration of marriage.

The Brazilian Lexicon of Romantic and Companionate Love

This lόvi kind of Brazilian love focuses on the primary significance of passionate attraction, emotional intimacy between lovers, and expressive facets of love. Both the infatuated passion of paixão and the deep, true feelings of amor are mixed together in this romantic love.

The lόvi also admires the loving man and woman as a wonderful couple. Lόvi is also viewed as a vital affective basis for marriage. This romantic love of lόvi paves the way to the essential features of companionate marital love that are based on “obrigaço”, meaning “obliga­tion”, and “consideração,” meaning “consideration.”