De Munck, V. (2019). Romantic love in America: cultural models of gay, straight and polyamorous relationship. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.

Victor de Munck is Professor of Asian and Transcultural Studies at Vilnius University and the State University of New York at New Paltz. In his new book, “Romantic Love in America: Cultural Models of Gay, Straight, and Polyamorous Relationships,” he presents to the reader the experiences and expressions of love and sex in the lives of two polyamorous people, five gay people, and eight straight people. The book examines in depth how the social sciences have investigated the variable geography of love relationships. The book also presents the narratives of the rich interview material that the author collected for his study. The author discusses evolutionary, cognitive, social, prototypical, triadic, and neural theories of romantic love and sex. Then, Victor de Munck describes a general view of an American cultural model of romantic love. In this study, he reveals the relational properties of love as a dyad relationship. 

De Munck, V. C., & Korotayev, A. (1999). Sexual equality and romantic love: A reanalysis of Rosenblatt’s study on the function of romantic love. Cross-Cultural Research, 33(3), 265-277. https://doi.org/10.1177/106939719903300303

The authors believe that sexual attraction or passion is a primary criterion of romantic love. In their study, they proposed that only in societies that permit both men and women to give or not give love freely, romantic love is valuable and considered as a basis for marriage. Researchers found that there is a positive correlation between social indicators of sexual equality and the importance of romantic love.

The authors found that in those societies which permit premarital and extramarital sex for both males and females, people rate the value of romantic love significantly higher than in those societies which have double standards or the societal norms strong sanctioning against female sexuality out of wedlock. Authors concluded that the type of sanction against female sexuality is the most important factor that predicts the cultural importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage.

De Munck, V., Korotayev, A. & McGreevey, J. (2016). Romantic love and family organization: A case for romantic love as a biosocial universal. Evolutionary Psychology, 14 (4), 1–13. doi:10.1177/ 1474704916674211

The authors explain romantic love as a biosocial phenomenon. They argue that it may or may not be universal. They show that cultural aspects of romantic love are a product of the social conditions in which people live.

Their position is original because the authors suggest that romantic love is a cultural rather than a socially universal phenomenon. They argue that researchers frequently confound basic definitional aspects of cultural, social, and psychological phenomena. They don’t clearly define those different concepts. They usually define culture as the learned practices that the members of a society share in their collectively known meanings.

The authors explain that romantic love is typically suppressed, undeveloped, and rejected as a cultural component in social situations where it does not provide reproductive and health benefits to a mother and child. In their cross-cultural study, the authors show that family organization and female status are the essential social parameters affecting the societal value of romantic love as a basis for marriage.