State University, Dana Hussein, Claremont Graduate University, Zita Oravecz, Pennsylvania State University, Saida Heshmati, Claremont Graduate University, United States
published in the Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Love and Relationship Studies, 6-8 March, 2026
You can see the full video recording of this presentation at the YouTube channel of the International Institute of Love Studies
Introduction
Love is a complex human emotion that is often felt and expressed in the small moments of daily life. Positivity Resonance Theory (Fredrickson, 2013) provides a lens for understanding love as a momentary emotional experience that emerges from shared positive affective experience alongside synchronized nonverbal caring behaviors and physiological indicators between two people. Thus, love can be experientially felt in the moment during interactions with other people.
Love is also bound to the culture and context in which it is experienced. The different norms and values emphasized in their culture shape one’s conceptions and expressions of love. Cultural Consensus Theory (CCT; Batchelder & Romney, 1988) provides a framework for examining how culture shapes the way love is felt and expressed in everyday life. The theory suggests a method of assessing the degree of shared agreement in beliefs about love experienced among people within a culture.
Guided by these theories, the present study aimed to: (1) determine if there is a consensus among people living in Spain about everyday experiences that elicit feelings of being loved in daily life, and (2) characterize these experiences of feeling loved in terms of (a) which are most likely to make people feel loved, and (b) how this experiences varies by two people across various relational ties (e.g., stranger, acquaintance, friend, family, partner).
This study extends cross-cultural knowledge on feelings of being loved by using Cultural Consensus Theory (Heshmati et al., 2019) to examine cultural beliefs regarding these feelings among adults in Spain. Whereas most prior researchers have focused on exploring the feeling of being loved in U.S. samples, this study broadens our understanding of love experiences in everyday life outside the U.S.
Methodology and Methods
Participants: A sample of 502 adults living in Spain, representative of the Spain population based on the census.
Procedure: Researchers presented each participant 61 items describing daily life experiences based on fieldwork in Spain. These items had the stem “Most people feel loved when…” followed by a scenario or behavior (e.g., “…their friend hugs them warmly.”) that might make an individual feel loved. Participants rated how likely most people would feel loved on a scale of 0 (unlikely) to 100 (likely).
Data Analysis: We used the CCT-based Continuous Response Model (Anders et al., 2014) to determine whether participants reached a shared agreement on the everyday life experiences that most people consider as being loving experiences, and to what extent these experiences are likely to make Spanish people feel loved.
Highlights of Results
• Spanish participants reached a culturally shared agreement on what are considered as experiences that elicit feelings of being loved in everyday life. Although many subcultures exits in Spain (e.g., values, religion, socioeconomic status), the results suggested that the consensus on everyday experiences of feeling loved converges in a common cultural model of such experiences.
• Certain experiences of feeling loved had high consensus estimates, such as “their family supports them in a difficult time” (94%), “their parent says: ‘I love you” (94%) and “their child is happy to spend time with them” (93%).
• Family and other close ties (e.g., friends, romantic partner) had higher consensus estimates than strangers and acquaintances.
Discussion and Conclusions
• Spanish people share a broadly similar understanding of how they experience the feeling of being loved in daily life, suggesting that these meanings reflect a common cultural model of love.
• Experiences of being loved in Spain are influenced by shared social norms and values.
• Within this shared model of feeling loved, family ties emerged as the strongest and most consistent source of love.
References
Anders, R., Oravecz, Z., & Batchelder, W. H. (2014). Cultural consensus theory for continuous responses: A latent appraisal model for information pooling. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 61, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2014.06.001
Batchelder, W. H., & Romney, A. K. (1988). Test theory without an answer key. Psychometrika, 53(1), 71–92. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02294195
Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). Love 2.0: Finding happiness and health in moments of connection. Plume.
Heshmati, S., Oravecz, Z., Pressman, S., Batchelder, W. H., Muth, C., & Vandekerckhove, J. (2019). What does it mean to feel loved: Cultural consensus and individual differences in felt love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(1), 214–243. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407517724600
Key words: Cultural Consensus Theory, everyday life, Spain, feeling loved, cultural psychology