Victor C. de Munck

Sexual Equality and Romantic Love: A Reanalysis of Rosenblatt’s Study on the Function of Romantic Love:

The authors propose that the importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage will occur only in societies that allow both males and females to give or not give love freely. Based on their belief that sexual attraction or passion is a primary criterion of romantic love, the authors hypothesize that there will be a positive correlation between the importance of romantic love and social indicators of sexual equality. Rosenblatt’s 11-point rating scale of romantic love is used to test this hypothesis. The authors find that societies that allow premarital and extramarital sex for both males and females rate romantic love significantly higher than societies that have a double standard or have strong sanctions against female sexuality out of wedlock. It is concluded that the type of sanction against female sexuality is the critical factor for predicting the cultural importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage.

Cross-Cultural Analysis of Models of Romantic Love Among U.S. Residents, Russians, and Lithuanians

Our goal was to detect and describe a common “core” structure of romantic love and to also discover and explain variations due to cultural or gender differences between three national cultures: the United States, Russia, and Lithuania. Our sample consisted of 262 American males, 362 American females, 166 Russian males, 130 females, 102 Lithuanian males, and 135 Lithuanian females—a total of 1,157 people. Our analysis was derived from (a) a 14-item questionnaire; (b) freelist responses to the question “What do you associate with romantic love?” and (c) interview and focus group data. The questionnaire was devised by employing well-known quotations about romantic love that cover a range of feelings and perceptions of love. Our results showed that there is no overall consensus but there was cross-cultural consensus on five variables: intrusive thinking, happiness; passion; altruism; and improve well-being of partner. In the freelist portion, we also found some significant similarities—particularly the desire to be together was ranked first across all three cultures. However key cultural differences were found. Friendship and comfort love were critical features of romantic love for the U.S. sample, but nonexistent for the Lithuanian and Russian samples. Conversely, the latter two samples saw love as “unreal,” “temporary,” and “a fairytale.” These cultural differences were explored through interviews and shown to serve as different cultural frames used to interpret similar emotional complexes. We suggest that the differences do not affect the evolutionary functions of romantic love and are adaptations to different types of social organizations. The etic-emic approach used in this cross-cultural research provides for a more nuanced, ethnographically sound, and cross-culturally valid description and analysis of the form and function of romantic love cross culturally than does either approach by itself.

Cultural Units in Cross-Cultural Research

In 1889, Galton argued that often traits diffuse across cultures and therefore we could never really know if cultural traits arose independently as adaptive responses or were a result of diffusion. With numerous hypothetical and actual examples we show that, statistically, there are no mechanical fixes to this problem. We conclude by asserting that each cross-cultural research question should find its own solution to Galtons problem and that, in fact, this is not a problem at all, but rather an asset which can be used to trace historical networks. (Galtons problem, cultural units, community, language, megacultural regions, Standard Cross-Cultural Sample) The notion of the cultural unit has two meanings. One meaning considers cultural units as elements out of which culture is composed. There are doubts whether such entities exist at all (see Gatewood, this volume). In any case, this meaning has no direct relevance on cross-cultural research. One can discuss and compare molecular units, such as postmarital residence practices, without being concerned about the elemental units that comprise this practice. The other meaning of cultural units, however, does have direct relevance and must first be descriptively rather than formally explained. To start with, within cross-cultural research the problem of cultural units is not quite identical to the problem of units of comparison (though both problems are connected). The solution to the problem of comparison was solved long ago by Naroll (e.g., 1970), who suggested that the unit of comparison should be community, not culture. However, the problem of cultural units arises immediately upon selecting communities for cross-cultural comparison. As the very notion of cross-cultural research implies, the communities that are used for comparison must belong to different cultures. Clearly, the inclusion in a sample of a number of communities that belong to the same culture could result in the production of a correlation confirming a false hypothesis (or, alternatively, rejecting right ones). This can be illustrated with a fictional example. Our hypothesis is that the consumption of dates (the fruit) enhances the sexual drive among religious specialists, and the consumption of red wine inhibits that drive in religious specialists. Sexual drive is measured by asking these specialists their frequency of sexual intercourse after consuming dates or wine. The frequency of sexual intercourse should go up after consuming dates and go down after consuming wine. To test the hypothesis, imagine a sample of communities described in Table 1: Table 1: Communities in Sample 4 Spanish 4 Iraqi 1 Russian 1 Estonian 1 Javanese 1 Ganda 1 Greek 1 Maronite-Lebanese The statistical analysis of the data for this sample is most likely to produce the following results: Table 2: Dates vs. Red Wine Consumption/ Sexual Intercourse Cross-Tabulation (version 1) Sexual Intercourse Near Absent Regular with Regular with More One Partner than One Panner Wine 4 1 0 No wine/dates 1 1 2 Dates 1 0 4 Total 6 2 6 Value Approx. Sig. Gamma .79 .001 Spearman Correlation .64 .014 Thus the test is likely to support a patently wrong hypothesis. One of the main reasons for this is that the sample included eight communities from two national cultures. One of these (Spain) is characterized by Catholicism (and hence a celibate clergy) and the wide use of red wine. The other is Islamic (which permits polygyny for religious specialists) and has a wide consumption of dates. The solution normally proposed to avoid such problems is simply to include no more than one community using the same language in the sample. …

A Theory Explaining the Functional Linkage Between the Self, Identity and Cultural Models

Abstract Self, identities and cultural models are interactive, dynamic and interdependent systems that connect the biological, psychological, social and cultural dimensions of human life. Identities are the means by which the self engages with the outside world and cultural models are the symbol complexes which the self, via an identity, relies on for generating sensible output and making sense of input. Thus, a theory of the self entails a theory of identities, which, in turn, entails a theory of cultural models. The primary function of the “self” is to bestow self-consciousness on an identity. Identities are sites of perspective – each is a self-organizing site of cultural models which provide it with dimensionality (e.g., gesture, emotional stance, logic, speech code, style, etc.). Over time a constellation of cultural models cohere to a particular identity to form a robust, but still dynamically contingent, system. When an identity is activated it automatically considers itself to be “the self”. Identities, themselves are organized into larger organization clusters, which I refer to as idniches (short for identity-niche). I argue that these higher-level, superordinate identity organizations serve the purpose of cognitive ease as they make it easier for the self to target an appropriate identity for any action. Three high-level idniches are proposed – the solitary or alone idniche, the intimate idniche, and the public idniche. This theory of self, identity and cultural models shows how each is functionally linked to the other and solves the problems of theories that deal with these three concepts independently.

Values and Change Over a Generation: Kelantan, Malaysia

This article presents the results of two semantic differential studies that focus on cultural values and modernization, which were carried out in Kelantan, Malaysia, first in 1969 and the second in 2001.The results of these quantitative psychological anthropology studies, complimented by more than 3 years of traditional fieldwork, provide a finely textured means to assess both the direction and the degree of sociocultural change in what has been a very traditional, conservative, Islamic, peasant community, but which now, with some notable exceptions, appears to be rapidly modernizing. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data resulting from our investigation, the authors discuss the continuing dominance of Islam in the conceptual and value system of virtually all Kelantanese Malays and some of its consequences for peace in the country and throughout the region.

Romantic Love in the United States: Applying Cultural Models Theory and Methods

We seek to advance cultural models theory by contributing to issues related to theory, methods, and testing the external validity of a cultural model. We propose that cultural models are learned as if they were truly properties of collectivities but have no primary existence except in individual representations of them. The shared aspect of cultural models also implies collective awareness of the if–then entailments of cultural models. We use inductive ethnographic methods of freelisting (n = 80) and pile sorting (n = 39) to derive a cultural model of romantic love in the United States. From these tasks, we developed a cultural model of successful romantic love consisting of normative scenarios. For successful romantic love relations, a person would feel excited about meeting their beloved; make passionate and intimate love as opposed to only physical love; feel comfortable with the beloved, behaving in a companionable, friendly way with one’s partner; listen to the other’s concerns, offering to help out in various ways if necessary; and, all the while, keeping a mental ledger of the degree to which altruism and passion are mutual. Our model is supported through an examination of two extended case studies. Further research is required, of course, but we believe we have a rather novel and dynamic cultural model that is falsifiable and predictive of successful love relationships. The model is unique in that it combines passion with comfort and friendship as properties of romantic love.