Love: The Final Analysis
— -- OK, so you just found out you’re a manic, ludic lover. Should you pack your bags and split the sheets?
Probably not, says Susan Hendrick, co-creator of the quiz. “If it just doesn’t seem to fit you,” she says, “believe experience and not the test.”
But in the 13 years this test has been given — it’s been translated into a dozen different languages and administered to lovers around the world — some patterns have emerged.
Hendrick has found that passionate lovers are also more willing to talk, for example, while people who play games are less chatty in love. Passionate people also seem to rank higher on self-esteem scales, while puppy lovers hit bottom.
Needless to say, there are also differences between the sexes when it comes to love.“Women tend to be more storgic and practical,” Hendricks says, “and men more ludic or game-playing.”
With tests like this one, sociologists and psychologists believe they’ve gotten a pretty good handle on describing love behaviors, if not emotions.
One mystery remains, notes Virginia Rutter, co-author with Pepper Schwartz of The Love Test, a compilation of tests that includes the Hendrick quiz. “The biggest thing we don’t know,” Rutter says, “is what makes two people fall in love. We know a lot more about what makes love last than what makes it start.”
This love attitudes scale originally appeared in “A Theory and Method of Love” by Clyde and Susan Hendrick, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50 (1986). Copyright 1986 American Psychological Association. Reproduced with permission of the authors and the American Psychological Association. This version is adapted from The Love Test, by Virginia Rutter and Pepper Schwartz, Perigree Books. Copyright 1998 by Virginia Rutter and Pepper Schwartz. Used with permission of the authors.
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