What is love? An empirically-based essentialist account

Abstract

This two-part study investigates new possibilities in our understanding of the nature of love. Evidence collected lends preliminary support to the following contentions: First, Persons’ concepts of human love of various kinds may not be, as widely maintained, Roschian prototypical ones, but may instead be definable, essentialist ones. Second, Foremost among love’s essential characteristics in terms of transcending four different kinds of love (romantic, parental, companionate, and altruistic) may be “Investment in the well-being of the other for his or her own sake.” Third, Persons’ models or prototypes of romantic, parental, companionate, and altruistic relationships may be different from and broader than their essentialist concepts of love itself of each of these kinds.