Die 5 Sprachen der Liebe sind BS
Zumindest ist das das Ergebnis dieser peer-reviewten Studie.
The public has something of an obsession with love languages, believing that the key to lasting love is for partners to express love in each other’s preferred language. Despite the popularity of Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages, there is a paucity of empirical work on love languages, and collectively, it does not provide strong empirical support for the book’s three central assumptions that (a) each person has a preferred love language, (b) there are five love languages, and (c) couples are more satisfied when partners speak one another’s preferred language.
Die “Theorie” ist extrem populär:
One of the most well-known lay “theories” about relationships that has proliferated in the public sphere, but does not have strong empirical support, is the love languages. Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages has gained immense popularity since its initial publication in 1992,1 having sold over 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into 50 languages.
The love languages have also been applied in relationship counseling and government initiatives, such as a $20 million relationship education and counseling program subsidized by the Australian government (as cited in Bunt & Hazelwood, 2017). Nevertheless, relative to its immense popularity, there is a paucity of scholarly attention in psychology paid to empirically testing the love languages.
Die fünf Sprachen der Liebe laut Chapman:
(a) words of affirmation (verbal expressions of appreciation, compliments, or encouragement), (b) quality time (intentional time spent together with undivided attention), (c) receiving gifts (visual tokens of appreciation), (d) acts of service (practical support through actions), and (e) physical touch (from holding hands to sexual interactions). Last, most relationship problems stem from partners speaking different (vs. the same) love languages.
On the basis of the assumption that the five love languages are “as different as Chinese from English” (Chapman, 2015, p. 15), Chapman suggests that partners cannot understand or feel loved when speaking in “foreign” love languages. In sum, according to Chapman, the key to happy and successful relationships is for partners to discover, learn, and speak each other’s primary love language.
Wenn die Sprachen der Liebe wenig empirische Basis haben, kann man die Essenz guter Beziehungen dann irgendwie anders herunterbrechen?
Die Forscher:innen schlagen eine neue Metapher vor:
The process of maintaining successful, loving relationships is akin to keeping a healthy, balanced diet. Whereas Chapman’s (2015) language metaphor implies that people can feel love only when their partner speaks their love language, the healthy-diet metaphor suggests that people need multiple essential nutrients to maintain satisfying relationships.
Although people can certainly stay alive if they consume only some ingredients (e.g., carbs), we ultimately need all key nutritional ingredients (e.g., carbs, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals) to be in the best state of health. Likewise, although people might be able to successfully maintain their relationships even if they are missing a particular ingredient (e.g., lack of physical touch in long-distance relationships),
the best relationships will be ones in which partners spend time together (quality time; Aron et al., 2022), express appreciation (words of affirmation; Algoe, 2012), show affection (physical touch; Jakubiak & Feeney, 2019), help and support each other (acts of service; Feeney & Collins, 2015), and make each other feel special (which is presumably the intention behind gifts; Komiya et al., 2019), among other behaviors (e.g., support for personal goals and autonomy) not captured in Chapman’s five love languages.
Of course, this does not mean that all expressions of love will be equally important to all people and in all situations. Just as there are times when people might have particularly strong needs for certain nutrients (e.g., a marathon runner needs extra carbs), people might benefit more from specific expressions of love at certain times, such as physical affection during times of stress (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2019).
In addition, just as some people with chronic health conditions benefit more than others from nutritional supplements (e.g., anemic people need supplemental iron), relationship science has shown that people with chronic relationship insecurities, for example, people higher in attachment avoidance who tend to have issues trusting in their partner’s love and care, experience even greater benefits when their partner expresses appreciation (Park et al., 2019).
The message delivered to the public could then be that instead of there being only one key thing that people need to do to make their partner feel loved, people should make sure they have a nutritionally balanced relationship, and if they feel that something is missing, they could discuss that imbalance (unmet need) with their partner.
In fact, one of the reasons why so many people feel that Chapman’s (2015) book has helped their relationships might be because it provides partners an opportunity to reflect on, discuss, and respond to one another’s needs, which is indeed a fundamental principle in relationship science (responsiveness; Reis et al., 2004).