Love as a Commitment Device : Evidence from a Cross-Cultural Study across 90 Countries

Abstract

Given the ubiquitous nature of love numerous theories have been proposed to explain its existence. One such theory refers to love as a commitment device suggesting that romantic love evolved to foster commitment between partners and enhance their reproductive success. In the present study we investigated this hypothesis using a large-scale sample of 86310 individual responses collected across 90 countries. If romantic love is universally perceived as a force that fosters commitment between long-term partners we expected that individuals likely to suffer greater losses from the termination of their relationships—including people of lower socioeconomic status those with many children and women—would place a higher value on romantic love compared to people with higher status those with fewer children and men. These predictions were supported. Additionally we observed that individuals from countries with a higher (vs. lower) Human Development Index placed a greater level of importance on romantic love suggesting that modernization might influence how romantic love is evaluated. On average participants worldwide were unwilling to commit to a long-term romantic relationship without love highlighting romantic love’s universal importance. © 2025 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.