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AbstractAlthough scholars' interest in love phenomena has continued to increase in recent years, a common conceptual language for the study of love has not yet emerged, as is evidenced by the large number of love taxonomies and associated vocabularies that have been advocated. A promising avenue for the development of a common scientific vocabulary of love lies in the systematic examination of the love vocabularies of laypersons to identify what varieties of love, if any, their lexicon reflects. Several means by which love researchers have attempted such examinations are described and illustrated with reference to the linguistic expressions "love" and "in love." These methods include direct questioning, autobiographical reports, inferential studies, and the prototype approach, which introduces the probabilistic view of cognitive categorization structure and process to the study of love. Several of the underlying assumptions of the prototype approach are discussed and contrasted to those of the social categorical approach we present here. The social categorical method is described in this approach, respondents place persons in their actual social worlds into social categories, and the associations among the memberships of those categories are examined. Finally, the implications of some of the findings derived from this method for a taxonomy of love and for the study of interpersonal relationships are discussed.

AbstractLittle is known about the beliefs men and women have about the causes of sexual desire, despite the interpersonal and individual significance of those beliefs. Participants in this study received a definition of sexual desire and answered a set of free‐response questions exploring their beliefs about the causal antecedents of male and female sexual desire. The results indicated that more women than men view female (and male) sexual desire as caused by external factors. In addition, both men and women believe that male and female sexual desire have different causes: intraindividual and erotic environmental factors are believed to cause male sexual desire, but interpersonal and romantic environmental factors are believed to cause female sexual desire. Although both men and women view physical attractiveness and overall personality as sexually desirable male and female characteristics, women, but not men, view femininity as a sexually desirable female characteristic, and men, but not women, view social and financial power or status as a sexually desirable male attribute.

AbstractThis article presents self‐report scales for the assessment of perceived dependency and insecurity in a romantic relationship. These scales were originally developed many years ago (Fei & Berscheid, 1977) but were never published. The process of original scale development is summarized, and results from five studies (total N= 1,283; including data from the original Fei & Berscheid studies) are presented showing evidence for (a) scale reliability and validity; (b) the association between dependency and insecurity and the relationship conditions that moderate this association; (c) the association of dependency and insecurity with other theoretically relevant dimensions of close relationships; and (d) dyadic‐level issues of partner similarity and correlates of discrepancies in levels of dependency and insecurity. The results indicate that the two scales are reliable, valid, and associated with many other relationship constructs (e.g., commitment, love, closeness, and attachment).