Description:
<jats:p>This study extended prior research on attitudes about the importance of love as a basis for marriage. With data from a sample of 4,245 college students, obtained over a 16-year period, we found that both men and women, but women to a slightly greater degree than men, rated love as important for entering marriage. Over the 16-year period of the study, the importance of love as a prerequisite for marriage decreased slightly for men. Other individual difference variables (beyond gender) that were found to be associated positively with viewing love as an important basis for marriage included being White (vs. Black), high self-esteem, restrictedness in sociosexuality (true for women only), and a secure attachment style. Participants were more undecided or ambivalent about whether love is necessary to maintain a marriage. The importance of love for maintaining marriage was rated slightly higher by women (than by men), less religious participants, those whose parents had divorced, and those who were unrestricted in their sociosexuality; this belief was not found to change over time.</jats:p>