Love American Style: A Test of Role Structure Theory on Changes in Attitudes Toward Love

A series of four investigations was completed to validate a new love scale and assess the relationship between stage of life and romantic and conjugal love attitudes. Collegeand highschool-educated samples were compared overfour stages of life. The data support a proposed functional linkage between role structure and love attitudes. Specifically, during stages where role expectations were simple and loosely defined, romantic attitudes were high, while complex stages were associated with low romantic and high conjugal love preferences.