Care, need, and conceptions of love.

Determined the relative representativeness, as exemplars of love, of caring and needing, which are subclasses of love. In 5 studies with 322 undergraduates, Ss examined different items on the Love Scale, were instructed differently on how to interpret response patterns, and rated the response patterns on how much love the individual felt for the partner, how friendly he or she felt toward the partner, how much he or she liked the partner, and how attracted he or she was to the partner. It was predicted that (a) care plays a more important role than need in judgments of love and (b) need plays a more important role than care in judgments of attraction. Results support these predictions and also indicate that trust plays a more important role in judgments of friendship than in those of any other attitude. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)