(PS4-23) Is speaking your partner's primary love language essential to relationship quality? An empirical test of Chapman's Five Love Languages Theory

Chapman’s (1992) claim that the key to marital happiness is identifying and ‘speaking’ your partner’s primary ‘love language’ has been highly influential in pop culture and incorporated into therapeutic practice. However, despite multiple attempts to validate the theory, it has received minimal empirical support. The current study seeks to replicate previous findings, examining the hypothesis that satisfaction with one’s partner’s primary love language behavior predicts relationship quality better than satisfaction with one’s partner’s non-primary love language behavior. It builds on previous research by using a revised scale developed from a bottom-up approach to assess primary love language and satisfaction with one’s partners love language behaviors and testing his theory by examining positive and negative relationship quality separately.
Participants (N=499; Mage = 44.4; 62% women, 83% heterosexual, 81% White) residing in the United States and living with an intimate partner of at least 5 years were recruited through Prolific and completed online anonymous surveys, including the Positive-Negative Relationship Quality Scale and an updated Love Languages scale that includes and expands on a previously developed 5 love languages scale.
Replicating previous findings, Chapman’s hypothesis was not supported. Participants’ satisfaction with their partners’ primary love language behavior did not predict positive or negative relationship quality better than the lower ranked love languages. Participants’ satisfaction with their partners’ behaviors on all of the love languages, regardless of the participant’s ranking, were moderately to strongly related to relationship quality. Furthermore, Verbal Affirmation, Encouragement for Individual Pursuits, Discourse and Disclosure, Support in Difficult Times, and Conflict Prevention and Resolution were the strongest predictors, predicting relationship quality better than participants’ primary love language. These love languages map onto, and go beyond, Chapman’s conceptions of Words of Affirmation and Quality Time. Additionally, participants’ data did not indicate a primary love language for over half the sample, which calls into question Chapman’s assertion that most individuals have a primary language. Finally, individuals with a primary love language reported lower positive relationship quality and higher negative relationship quality than those whose data did not indicate a primary love language.
Results replicate previous research that has found that affirming one’s partner, fostering emotional intimacy, being supportive in difficult times, encouraging one’s partner to pursue their interests and goals, and seeking to resolve disagreements fairly and respectfully is vital to relationship quality, regardless of individual preferences for receiving love. These should remain targets of intervention for relationship therapists. Rather than helping intimate partners to ‘speak’ their partner’s primary love language, therapists should normalize the idea that people both express and prefer to receive love in multiple ways and help individuals to hear their partner’s expression of love across a range of languages.