The Concept of Love Viewed From a Prototype Perspective

Even if superordinate concepts (such as fruit, vehicle, sport) are prototypically organized, basic-level concepts (such as apple, truck, hockey) might be classically defined in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient features. A series of 6 studies examined 1 basic-level concept in the domain of emotion, love, and found that it is better understood from a prototype than a classical perspective. The natural language concept of love has an internal structure and fuzzy borders: Maternal love, romantic love, affection, love of work, self-love, infatuation, and other subtypes of love can be reliably ordered from better to poorer examples of love. In turn, each subtype's goodness as an example of love (prototypicality) was found to predict various indices of its cognitive processing. Implications for a scientific definition and typology of love are discussed. Prototype theory has provided insights into concepts central to psychology, including behavioral act (Buss & Craik, 1983), personality trait (Cantor & Mischel, 1979), intelligence (Neisser, 1979), social situation (Cantor, Mischel, & Schwartz, 1982), and environmental setting (Tversky & Hemenway, 1983). The theory has inspired important new approaches to psychiatric diagnosis (Cantor, Smith, French, & Mezzich, 1980) and personality assessment (Broughton, 1984). The studies reported in this article are part of a larger project designed to explore the applicability of prototype theory to the domain of emotion concepts. We had two related purposes. The first was to use the tools of prototype theory to throw light on the elusive concept of love. We shall have something to say about both the definition of and typologies of love. The second purpose concerned prototype theory itself. Prior demonstrations of a prototype structure in concepts focused on superordinate concepts, such as fruit, vehicle, or emotion. Would the same results occur, we asked, for basic-level concepts, such as apple, truck, or love? We shall begin with the second issue.

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