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Loving is a fundamental aspect of being human. Yet knowledge of the nature of love remains primitive because until recently, it was not considered scientifically respectable to investigate love phenomena. The present study used hierarchical factor analytic methods to test the structure underlying data provided by 499 subjects on the 1990 version of the Hendrick and Hendrick Love Attitudes Scale. The results suggest that some variations in Lee's measurement model may result in an improved model fit.

Loving is a fundamental aspect of being human. Freud himself argued that the inability to love leads to illness, and some empirical research appears to support his view. Yet our knowledge of the nature of love remains primitive, because until recently it was not considered scientifically respectable to investigate love phenomena. This study used confirmatory factor analytic methods to test the fit of various models to data provided by 499 subjects on the 1990 version of the Hendrick and Hendrick Love Attitudes Scale. The results suggest that counselors and researchers should not treat the love styles delineated by Lee as discrete or uncorrelated entities. The results also suggest that the traditional model regarding this measure, positing (a) six factors (b) that are uncorrelated, may not provide a very good fit to data from the Love Attitudes Scale.