This article examines the relationships between family structure, type of mate-selection system, and romantic love as a basis for mate-selection. Analysis indicates that autonomous mate selection is more common in societies with nuclear family structure and neolocal residence patterns. Romantic love as a basis for mate selection is also more common with nuclear family organization, but it is negatively associated with neolocal residence patterns.

Previous cross-cultural studies of romantic love have, in the authors' view, been plagued by vague definitions of the concept and a conflation of cultural, bio-psychological, and social factors. Thus, the authors distinguish between the social aspect of romantic love (which they argue is a universal human predisposition) and the variable cultural valuation of romance. In a large cross-cultural sample, the authors test the hypotheses that gender equality and family organization are important predictors of the cultural valuation of romantic love.

This article explores the relationship between marital residence and romantic love; results suggest that romantic love is most important in societies with non-neolocal marital residence. The author explores potential functions of romantic love, including bolstering against the divisive pressure of relatives, or to substitute for economic interdependence between spouses.

Based on work by Rosenblatt (1966), this article tests a hypothesis relating sexual freedom to romantic love. Findings suggest a relationship between premarital and extramarital sexual permissiveness equality for women and men and romantic love.

This study examines the relationship between satisfaction of early oral and dependence needs and concern with affection in adulthood. Data showed significant support for an association between the satisfaction of early oral needs (but not the satisfaction of dependence needs) and concern for affection in adulthood.

This study examines different sources of marital stability. Authors find that subsistence dependence between partners provides marital stability and where subsistence dependence is not important, romantic love substitutes as a source of marriage stability.

This study explores the relationship between property ownership, pair bonding, and sex as predictors of romantic jealousy. The results of an unpublished cross-cultural study are presented in support of the theory.

This article reexamines Coppinger and Rosenblatt’s (1968) finding that romantic love insures marital stability where there is low subsistence dependence between the spouses. Analysis suggests that Coppinger and Rosenblatt’s associated variables, romantic love and subsistence dependence, are only related through their common association with subsistence technology.

This study negates the hypothesis that romantic love is unique to Euro-American culture and provides evidence of romantic love in the majority of cultures sampled.

This book examines population growth rate and its correlates by testing 274 hypotheses (derived from multiple theories) with an 18-society sample. Forty-one of these hypotheses were significant at the .05 level, leading the author to accept these relationships as reflective of the real world. The 274 hypotheses are grouped into 51 broader hypotheses, and marked by (*) where relationships are significant as designated by the author or by significance p < 0.05.