Abstract
While love is a common theme in pop music and studies indicate that music can significantly influence people’s emotions and behaviors, research on the impact of pop love songs on listeners—particularly regarding romantic love—remains limited. This study examined the short-term effect of listening to pop love songs on self-reported feelings of romantic love among a sample of adults in romantic relationships. Participants were randomly assigned to listen briefly to love songs (n = 98) or non-love songs (n = 101), before completing measures of four facets of love. While participants who listened to love (vs non-love) songs scored higher, on average, on measures of relationship commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love, the results were not statistically significant. We discuss the limitations of our study and provide recommendations for future research.
The connection between music and love is timeless, with countless ballads, arias, and songs encapsulating the vast spectrum of love, from the initial thrill of romance to the deep connection of lifelong partnership. Although research has highlighted the prevalence of love themes, particularly in pop music, there is still a limited understanding of the emotional effects these songs have on their audience (Bamford et al., 2024). Regardless of the genre of the music, over the last few decades, music psychologists have amply demonstrated the importance of emotional experiences when people listen to music. In fact, findings suggests that music evokes emotions up to 64% of the time we spend listening to it (Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008), and that people engage with music principally because of its powerful ability to evoke and regulate emotions and moods (Juslin & Laukka, 2003b; Schäfer et al., 2013). For instance, various studies have explored the reasons for the widespread appeal of sad music (Eerola et al., 2018; Garrido, 2017; Sachs et al., 2015; Vuoskoski et al., 2011), showing that individuals are more likely to listen to sad music when experiencing negative moods or situations, such as enduring a breakup or feeling lonely (Hunter et al., 2011; Saarikallio & Erkkilä, 2007). In these situations, people report that sad music helps them cope by validating their emotions, offering solace, providing rewarding emotional experiences, and facilitating reflection and relaxation (Taruffi & Koelsch, 2014; Ter Bogt et al., 2017; van den Tol, 2016). The subjective experiences evoked by music are varied, include both positive and negative affects, and have been conceptualized by music researchers in different ways (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2012; K. Scherer & Zentner, 2008). Tenderness (including feeling in love and affectionate feelings) and erotic emotions have been described as core affective experiences evoked by music cross-culturally according to two different data-driven models of emotions (Cowen et al., 2020; Zentner et al., 2008). While many of the past empirical studies of music and emotion have focused on instrumental music (Vuoskoski et al., 2011), some research has also examined songs, consisting of lyrics as well as instrumental music, thereby making it more complicated to disentangle the respective effects of the lyrics and the music on the listener’s emotional response (Ali & Peynircioğlu, 2006). Songs encompassing a variety of genres and styles are consumed ubiquitously, and several studies have shown that lyrics play a crucial role in the evocation of emotions such as empathy (Greitemeyer, 2009), sadness and emotional tears (Brattico et al., 2011; Fiveash & Luck, 2016; Hanser et al., 2022; Mori, 2022; Pond & Leavens, 2023), and aggression (Fischer & Greitemeyer, 2006). For example, Greitemeyer (2009) found that listening to prosocial (vs neutral) songs was associated with greater empathy. In the study by Fischer and Greitemeyer (2006), listening to aggressive and misogynistic (vs neutral) songs was associated with an increase in vengeance among male participants. More recently, de Leeuw et al. (2022) found that participants who listened to a favorite meaningful song were three times more likely to have the desire to express love for others (such as wanting to hug a loved one or tell them how much they love them), compared with participants who listened to a favorite pleasurable song.
Love songs
Several studies have documented the centrality of love themes in popular music (Horton, 1957; Peatman, 1944). A recent analysis of the 1,040 US top-40 songs from 1960 to 2010 revealed that 67% referred to love and romance and 30% to sexual relationships and desire (Christenson et al., 2019). Moreover, while the proportion of lyrics referring to sex had increased in recent decades (see also Madanikia & Bartholomew, 2014), the proportion of lyrics about romantic relationships had remained stable, demonstrating people’s unwavering preoccupation with romantic love (Christenson et al., 2019). Similarly, Ruth (2019) performed a content analysis of the lyrics of 588 songs appearing in the German yearly charts from 1954 to 2014, and confirmed that themes related to love were the most predominant (found in 57% of the songs). In exploring the specific aspects of love depicted in music, Jorgensen-Wells et al. (2022) performed a content analysis on the portrayal of romantic attachment styles in the lyrics of popular songs. Their findings indicate that a significant majority, 86% of the analyzed songs, conveyed themes of insecure attachment, with certain characteristics of the songs and artists being linked to particular attachment styles. Songs with a primary focus on love were more often pop songs and more often portrayed a secure attachment style through their lyrics. The authors found no relationship between an artist’s gender and the attachment style portrayed by the lyrics of their song.
Preliminary evidence suggests that listening to love songs can affect behaviors and emotions, both for initial attraction and for those already in romantic relationships. In the study by Shigeno (2015), listening to love-related background music (vs no music) before and during an interaction with someone of the preferred gender was associated with a greater likelihood of rating them as likable and dateable. Indirect evidence that listening to love songs can affect the behaviors of those already in romantic relationships comes from the study by Jacob et al. (2009), who found that listening to background love-related music (vs neutral or no music) in a flower shop was associated with men spending more money. More recently, Aghedu et al. (2021) found that thinking about one’s romantic partner while listening to a self-selected love song was associated with a more positive emotional state. Interestingly, Harris and colleagues (2019) investigated the phenomenon of “couple-defining songs” (CDSs), where a couple associates a specific song with their relationship. Their online survey study revealed that CDSs were common, with 60% of participants reporting a CDS unique to romantic partnerships. Although unrelated to the length of the relationship, CDSs occurred more frequently among married couples and were correlated with higher levels of relationship intimacy and music appreciation. In line with the findings by Harris et al. (2019), Mashek and colleagues (2000) found that listening to songs important to one’s relationship was rated among the top stimuli to evoke feelings of romantic love in young couples.
On one hand, recent research has highlighted the prominence of love and romance as key themes in pop music (Christenson et al., 2019), while on the other hand, researchers have demonstrated that music has the ability to influence emotions (Juslin & Sloboda, 2011) and behaviors (North & Hargreaves, 2008). However, a relatively small body of literature has explored the impact of love-related music on listeners (Aghedu et al., 2021; Jacob et al., 2009; Shigeno, 2015), specifically focusing on the effect of listening to love songs on different aspects of romantic love. This, therefore, was the focus of this study.
Measuring love
Love is a complex and multifaceted human experience (Fehr, 2019). Numerous theories have been developed to explain love and its various facets. Sternberg’s (1986, 2006, 2019) triangular theory of love (Sternberg & Barnes, 1988) proposed that love has three components: passion, commitment, and intimacy. These aspects of love are also often featured in other theories of love. For example, passion (eros) and intimacy (storge) featured in Lee’s (1973, 1977) styles of love theory, as well as Hatfield’s (1988) companionate (characterized by commitment, trust, and affection) and passionate (marked by longing and desire for physical closeness) love theory. Sternberg’s theory has been extensively validated (Chojnacki & Walsh, 1990; Lemieux & Hale, 1999, 2000, 2002; Sorokowski et al., 2020) and cross-culturally employed (Gao, 2001; Sorokowski et al., 2020; Vera Cruz, 2017), and is widely considered an appropriate explanation of some of love’s key facets (Clemente et al., 2020; Fehr, 2019; Sorokowski et al., 2020).
Passionate love is an “intense longing for union with another” (Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986, pp. 385–386), physical and sexual attraction, desire, excitement, and sometimes obsession. Commitment is the devotion of oneself to someone and the decision to maintain the relationship over time (Sternberg, 1986). Intimacy involves feelings of closeness, warmth, trust, and caring (Sternberg, 1986). Intimacy is often operationalized as the inclusion of the other in the self (Aron et al., 1992); that is, the extent to which individuals view themselves as overlapping with their partner.
Strongly related to passion, commitment, and intimacy is relationship satisfaction (Kochar & Sharma, 2015; Lewis, 2011; Madey & Rodgers, 2009), which is defined as an overall emotional evaluation of the quality of a relationship (Rusbult, 1980). As a predictor of romantic relationship dissolution (Le et al., 2010), life satisfaction (Demirtas & Tezer, 2012; Roberson et al., 2018), and psychological well-being (Roberson et al., 2018; Till et al., 2016), relationship satisfaction is important for individuals in romantic relationships. Therefore, this study measured three facets of love: “passion,” “commitment,” and “intimacy,” in addition to “relationship satisfaction.”
Aims of the study
In this study, we examined experimentally the short-term effect of listening to pop love songs on self-reported feelings of romantic love. Participants listened to either love songs or songs unrelated to love, and completed measures of relationship commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love. We tested the hypothesis that, compared to those who listened to songs unrelated to love, participants who listened to love songs would report greater commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love. We also asked if song familiarity would have an effect on reported levels of commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love.
Method
Participants
A convenience sample of adults (⩾ 18 years of age) in romantic relationships took part in an anonymous online study running from January to March 2022 on the Qualtrics platform (www.qualtrics.com). The study was published in the English language on study participation groups on Facebook and Reddit. Undergraduate psychology students at Durham University were also recruited via the university participant pool. They were invited to take part in a study entitled “Which lyrics do you hear?” in which they would listen to pop songs and be asked which lyrics stood out to them. Prior to participation, they were informed that they would be asked questions about their romantic relationships; the focus of the study on love was only disclosed, however, when they had completed it. Participants received no financial compensation for their participation. An initial sample of 295 participants was recruited. Ninety-three were excluded from the analysis, however, on the basis that they had failed to complete the survey or reported that they were not in a romantic relationship (n = 3).
The demographic characteristics of the final sample (N = 199) are presented in Table 1. The average age of participants was 24.83 years (SD = 9.44, range = 18–70). They had been in their current romantic relationship for an average of 3 years 11 months (SD = 5.81 [5 years 9 months], range = 2 weeks to 35 years 3 months).
Demographic characteristics of participants.
Note: N = 199 (n = 98 love songs condition, n = 101 non-love songs condition).
Participants were able to select more than one sexual orientation.
All participants gave informed consent according to the procedures approved by the Ethics Committee of the Music Department of Durham University, and the study was conducted in accordance with ethical standards outlined by the Declaration of Helsinki.
Materials
Pop songs
Music stimuli included 10 love songs (see Table 2) and 10 non-love songs (see Table 3). For the purpose of our study, love songs were defined as songs with lyrics centered around themes of romantic love. Conversely, non-love songs were defined as songs whose lyrics did not refer to romantic love. We initially compiled a list of pop songs related and unrelated to love by assessing the content of their lyrics. Both conditions comprised upbeat pop songs with positive valence that had featured in the UK Official Chart’s (2022) Top 100 singles from the last 20 years (https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/); all the selected love-related songs used no gendered language. From this initial pool, we carefully selected five songs with male singers and five with female singers for each condition, yielding a total of 20 songs. Inclusion of songs by non-binary artists was out of scope for this study due to our restricted criteria for songs (pop and upbeat music, with similar acoustic attributes, and no use of gendered pronouns or terms in love songs), and because non-binary people represent only a small percentage of the overall population (0.06% of the England and Wales population, according to the 2021 Census; Office for National Statistics, 2023a) and musicians (1.7% of those surveyed in 2022, according to UK Music, 2022).
Love songs used in the study.
Note: Love song condition (n = 98). Song popularity indicates the number (with percentage in brackets) of participants who selected that song in this study (see Design and procedure). Songs are listed here in order of popularity.
Non-love songs used in the study.
Note: Non-love song condition (n = 101). Song popularity indicates the number (with percentage in brackets) of participants who selected that song in this study (see Design and procedure). Songs are listed here in order of popularity.
We then conducted a small pilot study to assess whether the selected songs would be correctly categorized as related or unrelated to love based solely on their lyrics. In this pilot experiment, 19 volunteers read the lyrics of the selected songs, presented in a randomized order, and were then asked to rate whether the songs were focused on romantic love or not, using a forced-choice answer format (yes/no). The overall accuracy rate was 94.43% (range = 78%–100%), with 91.67% for love songs and 97.19% for non-love songs. Consequently, all the songs were deemed suitable for inclusion in the main study.
Independent t-tests were used to assess differences in a number of acoustic attributes between the two song conditions. Tempo, measured in beats per minute (BPM), did not significantly differ (p = .49) between love songs (M = 125.4, SD = 22.51) and non-love songs (M = 125.7, SD = 20.98). Similarly, loudness, measured in dB, did not significantly differ (p = .15) between love songs (M = –6.6, SD = 2.46) and non-love songs (M = –5.6, SD = 1.64). Furthermore, songs across the two conditions did not exhibit significant differences in valence (love songs: M = 61.90, SD = 19.51; non-love songs: M = 66.3, SD = 16.4; p = .29), danceability (love songs: M = 63, SD = 14.62; non-love songs: M = 64.9, SD = 6.06; p = .35), and energy (love songs: M = 65.9, SD = 17.39; non-love songs: M = 75.1, SD = 10.65; p = .09). The above parameters 1 were retrieved on 13 March 2023 from the Spotify API via the web app Sort Your Playlist, 2 and are derived exclusively from acoustic-driven information, 3 not user tags. The songs presented in each condition were 3–4.30 min long (love songs: M = 3.67; non-love songs: M = 3.80).
Measures
Relationship commitment
The eight-item Commitment Level sub-scale of the Investment Model Scale by Rusbult et al. (1998) was employed to measure commitment to one’s romantic relationship. This scale has been extensively employed to measure commitment among participants in romantic relationships (Baker et al., 2017; Bucher et al., 2019; Tran et al., 2019). Participants responded on a 9-point Likert-type scale from 1 (not at all true) to 9 (completely true). Items within the scale were presented in a randomized order. Example items include, “I am committed to maintaining my relationship with my partner” and “I want our relationship to last forever.” The scale demonstrated excellent internal reliability in the present (α = .90) and original study (α = .91). Aggregate scores were calculated by averaging item ratings across the scale. Higher scores indicate greater commitment to one’s partner.
Relationship intimacy
To measure relationship intimacy, we employed the single-item Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS) pictorial scale by Aron et al. (1992). The IOS is a simple and intuitive tool (Gächter et al., 2015) that has been extensively employed and is typically used to assess intimacy in romantic relationships (Emery et al., 2021; Gesell et al., 2020; Prause et al., 2021). The IOS is positively correlated with other measures of relationship intimacy and is considered a psychologically meaningful and reliable measure of subjective relationship intimacy (Gächter et al., 2015). In the IOS, participants are asked to select one from a series of seven overlapping circles labeled “self” and “other.” In this study, participants were asked to select the circles that best illustrate their relationship with their romantic partner. Scores range from 1 (where the circles touch but do not overlap) to 7 (where the circles are nearly entirely overlapping), with higher scores indicating greater relationship intimacy (see Figure 1).
Measure of relationship intimacy: Inclusion of the other in the self (Aron et al., 1992).
Relationship satisfaction
The six-item Satisfaction Level sub-scale of the Investment Model Scale by Rusbult et al. (1998) was employed to measure relationship satisfaction. This scale has been extensively employed to measure satisfaction among individuals in romantic relationships (Brick et al., 2021; Sasaki & Overall, 2021; Saslow et al., 2012). Participants responded on a 9-point Likert-type scale from 1 (not at all true) to 9 (completely true). Items within the scale were presented in a randomized order. Example items include “My relationship is close to ideal” and “Our relationship does a good job of fulfilling my needs for intimacy.” The scale demonstrated excellent internal reliability in this (α = .91) and original study (α = .92). Aggregate scores were calculated by averaging item ratings across the scale. Higher scores indicate greater satisfaction with one’s partner.
Passionate love
To assess passionate love, we employed the 15-item short form Passionate Love Scale by Hatfield and Sprecher (1986). This scale assesses the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral indicators of passionate love. The Passionate Love Scale is a reliable measure of passionate love (Fehr, 1994; Graham & Christiansen, 2009; Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986) and has been widely employed with participants in romantic relationships (Meixner & Herbert, 2018; Quintard et al., 2020). The scale asks participants to respond on a 9-point Likert-type scale from 1 (not at all true) to 9 (completely true) to items such as “I would rather be with my partner than anyone else” and “For me, my partner is the perfect romantic partner.” Items within the scale were presented in a randomized order. The scale demonstrated excellent internal reliability in this (α = .91) and original study (α = .94). Aggregate scores were calculated by averaging item ratings across the scale. Higher scores indicate greater passionate love for one’s partner.
Pop music enjoyment and song familiarity
Participants reported if pop music is a genre of music they enjoy (yes/no). They also reported if they were familiar with one, both, or neither of the songs they chose to listen to (see Design and procedure).
Demographic information
Participants reported demographic information on their age, gender, employment status, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and the length of their current romantic relationship (in months and years).
Design and procedure
This study employed a between-subjects design. The independent variable had two levels (love songs vs non-love songs). Participants were randomly assigned to listen to either pop songs related to love (experimental condition; n = 98) or pop songs unrelated to love (control condition; n = 101). Specifically, they were presented with a selection of 10 pop songs (audio files labeled by song name containing that song in full) and were asked to select two of their choice to listen to in full. The order of songs was randomized in each condition. A small number of participants chose to listen to more than the requested number of songs; four participants listened to two to three additional songs in the love songs condition and two participants listened to one to two additional songs in the non-love songs condition. Selection of songs by participants was used to create an ecological music listening environment, allowing listeners to choose their preferred music and thereby facilitating task completion and engagement. Participants were instructed to listen to the music via headphones on their preferred devices and not to engage in any other activity (e.g., checking emails) during the task. To encourage concentration, participants were informed that they would later be asked questions about the songs they listened to. After the listening task, all participants completed measures on relationship commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love (dependent variables; measure order randomized). Participants were also measured on their enjoyment of pop music and familiarity with the songs they listened to. To remain consistent with the name of the study, participants were asked to name the lyric that stood out most to them overall; however, these data were not utilized for analysis. Participants then reported demographic information. Finally, participants were debriefed as to the aims of the study and it was explained that its focus on love had been concealed to avoid bias. Participants could withdraw from the study at any time during participation simply by closing their browser.
Data analysis
Descriptive analyses of outcome variables were conducted for the full sample and by condition. Analyses of correlations between outcome variables were also performed to examine and provide evidence for the relationships among them. Independent t-tests were conducted to test for differences between the scores of participants in the love (vs non-love) song conditions across the four outcome variables. Exploratory one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were conducted to estimate the effect of song familiarity on the four variables.
Results
All analyses were conducted in JASP (JASP Team, 2023). Means, standard deviations, and Pearson’s correlations for all outcome variables for the full sample and each condition are presented in Table 4. All outcome variables were highly correlated across the full sample and in each condition.
Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlations between outcome variables for the full sample, love songs condition, and non-love songs condition.
p < .001.
Song familiarity
The majority of participants (74.38%; n = 148) were familiar with both songs they listened to; 21.60% (n = 43) were familiar with just one song; and 4.02% (n = 8) were unfamiliar with either song.
Pop music enjoyment
Most participants (84.42%; n = 168) stated that pop music was a genre of music they enjoy; 15.58% (n = 31) reported that it was not.
Song choices
In the love songs condition, the most popular songs selected were Still Into You (Paramore) and We Found Love (Rihanna). In the non-love songs condition, the most popular songs selected were Dancing in the Moonlight (Toploader) and Fireflies (Owl City). The number and percentage of participants who selected each song are presented in Table 2 and Table 3 for the love songs condition and non-love songs condition, respectively.
We tested the hypothesis that participants who listened to love songs (vs non-love songs) would report greater relationship commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love by conducting a series of independent t-tests between scores of the two groups of participants on the four measures, to which a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was applied (see Table 5). The hypothesis was not supported.
Results of independent t-tests examining differences between scores of participants who listened to love songs and non-love songs.
Note: The Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was applied.
We addressed the question as to whether there would be any effect of song familiarity on relationship commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love by conducting four exploratory one-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) in which familiarity had three levels: familiar with both songs versus familiar with one song versus familiar with neither song. The ANOVAs yielded no significant effect of song familiarity on relationship commitment, F(2,196) = 2.73 (p = .068); relationship intimacy, F(2,196) = 0.20 (p = .818); relationship satisfaction F(2,196) = 0.82 (p = .443); or passionate love F(2,196) = 2.05 (p = .132). However, because the number of participants per condition did not meet the required sample size (N = 53) to achieve a power of .80 (p < .05) for a one-way ANOVA, these results should be treated with caution.
Discussion
In this study, we tested the hypothesis that adults in romantic relationships who listened to love songs would report greater commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love than listeners to non-love songs. Although the mean scores on the measures of these variables were higher for the first group of participants than the second (see Table 4), the differences between the two groups were not statistically significant (see Table 5). We also found no effect of song familiarity on the four variables.
Although research on the effects of listening to love songs is limited, there are a few studies that offer preliminary evidence of the impact of love songs on listeners’ behavior (Jacob et al., 2009; Shigeno, 2015). Importantly, there is evidence that listening to love songs can evoke feelings and thoughts related to love and romantic partners (Aghedu et al., 2021; Harris et al., 2019; Mashek et al., 2000). These findings suggest that such musical experiences may enhance listeners’ subjective perceptions of various aspects of their romantic relationships. This idea aligns well with the priming effects of emotions, including those elicited by music, on cognitive judgments (Armitage & Eerola, 2022; Goerlich et al., 2012; Tay & Ng, 2019). Just as exposure to a particular emotional music stimulus (the prime) influences the evaluation of a second stimulus (the target) in another domain (e.g., words), in the context of affective priming paradigms using music (L. D. Scherer & Larsen, 2011), it is plausible that exposure to aspects of romantic love through listening to love songs could influence listeners’ judgments about their current romantic relationships. We found no evidence for this, however, in our comparisons between the levels of commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love reported by those who did and did not listen to love songs.
One reason for our results might be that we asked participants to listen to songs we had selected instead of participant-selected music, as in previous studies using participant-selected love songs (Aghedu et al., 2021), CDSs (Harris et al., 2019), and songs significant to the participant’s relationship (Mashek et al., 2000), which did find positive effects on emotion and behavior. We followed the example of Shigeno (2015) and Jacob et al. (2009) in employing experimenter-selected love songs even though they had not explored the effects of these songs on people in romantic relationships but rather on their interactions with strangers of another gender. We might, therefore, have obtained significant results if we had used participant-selected love songs and/or CDSs as stimuli, because they are likely to bring images or memories of romantic partners to mind, increasing their salience in listener’s thoughts, and enhancing their perceptions of the romantic relationship. We also sought to measure the effects of participants’ familiarity with the stimuli, so we asked them to select two favorite love songs to listen to from a predefined list. This ensured that participants had at least a degree of familiarity with the songs but did not guarantee that they liked them or, more importantly, that the songs were connected in any way with their romantic relationships. We would suggest that replicating our study using participant-selected music stimuli of particular romantic significance to the participant could be a valuable next step for research in this area.
Relationship commitment, intimacy, and passionate love are facets of love measured based on Sternberg’s (1986) triangular theory of love. This theory of love has been extensively validated (Chojnacki & Walsh, 1990; Lemieux & Hale, 1999, 2000, 2002; Sorokowski et al., 2020) and cross-culturally employed (Gao, 2001; Sorokowski et al., 2020; Vera Cruz, 2017), and is perhaps the most accepted and commonly cited theory of love (Fehr, 2019; Sorokowski et al., 2020). Moreover, the measures employed to assess these constructs have been widely validated (Fehr, 1994; Gächter et al., 2015; Graham & Christiansen, 2009; Hendrick & Hendrick, 1989) and employed (Baker et al., 2017; Brick et al., 2021; Bucher et al., 2019; Sasaki & Overall, 2021; Saslow et al., 2012). In contrast to the other outcome variables, however, in this study relationship intimacy was measured using a single-item pictorial measure (IOS). The IOS has been extensively employed to assess intimacy in romantic relationships (Emery et al., 2021; Gesell et al., 2020; Prause et al., 2021) and is positively correlated with other measures of relationship intimacy. It is considered a psychologically meaningful and reliable measure of subjective relationship intimacy (Gächter et al., 2015). However, employing the IOS has limitations because its internal reliability cannot be estimated and because it is methodologically different from the other measures we used, which were all text-based. It would be worth replicating our study using a different instrument for measuring relationship intimacy. One option is the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (PAIR) scale (Schaefer & Olson, 1981), which consists of 36 items across five subscales: Social Intimacy, Sexual Intimacy, Intellectual Intimacy, Recreational Intimacy, and Conventionality. Previous research has indicated that PAIR scores are positively correlated with relationship satisfaction and negatively with conflict (Schaefer & Olson, 1981). This scale was also successfully employed in a recent study that found that CDSs were associated with higher levels of intimacy (Harris et al., 2019). In our study, the difference between the scores on the IOS of participants who did and did not listen to love songs neared statistical significance, so it is possible that we would have obtained the results we predicted if we had used a different measurement tool.
Further limitations and future directions
In this section, we highlight additional limitations of our approach not previously mentioned and offer suggestions for future research. First, our participants were recruited through convenience sampling rather than representative or quota sampling (Ganguli et al., 1998). The sample was also relatively young and included high percentages of women and sexual minorities. Women are more likely to be university students in the United Kingdom (Bolton & Lewis, 2023), and women and young people are more likely to identify as sexual minorities (Office for National Statistics, 2020, 2023b), which may in part explain the large representation of women and sexual minorities in this sample. Having a young sample may have produced higher enjoyment of and familiarity with the selected pop songs than the general population, and with many participants being in a romantic relationship for a relatively short period of time (see Table 1 for details of relationship length). It would also be worth considering length of relationship more closely in future research, as music may serve different purposes in different stages of a romantic relationship (e.g., attraction in the early stages and connection in later ones; Bamford et al., 2024). Second, the outcome variables were measured only once immediately following exposure to the stimuli, and participants were exposed to them only once, and for a short period. Future research should explore the long-term effects of listening to love songs on feelings of romantic love, and the effects of repeated or extended exposure. Third, the stimuli used in this study were limited to experimenter-selected, upbeat pop music with positive valence, and it is therefore unclear how varying music genre, locus of control, and conveyed valence and arousal might have affected the results of the study. For instance, music characterized by a slow tempo, low sound level, minimal sound level variability, and reduced high-frequency energy has been found to convey feelings of tenderness (Juslin & Laukka, 2003a). It would, therefore, be valuable to study the effect of such music on reported feelings of romantic love. Fourth, the role of lyrics should be considered. Our goal in this study was not to disentangle the effects of lyrics from the acoustic features of the music on our dependent variables, but rather to consider the love songs as a whole, with all their main constituents. In future, song lyrics should be subjected to detailed linguistic examination. It has been shown that using second-person pronouns in song lyrics can encourage listeners to imagine the song’s narrative in relation to someone in their own lives, and songs that frequently use these pronouns tend to be more commercially successful (Packard & Berger, 2020). The use of second-person pronouns and other linguistic features could be examined in future research to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of lyrics that may contribute to the experience of romantic love. We did not constrain our choices of love song to include specific references to the facets of love under investigation (e.g., commitment and passion) but in future studies, using experimenter-selected stimuli, the lyrics could be controlled more rigorously.
Conclusion
References to love are commonplace in pop music and research has shown that music has the powerful ability to influence our emotions and behaviors, including those related to love and romance. This study tested the short-term effect of listening to love songs on different facets of romantic love. Participants who listened to love (vs non-love) songs scored higher, on average, on measures of relationship commitment, intimacy, satisfaction, and passionate love, but the results were not statistically significant. Nevertheless, the study offers valuable insights and directions for future research. While participants were primed to pay attention to the songs they listened to, chosen from a list we provided, we suggest that, in future research, participants should listen to songs they have selected themselves, and in particular, songs that are significant in their romantic relationships. We also suggest using a different measurement of relationship intimacy and examining longer or more frequent periods of music listening.
Finally, we consider this a worthwhile area of research because of its implications for people in romantic partnerships. For example, those who experience greater relationship intimacy with their partners tend to have more stable, high-quality, and satisfying relationships (Byrne & Blaylock, 1963; Frost, 2012; Murray et al., 2002), and greater psychological well-being (Debrot et al., 2013; Johnson et al., 2012; Prager & Roberts, 2004; Reis & Franks, 1994). Since listening to music is an enjoyable, cost-effective, and accessible activity for many couples worldwide—requiring only a radio or an internet-connected phone—it could be used effectively as a self-regulatory, flexible tool in daily life. Couples could use love songs to maintain and enhance their relationship intimacy and commitment, even during difficult times, or to manage conflict.
