Use of the term “romantic love” in the evolutionary social and behavioral sciences

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Abstract
There is a big problem in psychology and related disciplines related to the inconsistent use of the terminology of love in romantic relationships. The biggest problem is the use of the term "romantic love." On the one hand, a majority of researchers use the term to describe the motivational state that commonly occurs in the early stages of romantic relationships characterized by particularly intense cognitions, emotions, and behaviors (narrow sense of the term; e.g., Bode & Kushnick, 2021). This aligns with the concept of "passionate love" promoted and used by Elain Hatfield and some others (e.g., (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993). On the other hand, some researchers use the term to refer to any love that usually occurs in a romantic relationship, whether it be that state I described, or the less intense love associated with feeling of companionship that characterizes long-term romantic relationships such as marriages (broad sense of the term; (Marta Kowal et al., 2025). This dual use of the term leads to bad science as a result of misunderstanding, wasting of time and resources, and false beliefs about love in romantic relationships. There is a convention that the term "romantic love" is used in the narrow sense in the evolutionary social and behavioral science of love that should be adhered to. I am writing this opinion to lay out this convention and to advocate for researchers in the evolutionary social and behavioral sciences to follow this convention. In essence, I argue that the term "romantic love" should be used in the narrow sense, which is in line with convention in the evolutionary social and behavioral sciences (e.g., Bode, Kavanagh, & Kowal, 2025), the Englishlanguage definition (Collins, 2025), the American Psychological Association definition (American Psychological Association, 2025), the general conceptualization in the Triangular Theory of Love (Sternberg, 1986), and the convention in biopsychology (Bode & Kowal, 2023). The original classification system used to describe love in romantic relationships was formulated by Elaine Hatfield and her co-authors (e.g., (Berscheid & Walster, 1969;Hatfield & Rapson, 1993;Hatfield & Walster, 1985;Walster & Walster, 1978). They distinguished "passionate love" and "companionate love." Passionate love equates to the state of love commonly associated with the earlier stages of a romantic relationship and particularly strong cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Companionate love equates to the less intense love felt between individuals in longer-term romantic relationships, such as married couples. The question at hand is whether "romantic love" refers to passionate love or both passionate and companionate love.Problems with methodology is the prototypical negative outcome when it comes to dual use of the term "romantic love." Not only does it mean that researchers have wasted time and resources, but it creates the false impression in the literature that we know what is either not known or is incorrect. Two recent papers spring to mind that provide good examples of bad science resulting from methodological errors. The first uses the term romantic love in a very broad sense. Han and colleagues (Han et al., 2024) undertook a bibliographic analysis of the scientific literature to describe the landscape of what they call "romantic love." In their search terms, they extended the meaning of romantic love so much as to include a search field for "romantic relationship." This probably resulted from a lack of awareness that the term "romantic love" has a precise meaning, and the authors in turn conflated related concepts associated with romantic relationships. This in effect meant that the analysis considered all studies over the past ten years that had investigated romantic relationships, and as a result, the findings are not useful in describing the literature on love in romantic relationships. This is problematic because it creates the false impression that there is a sizeable literature on love in romantic relationships and falsely heralds establishedheralds romantic relationship researchers as leaders in the field of romantic love.A second recent study (Yang, Wang, Shi, & Zou, 2024) purported to test a theory that the mechanisms associated with romantic love are similar to those involved in addiction by undertaking a meta-analysis of fMRI studies of romantic love and addiction. The theory has always been based upon a narrow definition of the term "romantic love" (see (A. Bode & Kushnick, 2021;H. E. Fisher, Xu, Aron, & Brown, 2016;Wang et al., 2020;Zou, Song, Zhang, & Zhang, 2016). Yang and colleagues (Yang et al., 2024) introduce the theory correctly, drawing on a definition of romantic love that aligns with the narrow sense. However, when it came to the selection of fMRI studies, they included not only fMRI studies of people experiencing "romantic love" -in the early stages of a romantic relationships -but also studies of people in romantic relationships for many years or even decades. This error may have resulted because the authors conducting the study were only superficially familiar with the biopsychological literature on romantic love -one field where the use of the term is notoriously consistent -or the theory. This does not excuse the fact, however, that the corresponding author was a guest editor for a special issue in this Journal on the specific theory they were testing (Zhang, Zou, & Fallgatter, 2016) and was therefore aware of the meaning of "romantic love" in the biopsychology literature. The authors concluded that there were few similarities between romantic love and addiction. However, as is clear, this study failed to appropriately test the hypothesis. This is problematic because it creates the perception that the similarities between romantic love and addiction are minimal, despite this not having been tested appropriately. I note that after this that article was published, I submitted a letter to the editor at...

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