THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE - THE DIFFERENCE A PREPOSITION MAKES

The termslove and in love are often used in common discourse. A social categorical approach, whereby the actual members of an individual's s ocial categories are examined, was used to investigate the differentia l meaning of these terms. It was hypothesized that (a) the membership of the love category would be larger than that of the in love category ; (b) the membership of the in love category would be encapsulated wit hin the love category membership, indicating that love is the higher o rder generic term; (c) that the membership of the in love category, bu t not the love category, would be encapsulated within a sexual attract ion/desire category membership; (d) although these effects would be ob served for both men and women, certain gender differences would be obs erved. All hypotheses were confirmed. The implications of these findin gs for a taxonomy of love as well as for understanding and Predicting love phenomena are discussed.