Falling in Love and Passionate Love in an Iranian Sample

Romantic relationships and passionate love are topics of perennial interest to scientists and the lay public alike. While there is evidence of romantic love across many cultures, with some suggesting it is a universal human experience, the majority of research has been conducted in Western countries (e.g., the U.S.). When other cultures have been researched, the focus has typically been on Eastern countries (e.g., Japan). Much less is known about love experiences in countries such as Iran. The current study sought to address this gap and assessed 220 Iranian students. Participants completed a set of measures (translated into Farsi) and reported both qualitatively and quantitatively about love experiences (e.g., narrative account of their most recent falling in love experience, ratings about their relationship if they were currently in one). The majority of participants reported having fallen in love, although this was a notably smaller proportion (55%) than seen in past research. Similarly, content-analysis of narratives revealed fewer instances of 12 common precursors to falling in love found in past samples, though Iranian participants did highly endorse precursors when explicitly asked about them. Those in a relationship reported passionate love and high levels of closeness to their partner. This study highlights the need for additional love research in under-studied cultures, including research that can elucidate whether these results are due to actual differences in experiences, differences in reporting norms, third variables, or some combination.

Our understanding of romantic love (including passionate love and the FIL experience) tends to come from studies conducted in individualistic Western cultures (such as North America and Europe) utilizing measures that were developed within these cultures (e.g., Hendrick & Hendrick, 1989).Perhaps this skew is not problematic-some researchers theorize that romantic love is a human universal, similar across all cultures, as it is based on a mammalian brain system for mate choice (e.g., Fisher, Aron, & Brown, 2006) and facilitates pair-bonding in Homo sapiens (e.g., Fletcher, Simpson, Campbell, & Overall, 2015).They point to studies such as Buss et al. (1990) and Jankowiak and Fischer (1992), which found evidence of romantic attraction across 37 countries and in 147 cultures around the world, respectively.However, others point out that while romantic love in general may be a common experience, culture can affect people's experiences with love, reflected in crosscultural studies comparing individualistic Western cultures (e.g., North American and Europe) to more collectivistic Eastern cultures (e.g., East Asia).For example, Dion and Dion (1993) found that love is experienced more strongly in individualistic cultures (compared with collectivistic cultures).Others have found that those from Western cultures (compared with those from Eastern cultures) are more emotionally expressive (Kito, 2005;Tsai & Levenson, 1997) and report emotional experiences (including passion) more strongly (Gao, 2001;Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Iranian Passionate Love and Falling in Love Compared to what is known about love in the United States, other Western countries, and some East Asian countries, very little is known about how romantic love is perceived and experienced in countries such as Iran which fall outside of these more commonly studied groups.Iran (officially the Islamic Republic of Iran; formerly known as Persia) is a country located in southwestern Asia which uses Persian (locally known as Farsi or Parsi) as its official language.The United Nations classifies Iran within Southern Asian (United Nations Statistics Division, 2014) or as part of the Asia-Pacific group (United Nations DGACM, 2014), while other organizations classify Iran as part of the Middle East (Council on Foreign Relations, 2016).
There is a paucity of research on romantic love in the Iranian population.The research that does exist focuses on clinical issues associated with romantic love such as hypomania, sleep problems, depression, and anxiety (Bajoghli, Joshaghani, Mohammadi, Holsboer-Trachsler, & Brand, 2011;Bajoghli et al., 2014;Bajoghli et al., 2013;Brand et al., 2015), determinants of marital satisfaction (e.g., frequency of positive interactions; Tadinac et al., 2012), and maladaptive schemas as a predictor of divorce (Yoosefi, Etemadi, Bahrami, Fatehizade, & Ahmadi, 2010).Very little is known about Iranians in regards to experiences with passionate love and the process of FIL.Bajoghli, Holsboer-Trachsler, and Brand (2009) explored themes of love in the works of the 14th century Persian poet, Hafez, and found that views of romantic love among Iranian and Swiss participants were consistent with Hafez's themes (with few cultural differences).Ahmadi, Davoudi, Ghazaei, Mardani, and Seifi (2013) found that the prevalence of obsessive love (measured using the Passionate Love Scale, Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986) was 17.9% in their sample of Iranian university students, and that obsessive love was significantly positively correlated with ambivalent attachment.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate love-particularly, FIL and passionate love-in Iranians, a population that has been extremely understudied.We were interested in replicating Study 2 of Riela et al. (2010), which investigated precursors to FIL using both quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (narratives) methods among American and Chinese samples, in this new population.We were also interested in examining additional variables (passionate love and closeness) that have not been studied among Iranians.
Given that the Iranian population has been understudied, and for some of our variables of interest there was no past literature to draw upon to form strong hypotheses, this study was conducted in an exploratory manner.This exploratory framework is consistent with past research on romantic love when insufficient literature exists to support hypothesis testing.One example is the landmark study conducted by Sprecher et al. (1994), which investigated and compared reports of love among American, Russian, and Japanese participants.The authors emphasize in the paper "the exploratory nature of these comparisons" and their reluctance "to develop firm and specific hypotheses concerning what cross-cultural differences and similarities might be found" because "there is so little cross-cultural theory and research on love" (p.349).Similarly, Bajoghli et al. (2009) utilized descriptive methodology to compare themes from Hafez's love poems with themes from a love questionnaire (Fisher, 2004), and also utilized quantitative methodology to compare responses between Iranian and Swiss participants in an exploratory manner, without a priori hypotheses.Thus, the present study fell in with this tradition of utilizing an exploratory framework for initial scientific inquiry into new territory.

Method Participants
Students were recruited from two public universities in a major urban area in northwestern Iran.These universities had both undergraduate and graduate programs.The study was open to all students, thus participants were those pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies.Of the 220 participants, 142 were men, 66 were women, and 12 individuals did not indicate their gender.The skew in gender was due in part to fewer women than men attending the universities during the time period of data collection.The average age was 25.10 years old (SD = 5.12, Range = 18 to 45).Regarding relationship status, 130 participants reported that they were currently single, 48 dating, 33 married, and 9 did not respond.
Gender was not significantly associated with age or relationship status.There was an overall significant difference between relationship status groups with respect to age, F(2,202) = 21.09,p < .001.Participants who were single or dating did not differ significantly on age (Ms = 23.97 and 24.77, respectively), but both groups were significantly younger than participants who were married (M = 29.88,ps < .001).

Procedure and Measures
A member of the research team approached potential participants in university hallways.The experimenter asked those who were walking by whether they had time to participate in a study.The experimenter explained that participation was voluntary and asked if students would be interested in completing surveys on socialpsychological topics including FIL and passionate love.Students who agreed to participate were provided with the surveys.Questions were presented in the order listed below, with FIL questions appearing before narratives, narratives before self-ratings, and self-ratings before passionate love and closeness.All measures were written in Farsi.The measures originally written in English were independently translated and backtranslated by two of the authors fluent in English and Farsi.This study was approved by the ethics committee of the Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences.

Falling in Love (FIL)
General questions about one's love experiences focused on whether or not a participant had ever fallen in love and the number of times he/she had been in love.Following procedures used by Riela andcolleagues (2008, 2010), participants who had fallen in love at least once were asked to write a description of their most recent experience (including their feelings and the circumstances preceding it), indicate when it had occurred, rate speed (from 1 = very slow to 4 = very fast) and intensity (from 1 = not at all to 4 = very much), as well as selfrate the FIL precursors.

Narrative Precursors
Narrative accounts, which averaged 43.10 words (SD = 46.92,Range = 3 to 360), were content-analyzed for the 12 precursors to FIL: reciprocal liking, appearance, personality, similarity, familiarity, social influence, filling needs, arousal, readiness, specific cues, isolation, and mysteriousness.The two independent coders were fluent in Farsi.Precursors were coded as either present (mentioned) or absent (not mentioned), and when coders disagreed, the precursor was counted as present (Aron et al., 1989;Riela et al., 2010).Inter-rater reliability for each precursor was computed using Cohen's kappa (Cohen, 1968), and all reliabilities were greater than .95,which is considered excellent (Cohen, 2008).

Self-Rated Precursors
For the precursor self-ratings (Riela et al., 2010), participants responded to 24 items on a continuum from did not happen / not at all influential (0) to extremely influential (4).Example items include you thought ___ was physically attractive and you discovered that ___ filled some of your needs (Riela, Damanakis, Harel, Diaz, & Aron, 2008).Some precursors were singular (e.g., mysteriousness) while other precursors could be represented by multiple items (e.g., arousal); when needed, items were aggregated to represent the applicable precursor (Aron et al., 1989;Riela et al., 2010).

Passionate Love and Closeness
Participants currently in relationships were asked whether or not they were in love with their current partner, how passionately in love they felt, and how close they felt to their partner.Passionate love was measured using the 15-item version of the Passionate Love Scale (PLS; Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986), which measures passionate love using items such as I have an endless appetite for affection from X and knowing that X cares about me makes me feel complete (with X in these cases indicating the partner).The original PLS scores items on a 1 (not at all true) to 9 (definitely true) scale.For this study, we scored items on a 1 (untrue) to 6 (true) scale as these were the procedures used by Riela et al., 2010.A total score was created by averaging items; the scale's inter-item reliability, per Cronbach's alpha, was .94.Closeness was measured using the single-item Inclusion of Other in the Self scale (IOS; Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992), which presents seven pairs of circles that overlap to varying degrees from not at all (1) to almost completely (7), with higher ratings indicating greater closeness.Additionally, participants in relationships were asked about their perception of the partner's level of passion as compared with their own (more passionate, just as passionate, less passionate, or unknown) and the percentage of daily time typically spent thinking about the partner.

Incidence of Falling in Love (FIL)
For the question "Have you ever fallen in love?" a mere 55% of the sample (120 out of 220) reported that they had.Gender was not significantly associated with the occurrence of FIL.But participants who had experienced FIL were significantly older than participants who had not (Ms = 26.23 vs. 23.85),t(203) = 3.38, p = .001.There was also a significant association between FIL and relationship status, χ 2 (2, N = 208) = 81.55,p < .001.Among participants who had experienced FIL, 33% were single, 40% were dating, and 27% were married.In contrast, among participants who had not experienced FIL, 95% were single, 3% were dating, and 2% were married.
A hierarchical binary logistic regression analysis (for a review, see Warner, 2008) was computed to determine what combination of gender, age, and relationship status (as well as their interactions) could best predict whether a person reported having ever fallen in love.Given that relationship status is a three-level categorical predictor, it was represented in the regression by two, contrast-coded, orthogonal variables: single vs. relationship and dating vs. married.The baseline model, which determines whether FIL could be predicted without any explanatory variables, was not significant.When the block of main effects was entered into the equation, the overall model differed significantly from baseline, χ 2 (4, N = 201) = 95.69,p < .001.The predictors accounted for over 25% of the variance in FIL (Nagelkerke R 2 = .51)and correctly predicted its occurrence 76.9% of the time.But, of the individual predictors, only relationship status: single vs. relationship was significant, Wald = 44.92,p < .001.The odds of having had an experience of falling in love were 97% lower when someone was currently single (OR = .03).Neither the block of two-way interactions, nor the block of three-way interactions, achieved significance.

Characteristics of Participants Who Had Experienced FIL
The FIL subgroup (N = 120) had fallen in love an average of 1.62 times (SD = 0.88).Participants' most recent experiences occurred an average of 3.66 years prior to the study (SD = 4.52); however, that estimate is based on the 66 participants who provided the date of FIL.FIL experiences were typically slow (70% responded slow or very slow) and intense (78% responded somewhat or very intense).
Number of times in love and amount of time since experiencing FIL were not significantly associated with one another or with speed, but both were significantly related to intensity.As the number of times in love increased, the intensity of FIL experiences decreased (r = -.26,p = .005).In contrast, as the amount of time since experiencing FIL increased, the intensity of FIL experiences also increased (r = .26,p = .038).Additionally, there was a small, positive correlation between speed and intensity (r = .20,p = .039).
The FIL characteristics were also examined in terms of gender and age.No significant gender differences emerged for any characteristic.Age was positively correlated with the amount of time since experiencing FIL (r = .50,p < .001),as well as the intensity of FIL (r = .23,p = .020).(Relationship status was not examined because the characteristics reported weren't necessarily based on one's current relationship.)

FIL Narrative and Self-Rated Experiences
Among those participants who had ever fallen in love, 57% wrote narratives (see Figure 1 for an example) and 87% completed self-ratings.The number of precursors identified in the narratives averaged 0.84 (SD = 0.98, Range = 0 to 4); for 47% of narratives, none of the precursors were identified.To directly compare with the narrative coding, participants' self-ratings were dichotomized, in terms of whether a precursor did occur (1) or did not occur (0), and a total sum computed.The number of precursors identified in the self-ratings averaged 11.19 (SD = 1.29,Range = 6 to 12); for 57% of self-ratings, all of the precursors were identified.Like the way we thought that together we can conquer all of our problems.In fact we made each other whole.Her sentimental face and her pride were great.At first her care and support were quite a pleasure.Until misfortune arose and set us apart.The most devastating part was her being unfaithful which lasted for 1 year, but it didn't end our relationship.We tried to overcome that problem and we did get over it peacefully.The low number of narratives was surprising.Crosstabs indicated no significant association between narrative presence (having a narrative or not) and gender.The two groups did not differ significantly in terms of age, number of times in love, recency of FIL, speed, or intensity.But there was a significant association between narrative presence and current relationship status, χ 2 (2, N = 114) = 6.42, p = .04.Married people submitted fewer narratives (38.7%) than those in dating relationships (60%) or those who were currently single (68.4%).
Table 2 provides descriptive statistics and ranks for the narrative and self-rated precursors.For narratives, those most frequently mentioned were personality, similarity, and appearance; the remaining precursors were mentioned in less than 5% of narratives.For the dichotomized self-ratings, those most frequently occurring were personality, similarity, and reciprocal liking.The remaining self-rated precursors were reported as having occurred by over 90% of participants, with the exception of isolation which was only selected by 71%.While it is apparent that frequency varies greatly between the narrative and self-rating methods, it is interesting that the precursors' rankings were similar within each method (Spearman r = .88,p < .001).Note.Frequencies and percentages for narratives reflect the number of participants who mentioned the particular precursor.Frequencies and percentages for the dichotomized self-ratings reflect the number of participants who selected any response from "a little bit" to "extremely" influential (thus indicating that the precursor had occurred).Means and standard deviations for the original self-ratings (based on a 0 to 4 scale) are also included.
Correlations among the original, untransformed, self-rated precursors were computed.The strongest correlation, at .77, was between appearance and specific cues.Reciprocal liking, personality, and filling needs were each correlated with 7 or more precursors.Readiness, specific cues, and mysteriousness were each correlated with 3 or less precursors.(All correlations can be requested from the corresponding author.) The self-rated precursors were examined in terms of gender, speed, and intensity.There were no significant gender differences.Speed was negatively correlated with personality (r = -.32,p = .001)and reciprocal liking (r = -.24,p = .014);those falling in love slowly were more likely to mention these characteristics.Intensity was positively correlated with familiarity (r = .23,p = .019),specific cues (r = .21,p = .033),and reciprocal liking (r = .20,p = .041).

Passionate Love, Closeness, and Falling in Love Precursors
Of the 120 participants who had ever experienced FIL, 63.3% (n = 76) indicated they were currently in a romantic relationship (45 dating, 31 married).The majority of these participants reported being in love with their current partner (83%; n = 63) and about half of them (49%; n = 37) indicated feeling extremely close to the partner (by selecting the maximum score of 7 on the IOS).Interestingly, 66% (n = 50) perceived that their partners were more passionate as compared with themselves.
Passionate love, closeness, and amount of time thinking about the partner were examined in terms of gender and relationship status.As compared with participants in dating relationships, married participants reported higher levels of closeness to the partner (Ms = 4.67 vs. 6.66),t(70) = 4.53, p < .001,as well as more passionate love (Ms = 4.51 vs. 4.99), t(71) = 2.20, p = .031.There were no other significant effects.
An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the PLS using the principal components analysis method (Boivin & Ng, 2006;Fabrigar, Wegener, MacCallum, & Strahan, 1999).Most of the PLS items were moderately inter-correlated (rs > .3,ps < .001),with one notable exception-the "obsessive" item was not significantly correlated with 9 of the 15 items.(These statistics can be requested from the corresponding author.)The KMO measure of sampling adequacy was .88,well above the .50standard (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001).Three nonrotated factors, accounting for 73% of the PLS's total variance, were extracted based on eigenvalues greater than 1 and inspection of the scree plot.The first factor, passionate love, had an eigenvalue of 8.30 and accounted for 55.31% of the total variance.The second factor, uncontrolled thoughts, had an eigenvalue of 1.51 and accounted for 10.05% of the total variance.The third factor, powerful attraction, had an eigenvalue of 1.16 and accounted for 7.71% of the total variance.While all factor loadings were greater than .6,note that two items had high loadings (greater than .5 but less than .6)on more than one factor (see Table 3).This nonrotated solution of factor loadings was easier to interpret than either the orthogonal (varimax) or oblique (oblimin) solutions computed.

Discussion
This study is one of the first to investigate passionate love and the FIL experience with an Iranian sample.Our exploration of these topics yielded a rich set of results.One of the intriguing and notable findings from this study was that although participants were undergraduate and graduate students (who are commonly studied in the FIL and passionate love literature) and were on average 25.10 years old (SD = 5.12, Range 18 to 45), 45% of Iranian participants reported that they had never experienced FIL.This is quite different from past literature on college samples conducted in other cultures.In a study of 282 U.S. undergraduates (Aron et al., 1989, Study 3), only 5 individuals (1.77%) in the sample reported having never experienced FIL.Likewise, Sprecher et al. (1994) assessed Japanese (N = 223), Russian (N = 401), and U.S. (N = 1,043) undergraduates and found that 22%, 13%, and 11%, respectively, reported having never experienced FIL.Indeed, college samples are often studied in the literature not just because they are a convenient sample, but because they regularly experience FIL.For example, across two longitudinal studies, Aron et al. (1995) found that 28.81% (246 of 854) of U.S.
undergraduates reported either being currently in love at the beginning of the study or experienced FIL during the course of just 10 weeks.Those undergraduates were younger than the current study's Iranian participants, so differences cannot be explained by the samples having had more time to experience FIL.
The romantic love research that exists with Iranian samples also suggests that our FIL rate may be lower than  something that all adolescents experience, it is not uncommon, and rates should be higher among undergraduate and graduate students as they will have had additional time to experience FIL.However, there is little data on FIL rates among college and graduate school-aged Iranians (rather than adolescents) as such studies have focused on individuals experiencing love at that point in time (e.g., Bajoghli et al., 2014;Brand et al., 2015).
The FIL results of the current study suggest that there may be cultural differences in the prevalence of the experience of FIL and/or its time-course; first experiences of FIL may occur later for Iranian undergraduate and graduate students than in previously studied cultures.Perhaps there are cultural differences in values, customs, and social acceptability (e.g., of young adults dating) that affect the actual experiences of Iranians and/or how they report on their experiences.It is possible that these cultural and social acceptability factors help explain the association between FIL and relationship status (e.g., 95% of those who reported having never experienced FIL were single, while only 33% of those who reported having experienced FIL were single).
However, it is important to be cautious when interpreting these findings as there are potential alternative explanations for the lower incidence of FIL.The students in our sample may be unique in some way and not representative of the general Iranian population.Indeed, the rate of FIL in our sample is lower than those from younger Iranian samples (Bajoghli et al., 2011;Bajoghli et al., 2013).Those past studies were conducted in Tehran, the capital of Iran which has almost a ten-fold larger population (8.15 million) than the city of Kermanshah (~851,000) where this study was conducted (UNdata, 2011).Thus our results on the prevalence of FIL may reflect cultural differences both in terms of those residing in Kermanshah vs. those residing in Tehran as well as participants from Iran vs. participants from other countries.
Cultural factors could also influence reporting of love experiences.Perhaps Iranian undergraduate and graduate students experience FIL at a similar rate as those from other cultures, but are less comfortable endorsing and discussing this experience.Past literature (e.g., Kito, 2005) has shown that culture influences self-disclosure about romantic relationships.Or perhaps Iranians understand, define, and evaluate FIL differently, holding a higher bar for what constitutes a FIL experience.(Note that to be consistent with prior studies, we did not define FIL in our surveys and allowed participants to interpret the question as they saw fit).
Future research is necessary for us to fully understand why the lower prevalence of FIL occurred in our Iranian sample (i.e., what combination of factors contributed to these results and if the results reflect true experiential differences).We cannot conclude from the current data that the lower prevalence rate accurately reflects a true cultural difference in FIL experiences.Research that can account for or bypass self-report issues when comparing groups would be especially helpful.For example, recent neuroimaging studies utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have shown that patterns of brain activations in the context of romantic relationships are quite similar between men and women, heterosexual and homosexual individuals, and U.S.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Example Narrative.Translation: I can say it was completely an accident when I fell in love.Mutual attraction made us feel that we should move forward together.Like the way we thought that together we can conquer all of our problems.In fact we made each other whole.Her sentimental face and her pride were great.At first her care and support were quite a pleasure.Until misfortune arose and set us apart.The most devastating part was her being unfaithful which lasted for 1 year, but it didn't end our relationship.We tried to overcome that problem and we did get over it peacefully.

Table 2
FIL Narrative and Self-Rated Precursors' Descriptive Statistics and Ranks

Table 3
Exploratory Factor Analysis of the Passionate Love Scale Bolded factor loadings indicate the variables associated with each factor.