New research suggests that aggressive personality traits in romantic relationships often express themselves through an obsessive, possessive approach to love, which in turn feeds intense jealousy. Published in Sexual and Relationship Therapy, the dual-study investigation reveals that an individual’s specific style of loving acts as a psychological bridge between antagonistic tendencies and jealous reactions. The findings offer a deeper look at how some people navigate relationship threats and manage intimate bonds.
In the 1970s, psychologist John Alan Lee proposed a framework for understanding how different people experience romantic love. He categorized love into six distinct styles. Eros represents a passionate, immediate attraction akin to love at first sight. Ludus treats love as a game, often involving manipulation and a focus on short-term pleasure without deep commitment. Storge is built on friendship, valuing stability, trust, and mutual respect.
The remaining three styles blend the primary orientations. Pragma combines elements of Ludus and Storge, taking a highly practical approach to finding a partner who meets specific criteria. Mania blends Eros and Ludus into an obsessive, possessive, and emotionally volatile experience. Agape mixes Eros and Storge, resulting in a selfless, compassionate orientation where one prioritizes the partner’s needs without expecting anything in return.
Lead author Bruno Bonfa-Araujo, a psychology researcher at the Universidade Tuiuti do Parana in Brazil, and his colleagues wanted to understand how these love styles relate to darker personality traits and feelings of jealousy. People with antisocial personality traits tend to exhibit a disregard for the rights of others. They frequently display high levels of aggressiveness, irresponsibility, and a tendency to manipulate those around them. Previous investigations have shown that manipulative and obsessive love styles often correlate with pathological personality traits.
Jealousy in romantic contexts can range from mild concern to severe, destructive behavior. The researchers distinguish between threat-based jealousy, which arises when someone perceives a real or imagined risk of losing their partner to a rival, and non-threat jealousy. Non-threat jealousy describes situations where outside interactions do not provoke distress or are viewed as benign. The research team set out to map how antisocial traits, love styles, and these varying forms of jealousy interact.
The team designed two separate studies to test their ideas. For the first study, the researchers recruited 255 adult participants in Brazil. The group was mostly composed of women, and the participants ranged in age from 17 to 55. Participants completed specialized psychological questionnaires designed to measure their antisocial behaviors and their preferences among the six love styles.
The antisocial behavior assessment asked participants to rate their agreement with statements reflecting aggression, irresponsibility, interpersonal manipulation, and recklessness. The researchers then analyzed the data to see which love styles tracked with antisocial tendencies. They found that the Ludus and Mania styles were positively associated with aggression, irresponsibility, and manipulation. This matched their expectations, given that both of these love orientations involve elements of control, game-playing, or emotional volatility.
The results for Agape, the selfless love style, presented an unexpected pattern. Agape was also positively linked to select antisocial facets, including aggression and manipulation. This suggests that even a love style traditionally viewed as generous and purely altruistic might operate in complicated ways when expressed by individuals with antagonistic traits. Storge and Pragma, the love styles rooted in friendship and practicality, did not produce statistically significant links to antisocial behaviors.
To build upon these initial findings, the researchers conducted a second study focusing on how jealousy fits into the picture. They recruited a new group of 198 Brazilian adults. This sample was roughly evenly split between men and women, with ages ranging from 17 to 54.
In this second phase, the researchers added a questionnaire to measure both threat-based and non-threat jealousy. They also used a slightly modified version of the love styles survey designed to control for a phenomenon known as acquiescent responding. This is a psychological testing term for the tendency of some participants to simply agree with survey statements regardless of the actual content.
When controlling for this response bias, the associations between love styles and antisocial traits were weaker than in the first study. The team noted that aggression was the only antisocial trait reliably linked to threat-based jealousy. Mania was the only love style directly associated with threat jealousy, while Storge was linked to non-threat jealousy.
The researchers then ran a statistical path analysis to test how these three factors interact. They wanted to see if the love style mediated the relationship between personality traits and jealousy. In psychology, mediation occurs when one variable explains the process through which two other variables are related.
They found that the Mania love style acts as a mediator between aggression and jealousy. The relationship between aggression and threat-based jealousy was partially mediated by Mania. Part of this link ran through the obsessive and dependent characteristics of manic love, while a direct association between aggression and threat jealousy remained. Mania fully mediated the relationship between aggression and non-threat jealousy.
While the findings provide a nuanced map of relationship dynamics, the study relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires. People might not always accurately judge or honestly report their own antisocial behaviors, manipulative tendencies, or intense jealousy. The data also captured information at a single point in time. This makes it impossible to know whether certain personality traits prompt a specific love style, or if the way a person experiences love brings out their darker traits.
Another limitation involves the cultural context of the research. Both studies relied on samples from Brazil, meaning the observed relationship patterns might not universally apply to other cultural settings. The way people conceptualize romantic love and express jealousy can vary widely around the world.
Future research could track couples over longer periods to see how aggressive tendencies and obsessive love styles influence a relationship as it develops. Expanding the research to include observations from both partners in a relationship could offer a more complete picture of how jealousy and manipulation play out in real time. Observing these psychological mechanisms across different cultures would also help clarify how universally these traits are connected.
The study, “Untying the knot: investigating the mediating role of love in the relationship between antisocial personality and jealousy,” was authored by Bruno Bonfá-Araujo, Ana Deyvis Santos Araújo Jesuíno, Victor Hugo Farias Macedo, Rebeca Karen Alves Lima, Daniella Santos da Cruz, Ariela Raissa Lima-Costa, and Julie Aitken Schermer.