CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON ROMANTIC LOVE 151 not discuss courtship marriage or family relations; and ( 3) the inability of the coders to agree whether a specific passage conclusively indicated romantic love's presence(N=1). Using these criteria, twenty cultures were dropped, leaving us with a sample universe of 166 societies Besides the usual difficulties in finding reliable source material our primary methodological problem arose from the absence of any clear and consist usage of he terms love, lovemaking and lovers. Because ethnographers often fail to distinguish between love and sexual intercourse, it is unclear if they are referring to passionate love or only using a common metaphor for sexual interd order to distinguish between behaviors motivated solely out of lust or physical satisfaction from those motivated by romantic love, additional indices were required. thus the presence of romantic love in a culture was coded only when the ethnographer made a clear distinction between lust and love, and then noted the resence of love. There was, however, one exception. If the ethnographer claimed that romantic love was not present yet provided a folktale or an incident that demonstrated passionate involvement, his or her interpretation was rejected. Only two such discrepancies appeared in our sample population (i.e, Manus, Pakistan In over 250 ethnographic and folkloric studies examined not a single researcher explicitly defined romantic love. Those ethnographers who insisted that the phenomenon did not exist rarely noted which psychological attitudes or behavioral raits were absent. This lacuna arose from overlooking the exceptional or non normative act, as well as from failing to distinguish between lust and the two fundamental types of love experience; romantic and companionship love The most problematic cross-cultural studies are those that use high inferences indices. We were at pains therefore to find richly texture illustrations of romantie love's presences. Because many ethnographies did not supply such cases, we relied upon other indicative clues or indices. The criteria (listed below) are similar to those used in previous cross -cultural studies that sought to document the ecological and social factors responsible for the emergence of romantic love as a basis for marriage. These studies examined specific acts(e. g elopement, love magic, and love songs) that suggest choice for attachment and thus the presence of passionate affection With the exception of love magic, we used similar indices. It is important to stress, however, that we recorded as positive only those cases where the ethnographer recorded an expressive motive(i.e, mutual affection) and not an instrumental motive(i.e, meat for sex). If the ethnographer simply reported the presence of elopement, but did not supply additional information concerning the individual's motivation, then that culture was coded as romantic love absent. In this way our criteria are more precise than previous cross-cultural studies of romantic love. Moreover, unlike previous cross-cultural studies, we read whenever possible a culture's folklore. This proved to be the most fruitful means to document the presences of the romantic love. Finally, to determine the presence or absence of romantic love, only the initial phase of involvement (i.e, less than examined. The phase of the love relationships was determined through examining the ethnographic context Unless one of the indicators discussed below was present, we never inferred romantic love's presence The following indicators were used to assess the presence of romantic love within a culture during the first two years of involvement(marriage or other)CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON ROMANTIC LOVE 15 1 not discuss courtship, marriage, or family relations; and (3) the inability of the coders to agree whether a specific passage conclusively indicated romantic love's presence (N=l). Using these criteria, twenty cultures were dropped, leaving us with a sample universe of 166 societies. Besides the usual difficulties in finding reliable source material, our primary methodological problem arose from the absence of any clear and consist usage of the terms love, lovemaking and lovers. Because ethnographers often fail to distinguish between love and sexual intercourse, it is unclear if they are referring to passionate love or only using a common metaphor for sexual intercourse. In order to distinguish between behaviors motivated solely out of lust or physical satisfaction from those motivated by romantic love, additional indices were required. Thus the presence of romantic love in a culture was coded only when the ethnographer made a clear distinction between lust and love, and then noted the presence of love. There was, however, one exception. If the ethnographer claimed that romantic love was not present, yet provided a folktale or an incident that demonstrated passionate involvement, his or her interpretation was rejected. Only two such discrepancies appeared in our sample population (i.e., Manus, Pakistan). In over 250 ethnographic and folkloric studies examined not a single researcher explicitly defined romantic love. Those ethnographers who insisted that the phenomenon did not exist rarely noted which psychological attitudes or behavioral traits were absent. This lacuna arose from overlooking the exceptional or non￾normative act, as well as from failing to distinguish between lust and the two fundamental types of love experience; romantic and companionship love. The most problematic cross-cultural studies are those that use high inferences indices. We were at pains therefore to find richly texture illustrations of romantic love's presences. Because many ethnographies did not supply such cases, we relied upon other indicative clues or indices. The criteria (listed below) are similar to those used in previous cross-cultural studies that sought to document the ecological and social factors responsible for the emergence of romantic love as a basis for marriage. These studies examined specific acts (e.g., elopement, love magic, and love songs) that suggest choice for attachment and thus the presence of passionate affection. With the exception of love magic, we used similar indices. It is important to stress, however, that we recorded as positive only those cases where the ethnographer recorded an expressive motive (i.e., mutual affection) and not an instrumental motive (i.e., meat for sex). If the ethnographer simply reported the presence of elopement, but did not supply additional information concerning the individual's motivation, then that culture was coded as romantic love absent. In this way, our criteria are more precise than previous cross-cultural studies of romantic love. Moreover, unlike previous cross-cultural studies, we read whenever possible a culture's folklore. This proved to be the most fruitful means to document the presences of the romantic love. Finally, to determine the presence or absence of romantic love, only the initial phase of involvement (i.e., less than two years) was examined. The phase of the love relationships was determined through examining the ethnographic context. Unless one of the indicators discussed below was present, we never inferred romantic love's presence. The following indicators were used to assess the presence of romantic love within a culture during the first two years of involvement (marriage or other):