Emophilia is a distinct psychological trait and linked to infidelity

A group of Norwegian researchers recently examined the validity of the Emotional Promiscuity Scale, a popular measure of emophilia, on a Scandinavian population. Emophilia is a psychological trait that describes how easily and how often a person falls in love. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found that individuals with high emophilia tend to have more romantic relationships and higher instances of unfaithfulness.

Romantic love is an intense emotional and physical attraction toward another person, characterized by feelings of passion, intimacy, and commitment. It typically begins with an initial attraction and infatuation, where individuals experience heightened emotions and a strong desire to be close to each other. If these feelings are mutual, the individuals involved might start a romantic relationship. As the relationship progresses, deeper emotional bonds and attachment develop through shared experiences, communication, and mutual support.

The initial part of this process is “falling in love,” the transition from not experiencing romantic love to experiencing it. This experience includes intense emotions, many of which are pleasant, but others can be painful, such as emotional pain in the absence of the loved one or longing for them.

People differ in how easily and how often they fall in love. While some individuals fall in love often and very easily, others have this experience much less frequently or never, and it can take much more for it to start. Researchers propose that the ease with which one falls in love and how often it happens is a relatively stable psychological trait, named emophilia.

Study author Sol E. Røed and his colleagues aimed to assess whether the Emotional Promiscuity Scale (EPS) accurately measures emophilia in the Scandinavian population. Their assumption was that emophilia could predict the number of romantic relationships a person will have and how often that person will be unfaithful.

The researchers collected data using an online survey distributed through the Norwegian newspaper VG+ and the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet+. They gathered responses from 2,607 individuals, 75% of whom were women.

Participants reported the number of romantic relationships they had in their lives (“How many romantic relationships have you had in your life?”) and the number of times they were unfaithful (“How many times have you been unfaithful?”). They also completed the EPS to measure emophilia and two assessments of personality traits: the Dirty Dozen (for Dark Triad traits) and the Mini International Personality Item Pool (for Big Five Personality traits).

The results confirmed that the EPS produces valid measures of emophilia in a Scandinavian context. The researchers compared whether the assessment functions equally for men and women and across different age groups. They found that the scores are comparable for men and women but not directly comparable across different age groups (up to 35 years, 36-55 years, and 56 or older).

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Further analysis revealed that emophilia had some associations with personality traits, particularly with neuroticism, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. However, these associations were weak, confirming that emophilia can be considered a distinct psychological characteristic.

There were no significant gender differences in emophilia. Individuals with more pronounced emophilia tended to have had more romantic relationships and also reported being unfaithful more often.

“The present study indicates that the EPS [the Emotional Promiscuity Scale] holds good psychometric properties [functions as intended]. Emophilia showed satisfactory discriminant validity against the personality traits included [showed that it is distinct from the examined personality traits]. Lastly, the study indicates that emophilia may be associated with entering more romantic relationships and unfaithfulness, but the cross-sectional design of the current study precludes conclusions concerning directionality [whether the number of relationship and unfaithfulness episodes affect emophilia levels or vice versa],” the study authors concluded.

The study makes a valuable contribution to the development of psychological assessment tools and to the scientific understanding of emophilia. However, it should be noted that all data were collected using self-reports, while the survey included questions about sensitive topics. This leaves some room for reporting bias to affect the results. Additionally, the questions about the number of romantic relationships and instances of unfaithfulness were not accompanied by definitions of what constitutes a romantic relationship or unfaithfulness, leaving room for participants’ interpretations.

The paper, “Emophilia: psychometric properties of the emotional promiscuity scale and its association with personality traits, unfaithfulness, and romantic relationships in a Scandinavian sample,” was authored by Sol E. Røed, Randi K. Nærland, Marie Strat, Ståle Pallesen, and Eilin K. Erevik.