Science - The Love Factor Inventory

Science Behind the LFI

Summary

The Love Factor Inventory was standardized on a sample of 1933 subjects (Males N=721 and Females N=l,148) from across the United States and Vancouver, Canada.

Females scored higher on the various scales than males. The means, standard deviations, and tests of significance of difference are presented in Table D 1 of Appendix D. Due to the significant difference between males and females, the Love Capacity scale results are computed differently for men and women, and the percentile scores are computed separately for each group as well.

Using the Spearman rank order procedure, positive correlations were found between age and nine of the scales (Mann & Braun-Smith, 1990a). In this study the authors suggested that love appears to be a learned ability that improves with maturity.

Those individuals involved in personal development experiences, i.e., psychotherapy, growth experiences, etc. score higher on the scales, and those people who came from divorced families score lower on the scales.

Although there is a high degree of relationship between the scales, the selection of the items for each scale does have internal consistency that relates specifically to the concepts of each scale.

Research indicated good concurrent validity and positive correlations were found between Personal Orientation Inventory scales and LFI Scales: Self-Respect, Psychological Adjustment, Masculine/Feminine, Spirituality, and the Love Capacity scale.

LFI Scales

DEVELOPMENT OF ITEMS

The approach to choosing constructs to assess love was built upon observations in clinical practice as well as the consideration of a variety of theories about love. What qualities do the great traditions in psychology and spirituality address? What aspects have been suggested that an individual must contain in order to have an integrated personality yielding an open heart? What qualities appear to be essential for an individual to behave in a consistent, balanced, loving fashion with those closest to him or her? The following areas were chosen to be represented by the scales of The Love Factor: Compassion, Friendship, Intimacy, Masculine/Feminine, Primitive Self, PsychologicalAdjustment, Romantic Love, Self-Respect, Sensitivity, Spirituality, and Trust. This set of scales reflects several traditions in the study and understanding of human relationships including object relations theory of Guntrip (1968) , Fairbairn (1952), and Winnicott (1965), the self-psychology of Kohut (1972), the concepts of the shadow and the Animus/Anima from Jung’s work (1956), and the spiritual dimension emphasized in the teachings of Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

SCALE CONSTRUCTION

An initial pool of 248 items was devised with 18 to 22 items assigned rationally to all scales. Three clinical psychologists with at least five years of post-doctoral experience reviewed each scale to corroborate the theoretical and clinical appropriateness of the placement of the various items on the corresponding scales. In the initial Love Factor questionnaire booklet, a five point response scale was used (l=absolutely disagree; 2=moderately disagree; 3=neutral (neither agree nor disagree); 4=moderately agree; 5=absolutely agree). Approximate! y one-half of the items were phrased in the negative sense in order to reduce problems of acquiescence response set; ratings on these items were reversed (by subtracting the response from 6) for the computation of scale scores. The score for each scale was computed as the sum of ratings on its constituent items. The preliminary version of The LoveF actor was administered to 100 individuals, 50 from a Brugh Joy conference at Asilomar and the remaining were from a Unitarian Church in Southern California. An item analysis was performed on each scale and those items with low item to-total correlations were dropped. The final questionnaire consists of 124 items, and takes approximately 20- 30 minutes to complete.

Normative Data

The Love Factor Inventory was standardized on a sample of 1933 subjects (MalesN=721 and FemalesN=l,148) from across the United States and from Vancouver, Canada. While this sample was quite useful for statistical comparison between various demographic groups, it was felt to be unequally weighted for the development of national means and standard deviation scores. The weight function in the SPSS PC+statistical program was used to create a new sample totaling 2606 subjects for the normative scores. The sample was assigned to specific groups for statistical analysis as part of the validation study. The weights were developed from the original sample. Table Bl in Appendix B compares the group percentages of the original sample with the final weighted normative sample.

SAMPLE DISTRIBUTION

The sample is described according to the frequency and percent of total respondents by sex, age, race, income, religion, and marital status for both the original and weighted samples. These results are listed in Tables B2- B7 in Appendix B.

PERCENTILES

Percentile scores for men and women are based upon the weighted sample of 2606 cases. Subjects responded from eleven states across the country and Vancouver, Canada. The majority of subjects came from California and Michigan. The additional states that provided subjects were: Iowa, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Kentucky, Arizona, and Washington, D.C. The frequency distribution and equivalent percentile score for each scale by sex are presented in Table Cl of Appendix C.

SEX DIFFERENCES

RACIAL DIFFERENCES
Black and Caucasian college students are compared for each scale. Because gender was not evenly distributed across the two ethnic groups, two way Anovas were used to enable analysis of the ethnicity effect controlling for gender effect. Using Manova procedures, Wilks lambda was used to assess overall group differences across the set of scales. The obtained lambda for the group effect was statistically significant. Follow up Anovas indicated that the groups differed only on two scales, Intimacy, and Trust. In light of a Black person’s experience in a predominantly white society, these findings make good sense. The level of trust in the world as a good and positive place is certainly worth questioning. The lower intimacy scores also can be understood when we consider the experience of intimacy, within the context of The Love Factor’s conceptualization, requiring an opening and more vulnerable expression of one’s most innermost self. Again, Blacks learn to be cautious in this regard. The means and standard deviations for Black and Caucasian students for men and women are presented in Table D2 of Appendix D.

AGE
Using the Spearman rank order procedure, positive correlations were found between age and nine of the scales (Mann & Braun-Smith, 1990a). In this study the authors suggested that love appears to be a learned ability that improves with maturity. The means and standard deviations according to age groups are presented in Table D3 of Appendix D.

GROUP NORMS
The norms for the Professional population and the Prison Inmate Population are presented in Tables D4 and D5 of Appendix D. Means and standard deviations are presented for both males and females.

DEMOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCES
In the initial study by Mann &Braun-Smith (1990b), the normative sample was compared along several demographic features: marital status, parental divorce status, and personal development. These findings suggest that those who have demonstrated an ability to make a commitment score higher on The Love Factor. Those individuals involved in personal development experiences, i.e., psychotherapy, growth experiences, etc. score higher on the scales, and those people who came from divorced families score lower on the scales.

The means and standard deviations for these groups are presented in Table El-E3 of Appendix E.

*Tables are available on request.

RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

The complete results of the initial reliability and validity studies are presented in the article “The Love Factor: An Inventory to Assess One’s Capacity to Love” by Mann & Braun-Smith, (1990b). A summary of the main findings is presented here.

RELIABILITY

The study designed to investigate the internal reliability of The Love Factor scales, is reported by Mann & Braun-Smith (1990b ). In this study The Love Factor was administered to 688 subjects from a variety of sources: Colleges, Department of Social Services, Yoga students, and Mental Health Out-patients. The results suggested satisfactory levels of internal consistency for all the scales. The findings are presented in Table G 1 of Appendix G.

SCALE INTERCORRELATIONS AND FACTOR STRUCTURE

In the same study by Mann & Braun-Smith (1990b ), a correlation matrix of all scales was reported showing a high degree of relationship among the scales. Due to the high degree of correlation among the scales, a factor analysis, using the Principal Axis Factoring Method, was performed. One factor, with an Eigenvalue greater than one, was found accounting for 52.9% of the total variance. In other words, this general factor encompassed much of the variability of the inventory’s scales. These results are presented in Tables G2 and G3 of Appendix G.

The argument has been presented that the high intercorrelation of the scales and the large single factor indicate that any random selection of items would result in a satisfactory alpha score. In an attempt to investigate this criticism, the senior author choose ten items at random on three consecutive occasions. The results obtained were alpha levels of .26, .50, and .55, averaging .44. These levels are not considered satisfactory for the criteria used in the development of The Love Factor scales and suggests that although there is a high degree of relationship between the scales, the selection of the items for each scale does have internal consistency that relates specifically to the concepts of each scale.

CONCURRENT VALIDITY

In the Mann & Braun-Smith (1990b) study, respondents were asked to indicate whether they were satisfied or not in six areas of their life: Friendship, Love Relationship, Work Relationship, Job, Self-Esteem and Ability to Love. A count was made of the “yes” responses to these categories, and this count was labeled the Life Satisfaction Rating. Statistically significant correlations were found for all scales. Previously it was stated that the total sample of respondents was divided into various groups for purposes of statistical analysis. In a further attempt to validate the various scales, four professional colleagues were asked to rate each group on the construct represented by every scale according to how they expected the various groups to score. The mean rating for each group across every scale was correlated with the raw scale score for each respondent in the larger sample (N=1651). The subjects from the prison sample with a Faking Good score equal to or above the 85th percentile were deleted from this procedure because it was felt that those prisoners who did not seriously respond to the items should be excluded from this particular analysis. Positive correlations were found for Compassion, Friendship, Intimacy, Masculine/Feminine, Primitive Self, Psychological Adjustment, Self-Respect, Sensitivity, Spirituality, Trust, and Love Capacity. Negative correlations were found for the Romantic Love scale. The authors suggest that the Romantic Love scale may be useful in cross-cultural studies and warrants further investigation.

GROUP DIFFERENCES

Mann & Braun-Smith (1990b) also reported that various clinical groups differed in their responses to the Love Factor scales as predicted. In general, those groups demonstrating a lower level of functioning scored lower than higher functioning groups on most of the scales. The means, standard deviations, and the results of the Anova are presented in Table G4 of Appendix G.

CORRELATIONS WITH OTHER SCALES

Personal Orientation Inventory Dion & Dion (1990), in their chapter “Romantic Love: Individual and Cultural Perspectives,” suggest a relationship between self-actualization and romantic love. The argument suggests that individuals who are more highly self-actualized would be more loving. They focused upon romantic love. In fact, they discovered that on Rubin’s (1970) Love Scale,” •.. individuals high in self-actualization express less need and less caring for their romantic partners than those low in self-actualization.” This finding suggests that romantic love is not based upon levels of maturity, but more upon infantile needs for closeness and affection. It is no wonder that many romantic beginnings end up in divorce court.

Since the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) is considered a very good measure of self-actualization, a study was performed (Mann, Kanitz, & Zionts, 1991) in which The LFI scales were correlated with the POI. Seventy female students from the department of Counseling and Special Education at Central Michigan University responded to both The LFI and the POL The correlation matrix is presented in Appendix G in Table G5.

Self-Respect

The results from the correlational study are quite positive in providing further validation for several of The LFI Scales. First of all, the POI Self Regard scale correlated positively with The LFI Self-Respect scale.

The Self Regard scale is defined as measuring the affirmation of self because of worth or strength.

The LFI Self-Respect scale is conceptualized in a positive manner as well. The LFI Self-Respect scale also correlated significantly with the following POI scales: Time Incompetence, Time Competence, Self Actualizing Value (SA V), and Spontaneity (S). The Time scales measure the degree to which one is present oriented or living in the moment.

There appears to be some relationship between feeling positive about oneself and being able to be present with life’s experiences. It seems reasonable to assume that when a person is feeling good, his/her energies are available to live life and be engaged in the experience of living.

There also appears to be a relationship between having a positive sense of Self and identifying with self-actualizing values. This again seems reasonable given the notion that self-actualization is an evolutionary process that strives for higher levels of personal expression and functioning. There obviously appears to be a relationship between feeling a high degree of self-respect and one’s ability to identify and affirm the ideals of self-actualization.

Finally, there also appears to be a relationship between the POI Spontaneity scale and The LFI Self Respect scale. The Spontaneity scale is defined in the POI Manual as “Measures freedom to react spontaneously or to be oneself.” It seems natural to conclude that one would have to feel good about oneself in order to be spontaneous and authentic. All in all, these findings provide strong concurrent validity for the Self-Respect scale.

Psychological Adjustment

The LFI Psychological Adjustment Scale correlated significantly with the POI Ti, TC , SAV, S, and Synergy (Sy) scales. These results provide good concurrent validity for the Psychological Adjustment scale which is conceptually defined as measuring one’s freedom from debilitating psychological problems that develop from fear and anxiety.

The actual LFI items speak to one’s ability to express his/her true and authentic inner Self. One cannot live in the moment and be present for one’s life experience when he/she is bound up with anxiety and fear. The significant correlation with the SAV scale provides further validity for The LFI Psychological Adjustment scale.

A psychologically healthy person is able to live authentically and is not caught in inner struggles. The positive relationship between the POI Spontaneity scale and The LFI Psychological Adjustment scale provides further validity for its use. Psychologically healthy people are not afraid to express their inner Self.

The results also suggest a relationship between this LFI scale and the POI Synergy scale which is a measure of one’s ability to perceive unity and see beyond the apparent dualities of existence. The ability to embrace this more transcendent view of life would require a freeing up of psychic energies. An individual troubled with fear, anxiety and doubt probably would not have the freedom to embrace this higher level of perception. In summary, these findings are very supportive of the concurrent validity of the Psychological Adjustment scale.

Masculine/Feminine Scale

The LFI Masculine/Feminine (MF) scale significantly correlated with the POI Other (0), Inner (I) , and Spontaneity (S) scales. The O and I scales are mirror reflections. The other directed person is described as being overly concerned with acceptance and approval of others.

The LFI MF scale addresses the style of expression. A high score on this scale reflects a stronger feminine style relying more upon intuition and feelings than logic and reason. The direction of the correlations is consistent with the definition of the MF scale since an individual must be more inwardly directed to access the more feminine part of the psyche. The relationship between the POI S scale and the LFI MF scale is also consistent with the conceptual definition of the MF scale.

The MF scale also taps one’s relationship to inner feelings as a source of direction and definition. The POI S scale measures one’s freedom to be oneself, a function that is directly related to the acceptance and expression of feelings. These findings lend good validity to The LFI Masculine/Feminine scale.

Spirituality Scale

The results reveal a significant correlation between The LFI Spirituality scale and the POI S scale. Apparently, there is some relationship between one’s connection with the Divine and one’s ability to spontaneously be oneself. Perhaps the ability to truly be oneself speaks to the same inner connection to the essential aspect of the Self that opens the way to Divine experience.

Love Capacity Scale

The LFI Love Capacity scale, a scale derived from a sum of the Z scores of all scales, correlated significantly with the POI TI, TC, O, I, SA V, and S scales. These findings provide good validity for the Love Capacity scale. This correlational study provided positive results for many of the LFI scales. Although most scales of the POI obviously measure different qualities than the scales of the LFI, these initial results are encouraging of the validity of the scales. Further research needs to be done with the other measures to further validate the LFI scales.

Science Behind the LFI

LFI Scales

Normative Data

RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

CONCURRENT VALIDITY

CORRELATIONS WITH OTHER SCALES

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