Pictured (left to right): Lindy Williams, Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa, and Andrew Villamil
Last month (May 23, 2025), the Research Team was invited to present a research symposium at the Association for Psychological Science (APS) Conference in Washington, D.C. The symposium was chaired by Dr. Saida Heshmati, with Dr. Zita Oravecz serving as discussant. The symposium featured three presentations:
“What Makes Older Adults Feel Loved in Everyday Life” – presented by Lindy Williams, et al.
“Do U.S. Immigrants Come to a Unique Consensus on What It Means to Feel Loved?” – presented by Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa & Saida Heshmati
“What Does It Mean to Feel Loved in Spain? A Cultural Consensus Theory Approach” – presented by Andrew Villamil, et al.
A Brief Overview of the Talks
What Makes Older Adults Feel Loved in Everyday Life?
Lindy Williams provided a brief overview of past Cultural Consensus Theory research on love with samples of U.S. adults and young adults. Then, she discussed the empirical findings from recent research on a sample of over 400 older adults (above the age of 65 years). Based on the study by Williams and colleagues, older adults do indeed come to a consensus on what everyday life experiences make most people feel loved when presented with over 60 items on the Felt Love Questionnaire. The top three experiences most highly agreed upon as "loving were “someone cares for them when they are sick,” “a child snuggles up to them,” and “someone tells them: ‘I love you,’” which are also highly agreed upon in the general U.S. population of adults and also for a sample of younger adults (age 18–25).
Do U.S. Immigrants Come to a Unique Consensus on What It Means to Feel Loved?
Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa presented findings from recent CCT empirical research on a sample of over 200 U.S. immigrants. Using the same set of items from the Felt Love Questionnaire, Rombaoa found that U.S. immigrants reach a similar consensus on what experiences constitute “love” in daily life. However, certain scenarios were not congruent with the general U.S. population, such as “someone insists to spend all their time with them” (loving for immigrants, non-loving for general population) and “they hear or sing their country’s national anthem” (non-loving for immigrants, loving for the general population).
“What Does It Mean to Feel Loved in Spain? A Cultural Consensus Theory Approach
Andrew Villamil gave an overview of the methods and results from the qualitative research data collection in Spain earlier this year, as well as a general overview of the 5-year Project plan for the six target countries (Spain, Brazil, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Kenya). In this presentation, Villamil presented results from the qualitative data analyses and noted emergent themes salient in Spain, such as: “strong emphasis on family,” “passionate physical expression,” “community solidarity,” and “group belonging.” Findings from the qualitative data analyses informed how the Team on how to revise and refine the Felt Love Questionnaire for the upcoming Spanish quantitative data collection via Qualtrics during this month and next.
You can access the slides (PDF) for the talks here, and see photos from APS below!
This summer, we’re continuing to code our interviews and are wrapping up quantitative data collection of our Spain sample.
And as always, thank you for following our journey of love across cultures.
