Experimenter Attributes as Determinants of Subjects' Responses

Viewing desperate love as marked by urgency, neediness, dependence, a great need for reciprocation, indealization, and affective extremes, personality traits leading to desperate love were examined. A sample of 251 undergraduates, in desperate love, nondesperate love, and random groups, completed several questionnaires examining characteristic qualities of self and important others and attitudes toward love (Desperate Love Scale, Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Knox-Sporakowski Attitudes Toward Love Scale, Characteristic Qualities Questionnaire). Findings support both the primary hypothesis that people can be differentiated in their experience of desperate love based upon significantly different responses when describing characteristic qualities of self and important others and the secondary hypothesis that those tending toward desperate love have a more romantic attitude toward love. The study can be taken as an indication that latent qualities, as well as manifest behavior, differentiate someone who experiences desperate love.