Valentine’s Day is around the corner and many people use this as an opportunity to share with the world how they feel about their partner. In particular, Valentine’s Day announcements in the newspaper are messages not only for your partner, but also represent a very public broadcast of how much you love him or her. For example: “Dear Audry, you are truly a dream come true,” “To Frank, who is the love of my life.”

Researchers recently explored these newspaper announcements for expressions of love, praise, commitment, and fidelity to see if they differed between men and women. Valentine announcements posted in a newspaper between the years 2001 and 2005 in Montreal, Canada were reviewed. 300 announcements were randomly chosen, representing three types of relationships: dating, married, and married with children. Here are some examples of the types of emotions that were evaluated:

Praise: “You are wonderful.”

Love: “I love you.”

Commitment: “Love you always and forever.”

Fidelity: “You are the only one I love.”

Men and women were equally interested in using newspaper announcements to express their emotions on Valentine’s Day, however, the results of this study showed interesting gender differences in the types of emotions. Specifically, men were more likely to offer praise, whereas women were more likely to express love. This may be no surprise to people who have trouble getting their boyfriend or husband to say “I love you,” but find they are more than willing to say “You are great” or “You are wonderful.” The authors suggested that this reflects gender role socialization, such that men experience more discomfort in expressing vulnerable emotions such as love, and opt instead to express praise.

Evolutionary theory suggests that it is important for women to assure their mates of their fidelity, and for men to assure their mates of their commitment to their relationship. Only the former was supported by the current findings; women were more likely to express their fidelity, but there was no gender difference in the expression of commitment. However, an examination of the type of relationship proved interesting. Dating men (and not married men) expressed high levels of commitment. The authors suggest that in contrast to married men, dating men use this expression of commitment in order to reassure their partner that they are interested in a long-term relationship (something that a married man may not feel a strong necessity to do).

So for those of you having trouble deciding what do for Valentine’s Day, your local newspaper provides a new way to publicly display your affection…whatever the type may be.

Further Reading:

Gonzalez, A.Q., & Koestner, R. (2006). What Valentine announcments reveal about the romantic emotions of men and women. Sex Roles, 55, 767-773.