A group of Norwegian scientists from the University of Bergen has identified a new personality trait that is associated with an increased risk of infidelity in romantic relationships. We are talking about emophilia, a person’s tendency to fall in love easily and often. The research was published in the scientific journal magazine Frontiers in Psychology (FIP).
Romantic love is characterized by a strong emotional and physical attraction to another person, accompanied by feelings of passion, intimacy, and commitment.
The first part of this process is “falling in love,” the transition to the experience of romantic love. People vary in how easily and how often they fall in love.
Scientists suggest that the ease with which a person falls in love and how often it happens is a relatively stable psychological trait.
The study authors sought to assess how accurately the Emotional Confusion Scale measured emophilia in the population. They hypothesized that emophilia could predict the number of romantic relationships a person will have and how often that person will be unfaithful.
The researchers collected responses from 2,607 people using an online survey. Participants reported the number of romantic relationships they had throughout their lives and the number of times they had been unfaithful. The volunteers also filled out a questionnaire to measure emophilia.
The analysis showed that emophilia had some associations with personality traits, particularly neuroticism, Machiavellianism, and narcissism, but these associations were weak, suggesting that emophilia could be considered a separate psychological trait.
People with more hemophilia tended to have more romantic relationships and also reported cheating more often.
The authors of the scientific study noted that the study contributed to the development of psychological assessment tools and scientific understanding of the characteristics of emophilia.
Earlier scientists named Psychological factors of future betrayal in relationships.