Kruglanski et al. provide a thorough account of when people fall in love and when people fall out of love. Their model accounts for a phenomenon which is idiosyncratic and unique to societies high in relational mobility, such as the United States (Thomson et al., Reference Thomson, Yuki, Talhelm, Schug, Kito, Ayanian, Becker, Becker, Chiu, Choi, Ferreira, Fülöp, Gul, Houghton-Illera, Joasoo, Jong, Kavanagh, Khutkyy, Manzi and Visserman2018; Yuki & Schug, Reference Yuki and Schug2020). In such societies, individuals are free to make relationships and break relationships. Accordingly, Kruglanski et al.’s work can be regarded as an ethnography of romantic love in these cultural contexts, offering a culturally situated model of how love is initiated, maintained, and ended.

First, the elements of the model comprising romantic love are expressed in a manner that is culturally idiosyncratic. Notably, Kruglanski et al. acknowledge that partner merit is affected by the social norms prevalent in a society. This is in line with findings that physical attractiveness, a feature of partner merit, plays a smaller role in the formation of relationships in less relationally mobile societies (Yuki & Schug, Reference Yuki, Schug, Gillath, Adams and Kunkel2012). However, the same applies to the expression of partner appreciation. Societies high in relational mobility are unique in the extent to which partner appreciation is expressed, including greater prevalence of social support in close relationships (Chen et al., Reference Chen, Kim, Mojaverian and Morling2012), self-disclosure (Schug, Yuki, & Maddux, Reference Schug, Yuki and Maddux2010), and feelings of intimacy towards a romantic partner (Marshall, Reference Marshall2008). This is so ostensibly because relationships that are more likely to be terminated require greater expressions of commitment to maintain themselves over time (Yuki & Schug, Reference Yuki and Schug2020). This point is consistent with the original formulation of Significance Quest Theory, according to which “the linkage between value and action/attributes that realize that value is typically spelled out in cultural narratives” (Kruglanski et al., p. 1051). These cultural differences in partner merit and appreciation may result not just in culturally variable thresholds of acceptability but also in the very need for either one or the other to exist at all.

Second, and most critically, romantic love, the key phenomenon which the target article attempts to explain, is itself culturally contingent. People in Western societies, who are typically high in relational mobility (Thomson et al., Reference Thomson, Yuki, Talhelm, Schug, Kito, Ayanian, Becker, Becker, Chiu, Choi, Ferreira, Fülöp, Gul, Houghton-Illera, Joasoo, Jong, Kavanagh, Khutkyy, Manzi and Visserman2018), report experiencing more romantic love than people in other societies (Kito, Yuki, & Thomson, Reference Kito, Yuki and Thomson2017). Furthermore, one of the consequences of falling in and out of love is being able to pick up and leave an existing romantic relationship. This, too, is contingent on the notion that relationships are mobile. Beyond these societies, notions of forming new relationships or leaving existing ones are hypocognized (Wu & Dunning, Reference Wu and Dunning2018), meaning that they lack cognitive representation to such an extent that they are non-normative (Kalkstein et al., Reference Kalkstein, Hook, Hard and Walton2023).

Thus, regarding Equation 1, some of the elements that multiplicatively predict falling in and out of love may be set to zero in some cultures without completely eliminating the existence of romantic love. Alternatively, all of them may be positive and substantial without necessarily leading to romantic love.

The Chinese society, as a case study, demonstrates how love and relationships are influenced by socio-cultural values. In China, which has been influenced by Confucian values, relationships have been viewed as the foundational threads of human existence, with each individual’s identity and status shaped by their position within a hierarchy of social roles. The Five Great Relationships (father-son, ruler-subject, elder brother-younger brother, friend-to-friend, and, most relevant to the present context, husband-wife) capture one’s social roles and responsibilities (Tian, Reference Tian2024). Confucianism taught that peace and harmony could be achieved if every person knew his or her proper place in society and upheld the responsibilities of that place. Violations or disruptions of these relationships are seen as deeply harmful, leading not only to personal moral failings but also to broader societal instability (Park & Chesla, Reference Park and Chesla2007). This highlights the difficulty of breaking relationships in Confucianism, as such actions disrupt the social order and create imbalance in both the individual and society. Thus, in Confucian societies, romantic love appears to play a more limited role in relationships, and there is a lack of cognitive elaboration regarding notions of making and breaking relationships.

Furthermore, Confucian family ethics politicize and moralize intimate relationships, positioning the family as the primary site of self-cultivation, moral duty, and social order. Love, in this view, is hierarchical and bound to related to duty. In doing so, the Confucian model subordinates personal emotions to collective social responsibility, making relationships less about individual fulfillment and more about social harmony and political stability.

This can be juxtaposed with how individualist societies treat relationships as spaces for personal happiness, emotional growth, and individual choice. In her work on the contextual nature of romantic love, Eva Illouz emphasized the social, cultural, and economic structures that deeply influence our ability to form and dissolve relationships. Her work focuses on how modernity, individualism, and therapeutic culture have reshaped the landscape of love and intimacy. In her book, The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations (Reference Illouz2019), Illouz argues that romantic love is not a universal experience but is shaped by specific cultural and historical contexts. Specifically, she discusses how modern societies have normalized the dissolution of relationships, and attributes this to the rise of individualism and the commodification of emotional experiences. In this view, love is less connected to family or social duty. Relationships are seen as personal projects that can be started or ended based on individual needs. Ending a relationship is considered normal and acceptable when it no longer brings personal satisfaction.

In conclusion, we do not view the model proposed in the target article as incorrect. Instead, the very phenomenon it attempts to explain, as well as its determinants, are culturally contingent to such an extent that they occur only within a narrow slice of human societies (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010). As such, the target article should be regarded as providing a culturally grounded model that explains a culturally idiosyncratic phenomenon.