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I'd go one step further and assert that "love languages" are mostly bunk, in the same way that "learning styles" are not really a thing. Meyers-briggs, zodiac,

I'd go one step further and assert that "love languages" are mostly bunk, in the same way that "learning styles" are not really a thing. Meyers-briggs, zodiac, learning styles, love languages, etc. are all self-fulfilling prophecies that are sold as empowering but are mostly just traps which limit your potential.

xivzgrev 5y ago
I disagree. Love language improved my relationship for the better. It gives us language and priority to things that felt important but were difficult to describe and help the other understand. To your point tho we use all the languages, and many other things beyond the languages. I think it’s important to not get too fixated on them. It’s just one piece of the puzzle. There’s many other things required besides speaking someone’s love language, but it helps!
- unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
  Individual people can be radically different in what makes them feel loved, satisfied and connected. If the OP never has to understand this, he/she is fortunate. More likely, there is someone in that person's life who would appreciate some directed curiosity.
xyzelement 5y ago
> mostly bunk Does this style of post ever work? You are dismissive of all these things but you lack a single reason/argument. Is there a chain of logic that leads you to this conclusion? It's a bit fascinating to me. I imagine the purpose of a post is to share ideas, to give people a chance to think more like you and that takes a persuasive argument.
- fastball 5y ago
  Not sure why the burden of proof is on me to demonstrate that they are bunk. Seems like the burden of proof is on anyone who asserts they exist in the first place, since "love languages" are not an objective thing.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    > Not sure why the burden of proof is on me There's no burden of proof here, the question is: what is the point of the post? I assume the goal is to help someone change their mind - to think more like you. And my observation is that you are not providing anything in your comment that would enable someone to follow a logical thread to reach the same conclusion as you. So the net effect is, whoever already agreed with you continues to agree with you, and anyone who doesn't already agree with you isn't given a reason to change their mind. In my mind that's a lost opportunity to persuade people, in which case what's the point of the comment?
    - fastball 5y ago
      Well first off it is entirely possible that there are people who have been introduced to the concept of love languages in a way where they never questioned them critically, and merely pointing out that I think they are "bunk" might start someone down that path of questioning. On top of that, however, I specifically compared love languages to other things which people might have already examined critically. Since this is HN, probably the most cogent item from my list is zodiac/horoscope, as techies tend to be fairly dismissive of it already, and therefore might have the realization (after reading my comment): "oh wow, I've been believing in love languages this whole time but been dismissive of zodiac, even though both have the same amount of evidentiary backing (~ 0)". However, I actually think "learning styles" is a better example because it is something a lot of people believe in (something like 90% from the surveys I've seen), even though in reality there is almost zero experimental evidence for them as well, despite many biased attempts to do so. My opinion is that love languages are very similar – people believe strongly that there are certain actions/behaviors that they are most receptive to when it comes to romance, but that fundamentally people just want to be loved in a much more generic way and that if the particular way in which love is expressed matters that much to you, you are probably focused on the wrong thing (missing the forest for the trees). To really spell out why this is bad, let's look back at learning styles: someone believes in learning styles, which don't exist[1]. Specifically, they believe they are a "visual learner". As soon as this belief forms, it almost instantly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – they think they are a visual learner, so whenever they are faced with learning something in a non-visual way they don't try as hard, and therefore do not learn the material as well. They are effectively self-sabotaging by having this constrained picture of themselves in their head. There is no reason to believe that people who take love languages seriously will not suffer a similar fate. Imagine someone who thinks of themself as a lover whose primary love language is "physical touch", so when someone demonstrates love in a way that is not touch, they say to themselves (maybe not in an explicitly conscious way): "hmm, this isn't as compelling as it could be because I'm a physical touch lover – I wish my partner demonstrated their love with more touch". In essence, I feel that all of these things, love languages included, are artificial and mostly arbitrary labels (some more arbitrary than others) which only serve to constrain your breadth of experience and openness to new things, resulting in unfortunate self-fulfilling downsides with no clear upside. [1] https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/edu-a0037478.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/edu-a0037478.pdf
- moogly 5y ago
  I think the poster anchored their argument better than what the post they replied to did, by comparison to other things. The post they replied to stated something to be an absolute truth without any support whatsoever.
tailspin2019 5y ago
I would argue that they're all different forms of "maps" and have their uses, but they are not the territory. If you start to confuse the map for the territory then yes they can be limiting in some ways, because you no longer see any features that are not included on the map. And the features that have been included seem more prominent. All we can create as humans are maps for things. Different types of abstractions. And refine them over time as we gain better understanding. But when using these maps it's important to keep in mind that they're just one of many ways of describing the thing you're trying to understand. Myers-Briggs for me was very enlightening, and started me on a journey of understanding how people can be different (led to greater empathy and awareness on my part). I don't walk around classifying people's MBTI type though. Zodiac... not so much. That map is a bit old now!
- fastball 5y ago
  This is a fair point, though I'd say my main concern is that "confusing the map for the territory" seems to be the status quo with these types of things. As an example of this with Myers-Briggs: I think your MBTI can be helpful if you think of it as "these are the patterns of behavior I naturally fall into, I should try harder to be aware of and use patterns outside my comfort zone in situations where that might be more productive than my default". However, 9 times out of 10 when I actually meet someone who brings up their MBTI in conversation, the way they think about it is more like "I'm an INTJ, X just isn't something I do", where X is something they probably should do but are avoiding because their MBTI is giving them a pass (in their mind). So on balance I feel that "maps" like this do more harm than good, because our human instinct when given such a map is to point to it and say "this bit of territory looks scary so I'm gonna avoid it".
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Good counterargument to my counterargument :) I think you're right that confusing the map for the territory is by far the default. So in that sense I do agree with the downsides that you're bringing attention to. And as always, it's not so much about the tool but how you use it. If you give a power saw to someone who hasn't used it before and hasn't been remotely trained on how to, then they'll probably end up chopping off a limb. But that's not to say the power saw isn't an incredibly effective tool for achieving a very specific task in the right context. So I can't agree that these maps do more harm than good. It's not as binary as that in my view. Even if maps like MBTI are wrong - there is a lot of meta-understanding that can come from just going through the exercise. Most people go through life not really understanding that other people don't see the world exactly the same way as they do. And we judge people on their external actions alone with, most of the time, very little understanding or empathy as to what beliefs, traits and preferences might exist below the surface that drives their behaviour. The bar is very low even for the best of us in our ability to really understand ourselves and others. So just the process of discovering a map that shows you a different view of the world can be very powerful - even if ultimately the map itself isn't quite right. Without the use of external maps, we create our own internal maps by default anyway - this is just how the brain works. And those maps can have the exact same effect that you're describing. "I believe that I am X and so this is why I can't do Y". But often those maps aren't created with intention, nor are they based on information that is up-to-date and relevant (eg. our limbic system by default wants to pull our default behaviours/actions back towards surviving tiger attacks and hunting for food - this is out of date information encoded in an out of date map). I guess another way to put it, is we're always following a map of some sort. Our default maps (our beliefs about ourselves) aren't as a rule known to be the most accurate either!
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
Don't forget enneagrams. These things are all based on very shaky research at best. I would argue that love languages of all of these are probably the best supported, or at least the most plausible a priori. After all they mostly boil down to, "I especially like {touch, gifts, service, ...}." But even then I think that for most people you need a mix of all of these things in a romantic relationship. Getting great gifts from a spouse is not going to save the relationship if they won't touch you, nine times out of ten.

xivzgrev 5y ago

I disagree. Love language improved my relationship for the better. It gives us language and priority to things that felt important but were difficult to describe and help the other understand. To your point tho we use all the languages, and many other things beyond the languages. I think it’s important to not get too fixated on them. It’s just one piece of the puzzle. There’s many other things required besides speaking someone’s love language, but it helps!

unyttigfjelltol 5y ago
Individual people can be radically different in what makes them feel loved, satisfied and connected. If the OP never has to understand this, he/she is fortunate. More likely, there is someone in that person's life who would appreciate some directed curiosity.

xyzelement 5y ago

> mostly bunk Does this style of post ever work? You are dismissive of all these things but you lack a single reason/argument. Is there a chain of logic that leads you to this conclusion? It's a bit fascinating to me. I imagine the purpose of a post is to share ideas, to give people a chance to think more like you and that takes a persuasive argument.

fastball 5y ago
Not sure why the burden of proof is on me to demonstrate that they are bunk. Seems like the burden of proof is on anyone who asserts they exist in the first place, since "love languages" are not an objective thing.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  > Not sure why the burden of proof is on me There's no burden of proof here, the question is: what is the point of the post? I assume the goal is to help someone change their mind - to think more like you. And my observation is that you are not providing anything in your comment that would enable someone to follow a logical thread to reach the same conclusion as you. So the net effect is, whoever already agreed with you continues to agree with you, and anyone who doesn't already agree with you isn't given a reason to change their mind. In my mind that's a lost opportunity to persuade people, in which case what's the point of the comment?
  - fastball 5y ago
    Well first off it is entirely possible that there are people who have been introduced to the concept of love languages in a way where they never questioned them critically, and merely pointing out that I think they are "bunk" might start someone down that path of questioning. On top of that, however, I specifically compared love languages to other things which people might have already examined critically. Since this is HN, probably the most cogent item from my list is zodiac/horoscope, as techies tend to be fairly dismissive of it already, and therefore might have the realization (after reading my comment): "oh wow, I've been believing in love languages this whole time but been dismissive of zodiac, even though both have the same amount of evidentiary backing (~ 0)". However, I actually think "learning styles" is a better example because it is something a lot of people believe in (something like 90% from the surveys I've seen), even though in reality there is almost zero experimental evidence for them as well, despite many biased attempts to do so. My opinion is that love languages are very similar – people believe strongly that there are certain actions/behaviors that they are most receptive to when it comes to romance, but that fundamentally people just want to be loved in a much more generic way and that if the particular way in which love is expressed matters that much to you, you are probably focused on the wrong thing (missing the forest for the trees). To really spell out why this is bad, let's look back at learning styles: someone believes in learning styles, which don't exist[1]. Specifically, they believe they are a "visual learner". As soon as this belief forms, it almost instantly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – they think they are a visual learner, so whenever they are faced with learning something in a non-visual way they don't try as hard, and therefore do not learn the material as well. They are effectively self-sabotaging by having this constrained picture of themselves in their head. There is no reason to believe that people who take love languages seriously will not suffer a similar fate. Imagine someone who thinks of themself as a lover whose primary love language is "physical touch", so when someone demonstrates love in a way that is not touch, they say to themselves (maybe not in an explicitly conscious way): "hmm, this isn't as compelling as it could be because I'm a physical touch lover – I wish my partner demonstrated their love with more touch". In essence, I feel that all of these things, love languages included, are artificial and mostly arbitrary labels (some more arbitrary than others) which only serve to constrain your breadth of experience and openness to new things, resulting in unfortunate self-fulfilling downsides with no clear upside. [1] https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/edu-a0037478.pdf https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/edu-a0037478.pdf
moogly 5y ago
I think the poster anchored their argument better than what the post they replied to did, by comparison to other things. The post they replied to stated something to be an absolute truth without any support whatsoever.

tailspin2019 5y ago

I would argue that they're all different forms of "maps" and have their uses, but they are not the territory. If you start to confuse the map for the territory then yes they can be limiting in some ways, because you no longer see any features that are not included on the map. And the features that have been included seem more prominent. All we can create as humans are maps for things. Different types of abstractions. And refine them over time as we gain better understanding. But when using these maps it's important to keep in mind that they're just one of many ways of describing the thing you're trying to understand. Myers-Briggs for me was very enlightening, and started me on a journey of understanding how people can be different (led to greater empathy and awareness on my part). I don't walk around classifying people's MBTI type though. Zodiac... not so much. That map is a bit old now!

fastball 5y ago
This is a fair point, though I'd say my main concern is that "confusing the map for the territory" seems to be the status quo with these types of things. As an example of this with Myers-Briggs: I think your MBTI can be helpful if you think of it as "these are the patterns of behavior I naturally fall into, I should try harder to be aware of and use patterns outside my comfort zone in situations where that might be more productive than my default". However, 9 times out of 10 when I actually meet someone who brings up their MBTI in conversation, the way they think about it is more like "I'm an INTJ, X just isn't something I do", where X is something they probably should do but are avoiding because their MBTI is giving them a pass (in their mind). So on balance I feel that "maps" like this do more harm than good, because our human instinct when given such a map is to point to it and say "this bit of territory looks scary so I'm gonna avoid it".
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Good counterargument to my counterargument :) I think you're right that confusing the map for the territory is by far the default. So in that sense I do agree with the downsides that you're bringing attention to. And as always, it's not so much about the tool but how you use it. If you give a power saw to someone who hasn't used it before and hasn't been remotely trained on how to, then they'll probably end up chopping off a limb. But that's not to say the power saw isn't an incredibly effective tool for achieving a very specific task in the right context. So I can't agree that these maps do more harm than good. It's not as binary as that in my view. Even if maps like MBTI are wrong - there is a lot of meta-understanding that can come from just going through the exercise. Most people go through life not really understanding that other people don't see the world exactly the same way as they do. And we judge people on their external actions alone with, most of the time, very little understanding or empathy as to what beliefs, traits and preferences might exist below the surface that drives their behaviour. The bar is very low even for the best of us in our ability to really understand ourselves and others. So just the process of discovering a map that shows you a different view of the world can be very powerful - even if ultimately the map itself isn't quite right. Without the use of external maps, we create our own internal maps by default anyway - this is just how the brain works. And those maps can have the exact same effect that you're describing. "I believe that I am X and so this is why I can't do Y". But often those maps aren't created with intention, nor are they based on information that is up-to-date and relevant (eg. our limbic system by default wants to pull our default behaviours/actions back towards surviving tiger attacks and hunting for food - this is out of date information encoded in an out of date map). I guess another way to put it, is we're always following a map of some sort. Our default maps (our beliefs about ourselves) aren't as a rule known to be the most accurate either!

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

Don't forget enneagrams. These things are all based on very shaky research at best. I would argue that love languages of all of these are probably the best supported, or at least the most plausible a priori. After all they mostly boil down to, "I especially like {touch, gifts, service, ...}." But even then I think that for most people you need a mix of all of these things in a romantic relationship. Getting great gifts from a spouse is not going to save the relationship if they won't touch you, nine times out of ten.