New research published in Sexual and Relationship Therapy suggests that aggressive personality traits in romantic relationships can express themselves as an obsessive, possessive approach to love, subsequently amplifying jealousy. The two Brazilian studies examine how antisocial tendencies, love styles and jealousy interconnect, offering a clearer picture of how some individuals navigate threats to intimate bonds.
Lead author Bruno Bonfa-Araujo, a psychology researcher at the Universidade Tuiuti do Parana, worked with a team to explore the links between the classic six love styles proposed by John Alan Lee in the 1970s and darker personality traits. Lee’s framework distinguishes three primary styles—Eros, Ludus and Storge—with three blends: Pragma, Mania and Agape.
The researchers aimed to understand how these love styles relate to antisocial traits and different forms of jealousy, distinguishing threat-based jealousy from non-threat jealousy. Antisocial tendencies in the study were measured by indicators such as aggression, irresponsibility, manipulation of others and recklessness.
In the first study, 255 Brazilian adults participated, a group skewed toward women and ranging in age from 17 to 55. Participants completed questionnaires assessing antisocial behaviours and their preferences across the six love styles. The team found that the Ludus and Mania styles were positively associated with aggression, irresponsibility and manipulation, aligning with the notion that control, game-playing or emotional volatility characterises these orientations.
Among the findings, Agape—the selfless, other-oriented love style—also showed a positive link to certain antisocial facets, including aggression and manipulation, suggesting that even purportedly generous love can interact in complex ways with antagonistic traits. By contrast, Storge (friendship-based) and Pragma (practical, criteria-led) did not demonstrate statistically significant connections to antisocial behaviours.
To deepen the analysis, a second study recruited 198 Brazilian adults with a roughly even gender split and aged between 17 and 54. This phase added measures for threat-based and non-threat jealousy and used a modified version of the love-styles inventory to control for acquiescent responding—the tendency to agree with statements regardless of content.
When accounting for this response bias, the associations between love styles and antisocial traits weakened compared with the first study. Aggression emerged as the only antisocial trait reliably linked to threat-based jealousy. Mania was the only love style directly associated with threat jealousy, while Storge was linked to non-threat jealousy.
Using path analysis, the researchers tested whether love styles mediated the relationship between antisocial traits and jealousy. They found that Mania acts as a mediator between aggression and jealousy, with partial mediation for threat-based jealousy and full mediation for non-threat jealousy. In other words, manic, obsessive love partly explains why aggressive traits relate to threat-based jealousy, and wholly explains the link to non-threat jealousy, while a direct path from aggression to threat jealousy persists.
While the findings illuminate potential mechanisms in relationship dynamics, the authors caution that the research relies on self-reported data at a single point in time. Participants’ accounts of antisocial tendencies, manipulative behaviours or jealousy may be imperfect, and the cross-sectional design limits conclusions about causality or directionality.
Cultural context is another consideration, as both studies drew exclusively from Brazilian samples. The researchers note that patterns observed in this setting may not automatically translate to other cultures where conceptions of love and jealousy differ.
Future work could track couples over extended periods to observe how aggressive dispositions and obsessive love styles influence relationships as they evolve. Including reports from both partners and replicating the study across diverse cultures would help determine how universal these connections are.
Key findings and mediation
The study, titled Untying the knot: investigating the mediating role of love in the relationship between antisocial personality and jealousy, was conducted by Bruno Bonfá-Araujo, Ana Deyvis Santos Araújo Jesuíno, Victor Hugo Farias Macedo, Rebeca Karen Alves Lima, Daniella Santos da Cruz, Ariela Raissa Lima-Costa and Julie Aitken Schermer.
