July 07, 2025
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'When people are open and ready to express love, they might also be more open and ready to receive it,' say Penn State researcher Zita Oravecz about her study's findings on love.
What is the remedy for feeling unloved? Expressing more love to others.
That is what a Pennsylvania State University study published earlier this month suggests.
For the study, 52 people – 46 of whom were in relationships – answered survey prompts six times a day for 28 days about their experiences of giving and feeling love since the last survey. When people expressed more love, they felt more love over time.
"When people are open and ready to express love, they might also be more open and ready to receive it," Zita Oravecz, associate professor of human development and family studies who led the study, said in a February interview about her ongoing research. "This preliminary finding could also mean that people who express more love are generally more aware of the signs and expressions of love in everyday life, so they are more attuned to when they are experiencing love."
But feeling more loved did not lead to expressions of more love toward others. A possible explanation could be that the "lasting effect of experiencing love could be interfering with expressing love," the researchers wrote.
More persistent feelings of love also were associated with a greater sense of "flourishing," the researchers said.
"We often think in terms of partners and family, but the more I have dug into the research, the more I’ve realized that even small moments in daily life — when a neighbor does something kind like bringing in your garbage can or a colleague invites you for lunch and asks how you are doing — these moments are just as important, and they can create the same warm, caring, loving feelings that romantic and familial love can," Oravecz said.
People can become more adept at expressing love with practice, which will cultivate more feelings of being loved in return, the researchers wrote.
"The good news is that expressing and feeling love are skills we can learn," Oravecz said.
