Love knows no boundaries? Yet our feelings are influenced by cultural attitudes.
Anthropologists led by Andrei Korotaev from the Russian State Humanitarian University (Moscow) and Victor C. de Munck from the University of New York found out that for the inhabitants of the former USSR (Russians, Lithuanians) and Americans, “love” is not the same thing*. For Americans, this is «friendship», «care», «comfort» … but in the answers of Russians and Lithuanians, the word «friendship» is never found! For us, this is most often a “delusion”, “illusion”, “fairy tale” — something fleeting and magical. And we easily fall under his power: for 39% of Russians and Lithuanians, a few days of acquaintance is enough, for 29% — one or two weeks, and for 90%, a month is definitely enough. Meanwhile, 58% of Americans are ready to say that they are in love only after the relationship lasts from two months to a year.
* Cross-Cultural Research, 2011, vol. 45, № 2.