Is it better to give love than to receive it? A scientific experiment attempts to answer this question.

Love rarely manifests itself in grand gestures; rather, it's seen in the everyday, discreet displays that, day after day, forge a bond between people. This idea underpins the theory of "positivity resonance," on which a team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University (United States) based their findings, exploring how these small acts of affection strengthen our connections.

Typically, gestures of love are grouped into two categories: giving love and receiving it. How do these two forms of love feed off each other over time? This is what the experts wanted to find out.

Sending someone a supportive emoji, holding the door open for them, giving a well-deserved compliment with a big smile, leaving breakfast ready without warning—these are all small acts of love that can have a lasting effect throughout our day. The psychological reward is quite high, according to experts.

To examine the connection between giving and receiving love and how it resonates with people, researchers recruited 52 adult participants . Using ecological momentary assessment, the scientists sent these volunteers text messages six times a day for four weeks, asking them to rate, on a scale of 0 to 100, how much love they had shown since the previous alert and how loved they felt at that moment.

Opinion

In total, they collected nearly 8,200 responses, and the researchers analyzed variations in these responses over time. Applying a continuous-time model, they found that the feeling of being loved remained elevated for hours—its inertia remained strong even eight hours later —while the impulse to express affection through words alone quickly faded. In other words, to keep that flame alive, we must continue to show our affection consistently, not with a couple of resonant words here and there.

That is, the experts found that when people express love to others, they tend to feel more loved. However, people who received love were no more likely to express love later.

In fact, feelings of being loved tended to persist longer than feelings of expressing love. The bottom line is that taking the first step is more important than waiting to be inspired by someone's kindness; a single compliment can brighten our day.

This was determined by the researchers, who also measured the participants' overall well-being and asked them if they felt they were thriving in their daily lives. It turns out that those who experienced greater feelings of affection were also more likely to consider themselves happier. "Let's spread more love into the world by expressing it throughout our daily lives," the authors stated in their work published in the journal PloS One .

And, since the cycle begins with behavior, we must avoid the trap of waiting until we feel like it— extending a kind word or gesture toward someone. And it has nothing to do with romantic love, as the study wasn't limited to romantic love but included relationships between friends, family members, coworkers, and even strangers. These findings are consistent with previous studies showing that strong social bonds protect against stress and loneliness.

Love rarely manifests itself in grand gestures; rather, it's seen in the everyday, discreet displays that, day after day, forge a bond between people. This idea underpins the theory of "positivity resonance," on which a team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University (United States) based their findings, exploring how these small acts of affection strengthen our connections.