FLQ: Background

The Felt Love Questionnaire (FLQ) assesses everyday situations in which people are likely to feel loved, such as receiving care, support, affection, or attention from others. Rather than measuring love abstractly or focusing exclusively on romantic love, the FLQ uses concrete scenarios across different relational contexts, including family, friends, romantic partners, acquaintances, strangers, and general social situations.

Using Cultural Consensus Theory, FLQ studies examine whether people within a cultural group share a common understanding (i.e., shared agreement, or cultural consensus) of what makes someone feel loved. This approach helps identify culturally meaningful patterns of felt love and informs the development of culturally grounded versions of the questionnaire.

Love Across Cultures Project

The Felt Love Questionnaire has been (and continues to be) developed, revised, and adapted for cultures outside of the United States. The “Love Across Cultures” Project (Funded by the John Templeton Foundation) is a multiyear, cross-cultural project that seeks to understand cultural beliefs on love in diverse cultures. For more details on that project (e.g., research team, monthly Blog series), navigate to that section of the website.

Felt Love Questionnaire (United States)

The first iteration of the full 60-item Felt Love Questionnaire-US was developed by Heshmati et al., (2019) using a nationally representative sample of 495 U.S. adults. This FLQ-US was an extension of early work looking at shared cultural agreements on what makes people feel loved by Oravecz et al., (2016).

Later work using the FLQ-US has investigated the shared beliefs on love in everyday life among young and emerging adults (Ellis et al., 2024), older adults (Williams et al., 2025), U.S. Immigrants (Heshmati & Rombaoa, in progress). Other work by Heshmati and Oravecz (2022) has also investigated one’s own beliefs (“I feel loved when…”) compared to the majority culture’s beliefs (Most people feel loved when…”)

See more details (e.g., full item list, references, and papers/publications that have used this questionnaire) here: [FLQ-US Link to Guide for Researchers].

Felt Love Questionnaire (Spain)

The first non-US adaptation of the FLQ was developed by Heshmati et al., (2026) in their multi-study investigation of (1) narratives from interviews of adults living in Spain and (2) from surveying a nationally representative sample of 502 Spaniards living in Spain. This FLQ-Spain extends the work of the FLQ-US and also introduces the concept of Relational Ties to the FLQ. Specifically, the FLQ-Spain introduces scenarios that purposefully target different types of relationships with others, from strangers and acquaintances to family and friends, and also with objects, symbols, or abstract concepts (e.g., nature, national anthem, pets).

See more details here: [FLQ-Spain Link to Guide for Researchers].