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The Surprising Ways We Show Love Around the World
Sociodemographic variation and childhood predictors of showing love and care for others in 22 countries
- By
- Lee, Matthew T. et al.
- Participants
- 202,898
- Countries
- 22
- Journal
- Scientific Reports
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-025-31380-9
§1
Key Takeaways
01
Across 22 countries, showing love and care for others was a common practice with a pooled mean of 8.08 on a 0–10 scale, though mean levels varied considerably from 9.05 in the Philippines to 5.96 in Japan.
02
In a pooled analysis across all 22 countries, older age, female gender, excellent self-rated childhood health, and weekly or more frequent childhood religious service attendance were the strongest childhood predictors of adult love/care expression.
03
Countries in the Global South tended to report higher levels of love/care expression than Western, developed countries, a pattern that was moderately correlated with collectivism, lower GDP per capita, and shorter-term cultural orientation.
§2
Why It Matters
This research matters because it challenges a common assumption: that wealthier, more developed countries naturally produce more of the things that make life good. When it comes to showing love and care, the opposite may be true. People in some of the world's wealthiest nations reported the lowest levels, while people in lower-income countries reported some of the highest.
We often measure a nation's success by its wealth, but strong social bonds may be a far greater asset.
This has real implications for how we think about progress and development. If economic growth comes at the cost of social connection, community bonds, and everyday expressions of care, then something important may be lost along the way. The findings also highlight the role of childhood — relationships with parents, health, and religious community — in shaping how people treat others decades later. For policymakers, educators, and mental health professionals, this suggests that investing in children's emotional and relational well-being could have lasting effects on how communities function. And for anyone wondering whether love and care still matter in the modern world, the answer from 200,000 people across 22 countries is a resounding yes.
This research matters because it challenges a common assumption: that wealthier, more developed countries naturally produce more of the things that make life good. When it comes to showing love and care, the opposite may be true. People in some of the world's wealthiest nations reported the lowest levels, while people in lower-income countries reported some of the highest.
This has real implications for how we think about progress and development. If economic growth comes at the cost of social connection, community bonds, and everyday expressions of care, then something important may be lost along the way. The findings also highlight the role of childhood — relationships with parents, health, and religious community — in shaping how people treat others decades later. For policymakers, educators, and mental health professionals, this suggests that investing in children's emotional and relational well-being could have lasting effects on how communities function. And for anyone wondering whether love and care still matter in the modern world, the answer from 200,000 people across 22 countries is a resounding yes.
We often measure a nation's success by its wealth, but strong social bonds may be a far greater asset.
§3
The Story
How often do you show someone in your life that you love or care for them? Researchers asked this question to over 200,000 people across 22 countries on six continents, and the answers reveal something surprising about human connection worldwide. On a scale from 0 (never) to 10 (always), the average across all countries was about 8 — meaning most people around the world say they show love and care quite often.
Across 22 countries, people in less wealthy nations reported showing love and care more often than those in richer ones.
But the differences between countries were striking. The Philippines had the highest average at 9. 05, followed by Indonesia, Tanzania, and Mexico. At the bottom were Japan (5.
96) and Hong Kong (6. 52). In general, countries in the Global South — places with lower average incomes — tended to report higher levels of love and care than wealthier Western nations like Germany, Sweden, and the UK. The study also looked at who shows the most love and care within each country. Women tended to score higher than men in nearly every country.
Older adults reported more love and care than younger people — a pattern that held in most places. People who attended religious services frequently also reported higher levels, and this was one of the strongest patterns found. When researchers looked back at people's childhoods, several early-life factors stood out. Having a good relationship with your mother and father growing up, being in excellent health as a child, and attending religious services regularly as a kid were all associated with showing more love and care as an adult. Experiencing abuse or feeling like an outsider in your own family growing up tended to go along with lower levels later in life. Importantly, these patterns were not identical everywhere. The connection between childhood experiences and adult love and care varied a lot from country to country, suggesting that culture and social context play a big role in shaping how early experiences translate into later behavior.
Figures
77%
Countries with High Love/Care
Seventeen of the 22 countries studied had mean love/care expression scores of 8 or higher on a 0–10 scale.
+3.09 points
Cross-National Mean Range
On the 0–10 love/care expression scale, the Philippines had the highest country mean at 9.05 while Japan had the lowest at 5.96, a difference of 3.09 points.
0.69 points
Religious Attendance Gap
The greatest mean difference in love/care expression within any single sociodemographic category was for religious service attendance, with a 0.69-point gap on the 0–10 scale between those attending more than once a week and those never attending.
1.58
Robustness of Childhood Health
The association between excellent self-rated childhood health and adult love/care expression had an E-value of 1.58, meaning an unmeasured confounder would need to be associated with both variables by risk ratios of at least 1.58 to explain away the observed association.
§4
Reader Questions
Research Details
& Citation
Chat with this paperPublished
2025
Journal
Scientific Reports
Participants
202,898
Countries
22
Cite this paper
Lee, M. T., Wilkinson, R., Long, K. N. G., Case, B. W., Ritchie-Dunham, J. L., Bradshaw, M., Padgett, R. N., Johnson, B. R., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2025). Sociodemographic variation and childhood predictors of showing love and care for others in 22 countries. Scientific Reports, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-31380-9Tags
lovechildhoodreligion-spiritualityagecross-culturalrelationship-quality
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