Love Styles Test: Find Your Style Among the Six Ways People Love
This self-assessment is informed by psychologist John Alan Lee's six styles of loving and the Love Attitudes Scale research that followed. See your dominant and secondary style, with an honest read on strengths, friction points, and compatible pairings.
Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW 
Love Styles Test is a free, confidential 36-question self-assessment, informed by Lee's love styles theory (1973). It takes about 6 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language profile of your strongest style plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
Six ways of loving, not one romantic 'type'
Sociologist John Alan Lee identified six distinct styles people bring to romantic love. This test scores all six so you see your full pattern, then names your dominant and secondary style, the pairing that shapes how you actually love in practice.
Your full love-style profile
Where you land across all six of Lee's love styles: Eros (passionate), Ludus (playful), Storge (companionate), Pragma (practical), Mania (anxious/intense), and Agape (selfless).
Dominant and secondary style
Almost nobody is a pure type. Your leading style plus your second-strongest one together explain far more about how you love than a single label.
Strengths, friction, and compatible pairings
For your dominant style: what you bring to a relationship, where it tends to cause friction, which other styles pair naturally with yours, and where the growth edge is.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| Scores all six styles, not one label | Often one label | Yes, full profile as bars |
| Distinguishes from love language and attachment style | Often confused | Yes, explained clearly |
| Original items, no copied proprietary content | Often unclear | Yes, 36 original items |
| Covers compatible and mismatched pairings | Rarely | Yes, for every style |
| Clinician-reviewed language | Rarely | Yes, editorially reviewed |
| Optional in-depth personalized report | No | Yes, written to your exact scores |
| Answers stay on your device | Often tracked | Scored in your browser; we only receive anonymous completion counts unless you ask for a PDF or report |
The 6 patterns this test measures
- Eros: Passionate love built on intense physical and emotional attraction.
- Ludus: Playful love that favors freedom, variety, and low pressure.
- Storge: Companionate love that grows slowly out of friendship.
- Pragma: Practical love that weighs compatibility and long-term fit.
- Mania: Intense, anxious love with strong highs and a real need for reassurance.
- Agape: Selfless, giving love centered on a partner's wellbeing.
If nothing is endorsed, every pattern scores the same, or the leading patterns tie, the result says so instead of naming a single pattern.
Love style vs love language vs attachment style
These three tests get confused often, and they measure genuinely different things. Your love style, what this test measures, describes your overall approach to romance: how you fall for someone, what you value, and how you behave once you're in a relationship, based on the six styles sociologist John Alan Lee identified. Your love language, covered in our separate Love Language Test, is narrower: it describes how you prefer to give and receive affection day to day, through words, time, touch, gifts, or acts of service. Your attachment style, covered in our Attachment Style Test, is different again: it describes the deeper bonding pattern, secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized, that shapes how safe you feel in closeness and how you handle conflict or distance.
The three interact but don't map onto each other cleanly. Someone with an anxious attachment style might show up as high in Mania here, since both involve heightened need for reassurance, but a securely attached person can also score high in Mania if their current relationship feels genuinely uncertain. Taking all three tests together gives a much fuller picture of your romantic patterns than any one alone.
Can your love style change?
Yes. Lee's original research treated these styles as tendencies shaped by experience, not fixed traits you're stuck with for life. Many people notice their dominant style shift across different relationships or life stages; a Ludus-leaning early twenties can give way to a more Storge or Pragma-leaning style once someone starts prioritizing long-term partnership, and a person recovering from heartbreak sometimes moves toward Mania temporarily before settling elsewhere. Your result describes a real current pattern worth understanding, not a permanent verdict on how you'll always love.
It's also worth knowing that most people are a genuine blend rather than a pure type, which is why this test shows your full six-style profile instead of a single label. Your dominant and secondary styles working together, sometimes in tension, usually explain your actual relationship patterns better than either one alone.
Using your result with a partner
Love styles are most useful as a shared language rather than a verdict on who's right. If you and a partner score differently, that's normal and common; the goal isn't to convert each other but to understand what the other person actually needs to feel loved and secure. A Pragma-leaning partner isn't cold, they show love through planning and reliability; a Mania-leaning partner isn't needy, they show love through intensity and need consistent reassurance to feel safe. If a mismatch in styles is creating real, ongoing conflict rather than just occasional friction, our Relationship Satisfaction Test can help you look at the relationship more broadly, and a couples therapist can help translate between styles directly.
Methodology & sources
This test is informed by sociologist John Alan Lee's typology of six love styles, first published in Colours of Love (1973): Eros (passionate), Ludus (game-playing), Storge (companionate), Pragma (practical), Mania (possessive/dependent), and Agape (altruistic). Psychologists Clyde Hendrick and Susan Hendrick later built the Love Attitudes Scale (1986) to measure these styles empirically and have continued refining it since, including a validated short form. This test does not reproduce the Love Attitudes Scale; we wrote 36 original statements, six per style, informed by the theory those researchers established.
Each statement is rated on a five-point agreement scale, and the engine sums your score within each style to build your profile, showing your dominant style's interpretation along with the full set of bars so you can read your secondary style too. This is an educational self-assessment for reflection on your own romantic patterns, not the validated Love Attitudes Scale and not a clinical or predictive instrument.
References
- Lee JA. Colours of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving. Toronto: New Press; 1973.
- Hendrick C, Hendrick S. A theory and method of love. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1986;50(2):392-402. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.50.2.392
- Hendrick C, Hendrick SS, Dicke A. The Love Attitudes Scale: Short form. J Soc Pers Relat. 1998;15(2):147-159. doi.org/10.1177/0265407598152001
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, September 23). Love Styles Test. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/love-styles
Love Styles Test FAQ
What are the six love styles?
They come from sociologist John Alan Lee's research: Eros (passionate, physical), Ludus (playful, low-commitment), Storge (companionate, friendship-based), Pragma (practical, compatibility-focused), Mania (intense, anxious), and Agape (selfless, giving). Most people show a dominant style plus a meaningful secondary one, not a single pure type.
How is a love style different from a love language?
Your love style describes your overall approach to romance, how you fall for someone and what you value in a relationship. Your love language, covered in our separate <a href="/tests/love-language">Love Language Test</a>, is narrower: how you prefer to give and receive affection day to day. They're related but distinct, and many people find it useful to take both.
Is this different from my attachment style?
Yes. Love style describes your romantic approach and values; attachment style, covered in our <a href="/tests/attachment-style">Attachment Style Test</a>, describes the deeper bonding pattern that shapes how secure you feel in closeness. An anxious attachment style and a Mania love style often overlap, but they're measuring different things.
Can my love style change over time?
Yes. Lee treated these as tendencies shaped by experience and life stage, not fixed traits. Many people notice their dominant style shift across different relationships, especially between casual dating years and longer-term partnership.
Is one love style the healthiest?
No single style is inherently healthier than another; each has real strengths and real friction points, and compatibility matters more than any style being objectively best. That said, if your result in the Mania style feels distressing rather than just intense, our <a href="/tests/attachment-style">Attachment Style Test</a> and a conversation with a therapist can help you understand and ease that pattern.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. The test runs and is scored in your browser, and your individual answers are never sent to us. We count completions anonymously, and if you request the free PDF or a report we receive your summary scores with the email you give us, never your answers. No account is needed.
Related tests
Trust Issues Test
Explore how difficulty trusting shows up in your relationships, and how it can shift.
Abandonment Issues Test
Screens fear and anticipation, behavior, and origins behind abandonment sensitivity. Not a diagnosis.
Likeable Person Test
Reflect on six social behaviors without turning being liked into a score of your worth.
Friendship Quiz: What Kind of Friend Are You?
Discover the kind of friend you are: Anchor, Spark, Confidant, Truth-Teller, or Caretaker.
Loneliness Test
Informed by the UCLA Loneliness Scale, with a clear read on how connected you actually feel.