Abstract
Love is culturally universal in presence, yet highly variable in how people perceive it. The present study examined individual differences in cultural attunement and judgment styles related to love. Adults (N = 502) living in Spain rated 61 everyday scenarios according to how likely each would make most people feel loved. Using the Continuous Response Model within Cultural Consensus Theory, we captured individuals’ alignment with the shared understanding of love (i.e., their cultural attunement) in Spanish culture. Greater attunement was observed among women, individuals with higher perceived support from a significant other, those with lower anxiety, and those who valued benevolence. Weaker attunement, on the other hand, was associated with endorsement of power and traditional values. In addition, individuals differed in how they expressed their judgments: older adults and men used a narrower range of responses, whereas those higher in extraversion and conscientiousness showed greater differentiation across scenarios. More educated individuals were less likely to judge situations as loving overall, whereas those higher in agreeableness were more likely to do so. These findings highlight that judgments of love experiences reflect not only shared cultural knowledge but also systematic individual differences in how that knowledge is applied.