How to Measure Social Love. a Reflection on the Use of Metrics and Indicators

The effects of social love are wide ranging, influencing social relationships, society, the economy, the environment, as well as individual condition. However, there are few measurement and evaluation methods to study social love in its articulations and dimensions. This speech attempts to bridge the gap between the state of the art in relevant fields of social theory and public perception of social love trying to find how is possible to measure attitudes, behaviour, and knowledge. From the literature, different relevant and validated approaches were identified that can be used to measure the impacts of social love in contemporary society.
Scales that measure general social love behaviour, much like survey items, tend to focus on behavioural intentions and are correlated with socially friendly attitudes. In this presentatipon we propose an in-depth analysis of a recent Italian survey which allowed us to test the validity and reliability of some scales on attitudes and behaviours linked to social love.