In the mood for love?
Streetbees asked what you would give up for love
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we at Streetbees reached out to our community to ask what love means to them and what they’re willing to give up for it. Almost 6,000 members of our community (a.k.a. bees) from 11 countries responded back sharing their deepest feelings about love, sacrifice and relationships.
Cultures differ. Especially on matters of love and relationships. When asked about the qualities they look for in an ideal partner, over 60% of Saudi, Turkish, Indian, Chinese & Egyptian (STICE) respondents said that their partner ‘must think of me first before themselves’. For STICE respondents, selflessness scored higher than financial status, physical attractiveness, humour and charisma, which were more important qualities for other countries such as the US, UK and France.
Love, or dream job?
Not only do the STICE respondents value selflessness in their partners, they also perceive themselves to be selfless. We asked our community what they would do if they had to relocate to take up their dream job, but the love of their life could not move with them.
Indians, together with Nigerians, took the lead in the name of love, with 70% of men and women forgoing their ideal career. This is in stark contrast to countries like France and Argentina, where up to 70% of men and women prefer to chase their dream job.
What drives the decision to prioritise relationship over self-fulfilment in STICE countries? In Hofstede’s classification of national cultures, all of the STICE countries score high on collectivism and low on individualism. In collectivist societies where social rules evolve around selflessness and societal approval, individual happiness is underpinned by harmony rather than independence.
We also observed that family plays a central role in STICE when it comes to making life decisions. Even though the majority of respondents were prepared to sacrifice their dream job for love, they were more likely to leave their partner to appease their family in case of a conflict. 90% of Turkish, 83% of Chinese and 79% of Indian respondents are prepared to leave the love of their life if their family does not approve. Again these figures are in stark contrast with the responses from individualistic societies like the UK, where only 17% would put aside their romantic interest for their family.
On top of that, when asked about what makes them feel stigmatized about being single (a phenomenon experienced by over 70% of singles all over the world), STICE respondents perceived their families to be the primary source of pressure. In France and Argentina, the main pressure comes from friends.
There is no ‘I’ in LOVE…
…In STICE countries that is. But there are certainly some core values that unite us all in matters of the heart.
Over 80% of people across all countries surveyed said that they would rather be in a relationship, regardless of their current relationship status. Among single people, over 90% in the UK, US, South Africa, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would let go their independent single life for the love of their life.
Yes, we differ in how we find, choose and hold onto love, but we all still love to be in love.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
A quick word on our methodology: For the poll, a representative sample of 5,720 people from the Streetbees community in Argentina, China, Egypt, France, India, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States was surveyed between 5 and 9 February, and the data is accurate to within 5 percentage points 19 times out of 20.
Streetbees is a data intelligence platform. Founded on the principle of humanising how we collect data, Streetbees connects the people who need intelligence with the real people who have it across the world. All via smartphone. Join our community today by downloading the Streetbees app and start getting paid cash to share your opinion.
