Love addiction: Based on Network Approach

اLove addiction is a type of behavioral addiction that has recently attracted the attention of many researchers in psychology and psychiatry.This phenomenon causes suffering, distress, mal-adaptiveness and risks for the affected person and others. The purpose of the present study was to use network analysis as one of the psychometric approaches and to apply it in the study of network structure of love addiction symptoms.Network analysis is a powerful way to analyze the relationships among network elements (questionnaire items).The method of this study was descriptive-correlational and the statistical population consisted of all Iranian females and males with at least one experience of falling in love. A total of 148 questions were formulated using an 8point Likert scale and two questions were omitted form the questionnaire during the question analysis. Data were collected by electronically administering a researcher made questionnaire on 1149 individuals and analyzed in two distinct stages using MIRT software package in R software. Graphical representation based on the data collected through network analysis (graph theory)and Fruchterman and Reingold algorithm was performed using graphs, boothnet software packages in Rsoftware. The results of the network analysis showed that the items of the questionnaire, each of which indicating a symptom of love addiction based on studies in this area, were placed in a coherent network.The most important symptoms in the love addiction network were reported to be obsessiveness,fantasy,impulsivity, physical and emotional dependence, as well as high emotion seeking, while the least important symptoms were suicidal tendencies, extreme selfsacrifice and sexual attractions.