Love and the value of family seen by university students. A cognitive quantitative and qualitative case study of the UMCS students

Taking into account the fact that emotional intelligence is an important factor in the performance and development potential of young people, this article aims to investigate the world of emotions in two selected groups of students, i.e. students of Applied Linguistics at UMCS from the first and fifth year of studies. In particular, the study concerns the range of experienced emotions of love and the importance of family in young adults and the reasons why the selected two groups of students experience these feelings. The theoretical framework that best fits this quantitative and qualitative study on emotions and their causes is based on a hybrid model resulting from the combination of two important cognitively oriented theoretical models, namely: (i) Plutchik’s (1980) theory of eight basic emotions; and (ii) Averill’s (1980) social-constructivist model of emotions. The study was conducted using an anonymous questionnaire method without taking into account sensitive data. It included quantitative survey questions, multiple choice and matrix with one possible answer and one direct open question – all of them concerning students’ emotions. The results based on the preliminary survey show that love received the highest percentage increase among female students of Applied Linguistics at UMCS, or more precisely, 5th-year students experience love 12% more often than the 1st-year students. In the case of men in the last year of Applied Linguistics studies, love increased by 17%, which ranks third among all emotions studied. In general, the emotional life of both women and men studying Applied Linguistics develops and deepens around the values ​​of love and family.