How You Show Care
30 choices between two kinds of care, about 3 minutes. Thin on science, good for a conversation.
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What it measures
Five ways people give and receive care: words (praise, thanks, encouragement), time (undivided attention, doing things together), help (doing things for someone so they have less to carry), gifts (thoughtful things, small or large) and touch (hugs, a hand on the shoulder, sitting close). Each question puts two of them side by side, sometimes about what you would want and sometimes about what you would do for someone else.
Your result ranks all five by how often each one won. It describes emphasis, meaning which kinds of care you reach for first and which ones land hardest. It says nothing about how caring you are, or about who you should be with.
We rate the evidence 1 out of 5. A 2024 review found that when people rate each kind of care on its own, most value all five, and it found little support for the claim that couples do better when their styles match. Our pairs force a choice, which can make one style look dominant when the gaps are small. As a way to start a conversation about what helps, it is still useful.
Three of the questions
- After a hard week, which would you rather? Someone close to me gives me a long hug, or someone close to me tells me I handled it well.
- A friend gets bad news while you are with them. What do you do first? I put a hand on their shoulder, or I tell them I am here for them.
- Which would mean more from someone in your family? They fix something of mine that has been broken for weeks, or they give me something they made themselves.
What you get
- All five styles in your order, with how often each one won
- Portraits of your top two, with the costs as well as the strengths
- For each of your top two, one concrete thing someone can do for you
- How to use the result with someone, and what the research does and does not support
Where it comes from
We wrote the 30 pairs ourselves. Each style meets each of the others three times, and half the questions ask what you would want while half ask what you would do for someone else. The pairs have not been tested in published research.
Who owns the original
The idea of five ways people show love comes from Gary Chapman's 1992 book. The 5 Love Languages is a registered trademark of The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. We are not affiliated with it, with Gary Chapman or with his publisher, and our questions are our own.