Paul W Eastwick
Biographic Data
| ID | 127302 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul W Eastwick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul W |
| FAMILY NAME | Eastwick |
| SIGNATURE | EASTWICK P W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8512-8721 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 275 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
In-Person and Virtual Dates are Comparable, But People Don’t Know It
Virtual dating has become popular, but how do people feel about potential romantic partners on virtual versus in-person first dates? In Study 1, a sample of online participants predicted that in-person dates would be markedly better than virtual dates. Study 2 examined whether this prediction received support in a dataset of 4,542 real-life blind dates. We examined first-date outcomes (e.g., date enjoyment and attraction) and partner trait-percep…
Experimental Tests of the Role of Ideal Partner Preferences in Relationships
Despite the large literature on ideal partner preferences, the consequences of ideals have rarely been tested experimentally. We developed a conditioning paradigm that paired positive experiences with novel (“Reditry,” Study 1) and familiar (“youthfulness,” Study 2) traits to reliably manipulate ideal partner preferences among participants attracted to men. We then conducted the first experimental tests of four theoretical perspectives: motivated…
Promotion‐ or Prevention‐Focused Self‐Evaluation and the Preferential Pursuit of More Desirable Romantic Partners
OBJECTIVE: This research examined how self-regulatory orientations-promotion focus (growth) and prevention focus (security)-influence individuals' evaluation of their own desirable traits and their pursuit of highly desirable romantic partners. METHOD: Two studies analyzed participants' evaluations of themselves and romantic partners: Study 1 followed 208 college students longitudinally across 7 months of early romantic interest development; Stud…
The Social-Relations Model for Asymmetric-Block-Design Data: A Tutorial With R
We provide a guide to estimating social-relations-model (SRM) parameters for data collected with the asymmetric block design using R. SRM estimates reflect how people differ in the social behaviors they emit and elicit from others and the extent to which they behave differently with each unique partner. Such analyses have proven useful in studies of the power of leaders, negotiation effectiveness, and personality perception, to name a few. The SR…
A Credibility Revolution for Relationship Science: Where Can We Step Up Our Game
The discipline of psychology is undergoing a credibility revolution whereby researchers are critically evaluating and improving their research practices. In this review, we consider how the field of relationship science could capitalize on this movement in the context of four types of validity. Regarding statistical‐conclusions validity, we find that relationship scientists are engaging in open science practices (e.g., preregistration, open data …
Stimulus confounds in implicit and explicit measures of racial bias
Implicit measures often show dissociations from explicit measures, including low correlations, distinct antecedents, and distinct behavioral correlates. Interpretations of these dissociations referring to measurement types presuppose that the distinction between implicit and explicit measures is not confounded with other stimulus-related differences. However, in research on racial bias, explicit measures often use verbal category labels, whereas …
A worldwide test of the predictive validity of ideal partner preference matching
10,358) across 43 countries and 22 languages to estimate preference-matching effect sizes. The most rigorous tests revealed significant preference-matching effects in the whole sample and for partnered and single participants separately. The "corrected pattern metric" that collapses across 35 traits revealed a zero-order effect of β = .19 and an effect of β = .11 when included alongside a normative preference-matching metric. Specific traits in t…
Psychological Science in the Wake of Covid-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations
The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology…
Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies
Significance What predicts how happy people are with their romantic relationships? Relationship science—an interdisciplinary field spanning psychology, sociology, economics, family studies, and communication—has identified hundreds of variables that purportedly shape romantic relationship quality. The current project used machine learning to directly quantify and compare the predictive power of many such variables among 11,196 romantic couples. P…
Implicit Bias and Antidiscrimination Policy
The science behind implicit bias tests (e.g., Implicit Association Test) has become the target of increased criticism. However, policymakers seeking to combat discrimination care about reducing bias in people’s actual behaviors, not about changing a person’s score on an implicit bias test. In line with this argument, we postulate that scientific controversies about implicit bias tests are irrelevant for antidiscrimination policy, which should ins…
How Do Ideal Friend Preferences and Interaction Context Affect Friendship Formation? Evidence for a Domain- General Relationship Initiation Process
This research examined how people’s ideal friend preferences influence the friendship formation process. In an extension of prior research on romantic relationship initiation, we tested whether the match between participants’ ideals and a partner’s traits affected participants’ interest in forming a new friendship in three contexts: evaluating a potential friend’s profile, meeting in-person, and chatting online. Results revealed that participants…
Solutions to the problems of incremental validity testing in relationship science
Incremental validity testing (i.e., testing whether a focal predictor is associated with an outcome above and beyond a covariate) is common (e.g., 57% of Personal Relationships articles in 2017), yet it is fraught with conceptual and statistical problems. First, researchers often use it to overemphasize the novelty or counterintuitiveness of findings, which hinders cumulative understanding. Second, incremental validity testing requires that the f…
Negligible evidence that people desire partners who uniquely fit their ideals
How do people translate their experiences into abstract attribute preferences
Applicability of the Investment Model Scale in a natural-fertility population
Relationship quality is a construct that is central to theories of relationships and one that is used widely by psychologists. However, all prior assessments of relationship quality have derived from samples living in industrialized nation states. Here, the authors expand the breadth of this cultural variation to examine the means, reliability, and structure of the Investment Model Scale (IMS) in a sample from a natural-fertility, subsistence-lev…
The Psychology of Close Relationships: Fourteen Core Principles
Relationship science is a theory-rich discipline, but there have been no attempts to articulate the broader themes or principles that cut across the theories themselves. We have sought to fill that void by reviewing the psychological literature on close relationships, particularly romantic relationships, to extract its core principles. This review reveals 14 principles, which collectively address four central questions: (a) What is a relationship…
She’s Not One of Us: Group Membership Moderates the Effect of Fertility Cues on Attractiveness Ratings
The ability to differentiate in-group from out-group members on the basis of symbolic cues may be unique to Homo sapiens. The current research examined whether meaningful cues of in-group status moderate ovulatory shifts—a psychological adaptation that likely evolved earlier in humans’ evolutionary timeline. Four studies demonstrated that men were more attracted to fertile than nonfertile women’s voices only when men were evaluating in-group memb…
Consistency and inconsistency among romantic partners over time
Theoretical perspectives on mating differentially emphasize whether (and why) romantic partner selection and maintenance processes derive from stable features of individuals (e.g., mate value, mate preferences, relationship aptitude) and their environments (e.g., social homogamy) rather than adventitious, dyad-specific, or unpredictable factors. The current article advances our understanding of this issue by assessing how people's actual romantic…
Replicability and other features of a high-quality science: Toward a balanced and empirical approach
Finkel, Eastwick, and Reis (2015; FER2015) argued that psychological science is better served by responding to apprehensions about replicability rates with contextualized solutions than with one-size-fits-all solutions. Here, we extend FER2015's analysis to suggest that much of the discussion of best research practices since 2011 has focused on a single feature of high-quality science-replicability-with insufficient sensitivity to the implication…
Power and the pursuit of a partner’s goals
We investigated how power dynamics in close relationships influence the tendency to devote resources to the pursuit of goals valued by relationship partners, hypothesizing that low (vs. high) power in relationships would lead individuals to center their individual goal pursuit around the goals of their partners. We study 2 related phenomena: partner goal prioritization, whereby individuals pursue goals on behalf of their partners, and partner goa…
Jealousy increased by induced relative left frontal cortical activity
Asymmetric frontal cortical activity may be one key to the process linking social exclusion to jealous feelings. The current research examined the causal role of asymmetric frontal brain activity in modulating jealousy in response to social exclusion. Transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) over the frontal cortex to manipulate asymmetric frontal cortical activity was combined with a modified version of the Cyberball paradigm designed to i…
Best research practices in psychology: Illustrating epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science
In recent years, a robust movement has emerged within psychology to increase the evidentiary value of our science. This movement, which has analogs throughout the empirical sciences, is broad and diverse, but its primary emphasis has been on the reduction of statistical false positives. The present article addresses epistemological and pragmatic issues that we, as a field, must consider as we seek to maximize the scientific value of this movement…
The many voices of Darwin’s descendants: Reply to Schmitt (2014)
This article elaborates on evolutionary perspectives relevant to the meta-analytic portion of our recent review (Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, & Hunt, 2014). We suggested that if men and women evolved sex-differentiated ideals (i.e., mate preferences), then they should exhibit sex-differentiated desires (e.g., romantic attraction) and/or relational outcomes (e.g., relationship satisfaction) with respect to live opposite-sex targets. Our meta-analysi…
The predictive validity of ideal partner preferences: A review and meta-analysis
A central element of interdependence theory is that people have standards against which they compare their current outcomes, and one ubiquitous standard in the mating domain is the preference for particular attributes in a partner (ideal partner preferences). This article reviews research on the predictive validity of ideal partner preferences and presents a new integrative model that highlights when and why ideals succeed or fail to predict rela…
Is a meta-analysis a foundation, or just another brick? Comment on Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson, and Karney (2014)
In a longitudinal data set of married couples, Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson, and Karney (2014) reported that partner physical attractiveness is more strongly associated with relationship satisfaction for men than for women. Although a recent meta-analysis (Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, & Hunt, in press) provided no support for this sex difference across 97 samples and ∼30,000 participants, Meltzer et al. (2014) responded by outlining 7 criteria require…
Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner
In paradigms in which participants state their ideal romantic-partner preferences or examine vignettes and photographs, men value physical attractiveness more than women do, and women value earning prospects more than men do. Yet it remains unclear if these preferences remain sex differentiated in predicting desire for real-life potential partners (i.e., individuals whom one has actually met). In the present study, the authors explored this possi…
Best research practices in psychology: Illustrating epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science
In recent years, a robust movement has emerged within psychology to increase the evidentiary value of our science. This movement, which has analogs throughout the empirical sciences, is broad and diverse, but its primary emphasis has been on the reduction of statistical false positives. The present article addresses epistemological and pragmatic issues that we, as a field, must consider as we seek to maximize the scientific value of this movement…
Familiarity does indeed promote attraction in live interaction
Does familiarity promote attraction? Prior research has generally suggested that it does, but a recent set of studies by Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2007) challenged that assumption. Instead, they found that more information about another person, when that information was randomly selected from lists of trait adjectives, using a trait evaluation paradigm, promoted perceptions of dissimilarity and, hence, disliking. The present research began with …
Is Traditional Gender Ideology Associated with Sex-Typed Mate Preferences? A Test in Nine Nations
The attachment system in fledgling relationships: An activating role for attachment anxiety
Is it sensible to study attachment dynamics between potential romantic partners before they share a full-fledged attachment bond? The present data indicate that such an approach may reveal novel insights about initial attraction processes. Four studies suggest that the state-like experience of attachment anxiety has functional implications within fledgling (i.e., desired or undeveloped) romantic relationships, well before the formation of an atta…
Mispredicting distress following romantic breakup: Revealing the time course of the affective forecasting error
When and why do ideal partner preferences affect the process of initiating and maintaining romantic relationships
Three studies explored how the traits that people ideally desire in a romantic partner, or ideal partner preferences, intersect with the process of romantic relationship initiation and maintenance. Two attraction experiments in the laboratory found that, when participants evaluated a potential romantic partner's written profile, they expressed more romantic interest in a partner whose traits were manipulated to match (vs. mismatch) their idiosync…
Beyond the pleistocene: Using phylogeny and constraint to inform the evolutionary psychology of human mating
Evolutionary psychologists explore the adaptive function of traits and behaviors that characterize modern Homo sapiens. However, evolutionary psychologists have yet to incorporate the phylogenetic relationship between modern Homo sapiens and humans' hominid and pongid relatives (both living and extinct) into their theorizing. By considering the specific timing of evolutionary events and the role of evolutionary constraint, researchers using the p…
Implicit and explicit preferences for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner: A double dissociation in predictive validity
Five studies develop and examine the predictive validity of an implicit measure of the preference for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Three hypotheses were generally supported. First, 2 variants of the go/no-go association task revealed that participants, on average, demonstrate an implicit preference (i.e., a positive spontaneous affective reaction) for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Second, these implicit measures…
Replicability and other features of a high-quality science: Toward a balanced and empirical approach
Finkel, Eastwick, and Reis (2015; FER2015) argued that psychological science is better served by responding to apprehensions about replicability rates with contextualized solutions than with one-size-fits-all solutions. Here, we extend FER2015's analysis to suggest that much of the discussion of best research practices since 2011 has focused on a single feature of high-quality science-replicability-with insufficient sensitivity to the implication…
Power and the pursuit of a partner’s goals
We investigated how power dynamics in close relationships influence the tendency to devote resources to the pursuit of goals valued by relationship partners, hypothesizing that low (vs. high) power in relationships would lead individuals to center their individual goal pursuit around the goals of their partners. We study 2 related phenomena: partner goal prioritization, whereby individuals pursue goals on behalf of their partners, and partner goa…
Trust and biased memory of transgressions in romantic relationships
Relative to people with low trust in their romantic partner, people with high trust tend to expect that their partner will act in accordance with their interests. Consequently, we suggest, they have the luxury of remembering the past in a way that prioritizes relationship dependence over self-protection. In particular, they tend to exhibit relationship-promoting memory biases regarding transgressions the partner had enacted in the past. In contra…
Relational mate value: Consensus and uniqueness in romantic evaluations
Classic evolutionary and social exchange perspectives suggest that some people have more mate value than others because they possess desirable traits (e.g., attractiveness, status) that are intrinsic to the individual. This article broadens mate value in 2 ways to incorporate relational perspectives. First, close relationships research suggests an alternative measure of mate value: whether someone can provide a high quality relationship. Second, …
A worldwide test of the predictive validity of ideal partner preference matching
10,358) across 43 countries and 22 languages to estimate preference-matching effect sizes. The most rigorous tests revealed significant preference-matching effects in the whole sample and for partnered and single participants separately. The "corrected pattern metric" that collapses across 35 traits revealed a zero-order effect of β = .19 and an effect of β = .11 when included alongside a normative preference-matching metric. Specific traits in t…
Applicability of the Investment Model Scale in a natural-fertility population
Relationship quality is a construct that is central to theories of relationships and one that is used widely by psychologists. However, all prior assessments of relationship quality have derived from samples living in industrialized nation states. Here, the authors expand the breadth of this cultural variation to examine the means, reliability, and structure of the Investment Model Scale (IMS) in a sample from a natural-fertility, subsistence-lev…
In live interaction, does familiarity promote attraction or contempt? Reply to Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2011)
In this reply, we address and refute each of Norton, Frost, and Ariely's (see record 2011-18560-001) specific objections to the conclusion that, ceteris paribus, familiarity breeds liking in live interaction. In particular, we reiterate the importance of studying live interaction rather than decontextualized processes. These rebuttals notwithstanding, we concur with Norton et al.'s call for an integrative model that encompasses both Norton, Frost…
Consistency and inconsistency among romantic partners over time
Theoretical perspectives on mating differentially emphasize whether (and why) romantic partner selection and maintenance processes derive from stable features of individuals (e.g., mate value, mate preferences, relationship aptitude) and their environments (e.g., social homogamy) rather than adventitious, dyad-specific, or unpredictable factors. The current article advances our understanding of this issue by assessing how people's actual romantic…
Negligible evidence that people desire partners who uniquely fit their ideals
How do people translate their experiences into abstract attribute preferences
Act with authority: Romantic desire at the nexus of power possessed and power perceived
Stimulus confounds in implicit and explicit measures of racial bias
Implicit measures often show dissociations from explicit measures, including low correlations, distinct antecedents, and distinct behavioral correlates. Interpretations of these dissociations referring to measurement types presuppose that the distinction between implicit and explicit measures is not confounded with other stimulus-related differences. However, in research on racial bias, explicit measures often use verbal category labels, whereas …
Is a meta-analysis a foundation, or just another brick? Comment on Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson, and Karney (2014)
In a longitudinal data set of married couples, Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson, and Karney (2014) reported that partner physical attractiveness is more strongly associated with relationship satisfaction for men than for women. Although a recent meta-analysis (Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, & Hunt, in press) provided no support for this sex difference across 97 samples and ∼30,000 participants, Meltzer et al. (2014) responded by outlining 7 criteria require…
Is Traditional Gender Ideology Associated with Sex-Typed Mate Preferences? A Test in Nine Nations
Speed‐dating as an invaluable tool for studying romantic attraction: A methodological primer
Research on initial romantic attraction flourished in the 1960s and 1970s but has now been partially eclipsed by research on close relationships. The authors argue that speed‐dating procedures, in which participants attend an event where they experience brief “dates” with a series of potential romantic partners, permit researchers to “retrofit” the advances of close relationships research to the study of initial romantic attraction. Speed‐dating …
Mispredicting distress following romantic breakup: Revealing the time course of the affective forecasting error
Is Love Colorblind? Political Orientation and Interracial Romantic Desire: (617962012-249)
Sex differences in mate preferences revisited: Do people know what they initially desire in a romantic partner
In paradigms in which participants state their ideal romantic-partner preferences or examine vignettes and photographs, men value physical attractiveness more than women do, and women value earning prospects more than men do. Yet it remains unclear if these preferences remain sex differentiated in predicting desire for real-life potential partners (i.e., individuals whom one has actually met). In the present study, the authors explored this possi…
The attachment system in fledgling relationships: An activating role for attachment anxiety
Is it sensible to study attachment dynamics between potential romantic partners before they share a full-fledged attachment bond? The present data indicate that such an approach may reveal novel insights about initial attraction processes. Four studies suggest that the state-like experience of attachment anxiety has functional implications within fledgling (i.e., desired or undeveloped) romantic relationships, well before the formation of an atta…
Beyond the pleistocene: Using phylogeny and constraint to inform the evolutionary psychology of human mating
Evolutionary psychologists explore the adaptive function of traits and behaviors that characterize modern Homo sapiens. However, evolutionary psychologists have yet to incorporate the phylogenetic relationship between modern Homo sapiens and humans' hominid and pongid relatives (both living and extinct) into their theorizing. By considering the specific timing of evolutionary events and the role of evolutionary constraint, researchers using the p…
Smooth Operating: A Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (Sasb) Perspective on Initial Romantic Encounters
The present report used the comprehensive structural analysis of social behavior (SASB) observational coding scheme to examine which behaviors differentiate smooth from awkward initial romantic encounters. Participants on speed-dates rated as smooth (by independent observers) behaved more warmly and were more other-focused than participants on awkward dates. In addition, participants on smooth dates tended to avoid extremes on the autonomy dimens…
Language Style Matching Predicts Relationship Initiation and Stability
Previous relationship research has largely ignored the importance of similarity in how people talk with one another. Using natural language samples, we investigated whether similarity in dyads’ use of function words, called language style matching (LSM), predicts outcomes for romantic relationships. In Study 1, greater LSM in transcripts of 40 speed dates predicted increased likelihood of mutual romantic interest (odds ratio = 3.05). Overall, 33.…
In live interaction, does familiarity promote attraction or contempt? Reply to Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2011)
In this reply, we address and refute each of Norton, Frost, and Ariely's (see record 2011-18560-001) specific objections to the conclusion that, ceteris paribus, familiarity breeds liking in live interaction. In particular, we reiterate the importance of studying live interaction rather than decontextualized processes. These rebuttals notwithstanding, we concur with Norton et al.'s call for an integrative model that encompasses both Norton, Frost…
Implicit and explicit preferences for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner: A double dissociation in predictive validity
Five studies develop and examine the predictive validity of an implicit measure of the preference for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Three hypotheses were generally supported. First, 2 variants of the go/no-go association task revealed that participants, on average, demonstrate an implicit preference (i.e., a positive spontaneous affective reaction) for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Second, these implicit measures…
Familiarity does indeed promote attraction in live interaction
Does familiarity promote attraction? Prior research has generally suggested that it does, but a recent set of studies by Norton, Frost, and Ariely (2007) challenged that assumption. Instead, they found that more information about another person, when that information was randomly selected from lists of trait adjectives, using a trait evaluation paradigm, promoted perceptions of dissimilarity and, hence, disliking. The present research began with …
When and why do ideal partner preferences affect the process of initiating and maintaining romantic relationships
Three studies explored how the traits that people ideally desire in a romantic partner, or ideal partner preferences, intersect with the process of romantic relationship initiation and maintenance. Two attraction experiments in the laboratory found that, when participants evaluated a potential romantic partner's written profile, they expressed more romantic interest in a partner whose traits were manipulated to match (vs. mismatch) their idiosync…
Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science
Do Ideal Partner Preferences Predict Divorce? A Tale of Two Metrics
Though people report idiosyncratic desires for particular traits in an ideal romantic partner, few studies have examined whether these ideals predict important long-term relationship outcomes. The present 3.5-year longitudinal study of newlywed couples used survival analysis to investigate whether the match between participants’ ideal preferences and the traits they perceive in their partner predict the likelihood of divorce. Results depended ent…
Act with authority: Romantic desire at the nexus of power possessed and power perceived
Perceived, not actual, similarity predicts initial attraction in a live romantic context: Evidence from the speed‐dating paradigm
The “similarity‐attraction” effect stands as one of the most well‐known findings in social psychology. However, some research contends that perceived but not actual similarity influences attraction. The current study is the first to examine the effects of actual and perceived similarity simultaneously during a face‐to‐face initial romantic encounter. Participants attending a speed‐dating event interacted with ∼12 members of the opposite sex for 4…
Trust and biased memory of transgressions in romantic relationships
Relative to people with low trust in their romantic partner, people with high trust tend to expect that their partner will act in accordance with their interests. Consequently, we suggest, they have the luxury of remembering the past in a way that prioritizes relationship dependence over self-protection. In particular, they tend to exhibit relationship-promoting memory biases regarding transgressions the partner had enacted in the past. In contra…
The many voices of Darwin’s descendants: Reply to Schmitt (2014)
This article elaborates on evolutionary perspectives relevant to the meta-analytic portion of our recent review (Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, & Hunt, 2014). We suggested that if men and women evolved sex-differentiated ideals (i.e., mate preferences), then they should exhibit sex-differentiated desires (e.g., romantic attraction) and/or relational outcomes (e.g., relationship satisfaction) with respect to live opposite-sex targets. Our meta-analysi…
The predictive validity of ideal partner preferences: A review and meta-analysis
A central element of interdependence theory is that people have standards against which they compare their current outcomes, and one ubiquitous standard in the mating domain is the preference for particular attributes in a partner (ideal partner preferences). This article reviews research on the predictive validity of ideal partner preferences and presents a new integrative model that highlights when and why ideals succeed or fail to predict rela…
Is a meta-analysis a foundation, or just another brick? Comment on Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson, and Karney (2014)
In a longitudinal data set of married couples, Meltzer, McNulty, Jackson, and Karney (2014) reported that partner physical attractiveness is more strongly associated with relationship satisfaction for men than for women. Although a recent meta-analysis (Eastwick, Luchies, Finkel, & Hunt, in press) provided no support for this sex difference across 97 samples and ∼30,000 participants, Meltzer et al. (2014) responded by outlining 7 criteria require…
Relational mate value: Consensus and uniqueness in romantic evaluations
Classic evolutionary and social exchange perspectives suggest that some people have more mate value than others because they possess desirable traits (e.g., attractiveness, status) that are intrinsic to the individual. This article broadens mate value in 2 ways to incorporate relational perspectives. First, close relationships research suggests an alternative measure of mate value: whether someone can provide a high quality relationship. Second, …
Jealousy increased by induced relative left frontal cortical activity
Asymmetric frontal cortical activity may be one key to the process linking social exclusion to jealous feelings. The current research examined the causal role of asymmetric frontal brain activity in modulating jealousy in response to social exclusion. Transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) over the frontal cortex to manipulate asymmetric frontal cortical activity was combined with a modified version of the Cyberball paradigm designed to i…
Best research practices in psychology: Illustrating epistemological and pragmatic considerations with the case of relationship science
In recent years, a robust movement has emerged within psychology to increase the evidentiary value of our science. This movement, which has analogs throughout the empirical sciences, is broad and diverse, but its primary emphasis has been on the reduction of statistical false positives. The present article addresses epistemological and pragmatic issues that we, as a field, must consider as we seek to maximize the scientific value of this movement…
Power and the pursuit of a partner’s goals
We investigated how power dynamics in close relationships influence the tendency to devote resources to the pursuit of goals valued by relationship partners, hypothesizing that low (vs. high) power in relationships would lead individuals to center their individual goal pursuit around the goals of their partners. We study 2 related phenomena: partner goal prioritization, whereby individuals pursue goals on behalf of their partners, and partner goa…
Psychology (40 works) · Social Psychology (38 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (30 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (22 works) · Romance (21 works) · Developmental psychology (16 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Psychoanalysis (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works)