My primary research interests lie in the areas of close relationships and sexuality.  In particular, I am interested in three related varieties of interpersonal attraction; specifically, sexual desire, passionate love, and mate preference.  I approach research questions from both a social psychological and evolutionary perspective.

A list of publications is available from the "Publications" tab above. 

Sexual Desire 

Feelings of sexual desire or lust are associated with several significant human life events, including passionate love, relationship initiation and maintenance, and reproduction (and, therefore, species survival).  Surprisingly, scientists still know very little about this important aspect of human sexuality.  One primary goal of my research program thus has been to examine the phenomenon of sexual desire.  My attempts to understand this life experience have led me in three different (albeit intertwined) research directions:

(1) Research exploring the “facts” of sexual desire, including how desire has been defined and operationalized and its physical, mental, and interpersonal causes and correlates.

(2) Research exploring common understandings and beliefs about desire, including how men and women experience and define sexual desire, the factors they believe cause sexual desire, and how these beliefs influence their perceptions of sexual interactions.

(3) Research exploring the individual and interpersonal consequences of sexual desire. 

Passionate Love

Of all the varieties of love that we can and do experience over our lifetimes, passionate love has received the lion’s share of attention from social and behavioral scientists, with most agreeing that this type of love has a sexual component.  We disagree, however, about the precise nature of that component (although there seems to be a growing rapprochement in recent years).  My own work has led me to conclude that desire is the sexual response most closely allied with passionate love and, relatedly, that sexual desire may well be a distinguishing feature of this variety of love.  I have followed two general approaches in my quest to explore these ideas:

(1) Examinations of early discourse on passionate love in a variety of domains, including sexual pathology and medicine, psychiatry and psychoanalysis, existential philosophy, and religious theology, as well as contemporary social psychological statements.

(2) Empirical investigations of the prototype of passionate love, the perceived association between this type of love and sexual desire, and the relation between the two phenomena as they occur in dating relationships.

Mate Preferences 

In addition to my interest in sexual desire and passionate love – phenomena that have clear implications for human mating relationships – I have a longstanding interest in partner preferences, or the desires that guide our choice of various types of relational partner.  Much of my work in this area has focused on short-term mate preferences. I have examined:

(1) the concept of sex appeal, or the attributes that render someone desirable as a short-term mate.

(2) the characteristics that people prefer in short-term sexual partners as compared to those they seek in long-term romantic partners.

(3) people’s reasons or motives for establishing short-term, sexual relationships.