My primary research interest is in the area of close relationships - specifically, romantic relationships.  I am particularly interested in attraction - desire, passion, love, and related phenomena. I typically approach research questions from both a social psychological and evolutionary perspective.

A list of my 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 correlates and consequences of sexual desire.

I am especially interested in the role that hormones play in sexual attraction, and have explored how sexual desire is related to levels of testosterone and other sex hormones, as well as fluctuations in desire that occur during menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, and other hormonally-mediated female life events. My students and I have also examined sex differences in the experience of desire (including frequency and level), as well as how feelings of sexual attraction for one's partner are related to feelings of passionate love (and a lowered likelihood of infidelity!).

Many of my research findings are detailed in my co-authored book Lust: What We Know About Human Sexual Desire (1999, Sage), as well as in multiple publications listed (and available for download) under the Publications tab.

Love - Passionate and Companionate

Most love scholars today agree that, at a minimum, romantic love consists of two basic varieties - passionate love (an intense, sexual, emotionally charged, fleeting type of love) and companionate love (a sturdy, warm, affectionate type of love based on closeness and intimacy).  Both are important and intimately connected with the quality of our lives. 

Much of my work has focused on passionate love.  In early years, I was most interested in discovering whether sexual desire is an essential ingredient in the passionate, "in love" experience.  It is.  I have followed two general approaches in my quest to answer this question:  (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 and marital relationships.  Chapters summarizing theoretical and empirical work on passionate love, as well as my own empirical investigations, are available under the Publications tab.

I am also very interested in companionate love - one of the most important and most under-rated and under-studied types of love.  As with passionate love, I have conducted empirical research and have examined previous discourse on this important variety of love (detailed in some of my chapters and in my books Close Relationships [2011, Taylor & Francis/Routledge] and The Mating Game [2008, second edition, Sage]).

Romantic/Sexual Relationships 

Although I have a longstanding interest in attraction (most notably, sexual attraction and romantic love), the truth is that I am fascinated by almost any event, outcome, or experience that happens in romantic/sexual relationships.

So far, my students, colleagues, and I have compared outcomes (love, satisfaction, commitment) in arranged vs. love-based (free-choice) marriages.  We've also examined significant relationship "firsts" (first kiss, first sex, first love), and we've looked to see whether couples' levels of passionate and companionate love decline over time.  We've spent quite a bit of time exploring partner preferences (what we want in different types of relationship partner) and the concept of sex appeal (the attributes that makes someone particularly sexually desirable).  We've also examined young adults' motives for casual sex, and a host of other significant interpersonal events and experiences.

As before, I invite you to see the Publications tab for reprints of some of this work.

Other - Health Psychology

Because I am a statistician, I am frequently offered the opportunity to work with other scientists on their research projects.  Sometimes these collaborations are particularly fruitful and we end up co-authoring a paper or two.  In recent years, I have worked on several projects focusing on health-related issues, ranging from eating disorders (prevalence, correlates, treatment of BED, chronic dieting, etc.) to cancer prevention (cervical and breast cancer screening rates, etc.).  See the Publications tab for PDFs of this work.