Topics in Experimental Psychology
April 17, 2009
3:30 pm
Byrne 403
DePaul University
Eli Finkel
Northwestern University
Back to the Future: The Social Psychology of Romantic Attraction
Abstract:
Social psychological research on romantic attraction flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, but it has been largely eclipsed by research on established close relationships since the early 1980s. Meanwhile, major methodological and theoretical advances in social psychology over the past three decades have largely bypassed research on romantic attraction. In this talk, I discuss several lines of research Paul Eastwick and I have conducted that contribute to a broad resurgence in research on romantic attraction over the past few years. These lines of research (a) employ novel methods to explore age-old issues relevant to romantic attraction (e.g., reciprocity and attraction), (b) employ novel social psychology theory to the study of romantic attraction (e.g., embodiment and attraction), and (c) employ both novel methods and novel theory to provide a critical evaluation of certain evolutionary psychology theoretical perspectives (e.g., mate preferences and attraction).