People in romantic relationships can develop shared memory systems by pooling their cognitive resources, allowing each person access to more information but with less cognitive effort. Research examining such memory systems in romantic couples largely focuses on remembering word lists or performing lab-based tasks, but these types of activities do not capture the processes underlying couples' t...

Romantic pursuit decisions often require a person to risk one of the two errors: pursuing a romantic target when interest is not reciprocated (resulting in rejection) or failing to pursue a romantic target when interest is reciprocated (resulting in a missed romantic opportunity). In the present research, we examined how strongly people wish to avoid these two competing negative outcomes. When ...

This article presents preliminary psychometric data on the reliability and validity of the newly developed Romantic Competence Interview (RCI). The RCI is an interviewer-assessed measure designed to assess competence among adolescents regardless of romantic relationship status. Eighty-three early adolescent girls (m age=13.45 years) recruited from local school districts were administered the RC...

Using data from a longitudinal study on Mexican-origin female adolescents, this study examined whether mother-daughter conflict (intensity and frequency) at Wave 1 predicted adolescent depressive symptomatology at Wave 2 and examined the possible mediating role of romantic relationship conflict. A total of 100 participants had complete data on the variables of interest. Results indicated that c...

Capturing the multiple aspects of the romantic peer context is a significant challenge for research. One often recommended option is to use reports of multiple relationship features from both members of the romantic dyad. Using a new measure, we extended an existing model of dyadic perception (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001) to investigate associations between couples' (N = 148) reports about the posit...

The present study tested the hypothesis that single young adults who perceive their singlehood as voluntary would report a higher level of positive mental health (i.e., emotional, psychological and social well-being), lower levels of mental health illness (i.e., somatic symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, severe depression) and romantic loneliness in comparison to young adults who perceive t...

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, two 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 i...

Scientists have described myriad traits in mammalian and avian species that evolved to attract mates. But the brain mechanisms by which conspecifics become attracted to these traits is largely unknown. Yet mammals and birds express mate preferences and make mate choices, and data suggest that this "attraction system" is associated with the dopaminergic reward system. It has been proposed that i...

This open-label trial assessed the clinical efficacy of L-5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), a natural serotonin precursor, in nondepressed young subjects with high levels of romantic stress. Since both neurotrophins and serotonin have been linked to human romantic attachment, we sought to investigate the changes in serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels and platelet serotonin content ...