Interdisciplinary Research on Close Relationships: The Case for Integration

This book argues that close personal relationships are most fruitfully explored through interdisciplinary collaboration. Such cooperation permits researchers to integrate a variety of perspectives on how close relationships develop, function, and interact in various contexts. The contributors examine aspects of both early and adult relationships, and of parent–child relationships. Their chapters demonstrate how theorists and researchers versed in developmental, social, and cross-cultural psychology, as well as evolutionary science, individual differences, and psychophysiology, can collaborate and generate new thinking on familiar topics.

This excellent resource will be well received by researchers and students in the social sciences who are interested in a broader, more collaborative approach to relationship science.

Lorne Campbell earned his PhD in social psychology at Texas A&M University in 2001. He was an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University before joining the faculty at the University of Western Ontario in 2002, where he is currently an associate professor of psychology. From 2008 to 2009, Dr. Campbell was a Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences.
 
Dr. Campbell is a recognized expert in the fields of interpersonal relationships, research design and data analysis, and evolutionary psychology. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and is the editor of the journal Personal Relationships.
 
His research is currently funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and his work has been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Personal Relationships, Personality and Individual Differences, and the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
 
Timothy J. Loving received his PhD in social psychology from Purdue University in 2001. He is currently an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Human Development and Family Sciences. Prior to arriving at Texas, he received postdoctoral training at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, where he was funded by a National Institutes of Health training grant in psychoneuroimmunology.
 
Dr. Loving's research addresses the mental and physical health impact of relationship transitions, with a particular focus on affectively positive transitions (e.g., falling in love) and the role that network members serve as relationship partners adapt to these transitions. He is an associate editor of Personal Relationships and a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
 
His research is currently funded by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and his work has been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personal Relationships, Psychosomatic Medicine, Psychoneuroendocrinology, and Archives of General Psychiatry.