Relationship research tends to walk a meandering path between the obvious, the obscure and the ridiculous… with only rare visits to what might be considered brilliant. The extension of attachment theory to adult romantic relationships in 1987 by Hazan and Shaver comes to mind as one of the most recent examples that I would call brilliant. An article that I read today Less is More: The Lure of Ambiguity, or Why Familiarity Breeds Contempt falls much closer to the “ridiculous” end of the path.

You may have noticed that Neuroscience seems to be a hot topic these days in the popular press. Neurochemistry is a hot topic across the spectrum of human interest. Whether you’re worried about how to deal with depression, anxiety, weight-loss, cigarette smoking, impending Alzheimer’s, the effects of the modern environment on your children’s brains, or how to attract a mate… the neuroscience industry appears to be working on an answer.

Elsewhere in our blogs, we have emphasized research that has suggested that it may be the “little things” that count when it comes to making a relationship great. A new article examining and comparing couples who divorced in three countries points out the flip side of this coin: It’s the little things that add up when it comes to divorce as well.

The conventional wisdom among psychologists and sociologists studying marriage has long been that marital satisfaction, on average, declines with marriage length. This is not to say that there haven’t been some scientific challenges to this idea. When it comes to children, however, the effects on marriage have not proven to be entirely upbeat in the eyes science.

As the seemingly perennial debate over what is destroying American families has ebbed and flowed over the past few decades, one of the less ridiculous positions espoused has been that women’s increasing role in the labor market has created an additional source of marital stress. Simply put, the benefits of having two-incomes has often been seen to come with a significant cost to the family.

Much ado has been made of late in the United States about the increasing loan burden which graduating college seniors are facing. A debt-load of tens of thousands of dollars has become the norm to which most college students can look forward, it seems. Well, in keeping with the concept of “student loans,” a bank in Japan has recently announced that it will begin providing special, low-interest loans to cover the costs incurred by divorce settlements.

As someone who works in the online dating industry, I have always found it a bit ironic that one of Social Psychology’s “greatest hits” when it comes to research on use of the internet has been that people who use the internet are more socially isolated. The ad agency JWT today released findings from a report that add fuel to this fire by suggesting that people would rather spend time on line than either face-to-face with their friends, or in bed with their lover!

Research conducted by the University of Southampton in England has produced some fairly compelling evidence that combinations of six artificial food colorings appear to cause noticeable increases in hyperactivity and decreases in attention span. The good news is that three of these food additives are currently NOT approved for use in the United States. The bad news… well, the other three may be lurking in your fridge and pantry.

The kidnap of Helen of Sparta by Paris of Troy, and of course the beauty of Helen which drove her estranged husband, King Menelaus to “launch 1,000 ships” to get her back, has often seemed in movie adaptations and popular conception like the Mount Rushmore of romantic acts. But is it? What are our cultural icons for the big, crazy demonstration of love that our romantic ideals seem to express?

Scientists have found a way to make mice forget that they were taught to be afraid of something. Irrelevant rodent science? Or are we on the brink of a brave, new world?

NewScientist says maybe you shouldn’t eat your Wheaties(TM). Are you gonna believe that?!?

The time has come to admit a dark and troubling secret: I am the fattest of my friends. It’s true. I admit it. All my attempts at wearing untucked shirts and upsizing my pants can’t hide the pain in my heart. It’s me. I’m the fat one.

Last week, my maternal grandmother Mary, my Bubu, died at the age of 99. The end of her life, sleeping in a hopspital bed with my Aunt and Cousin at her side, was as quiet and uneventful as her early life was chaotic and unpredictable.
As a small child, my Bubu lived through the departure [...]

The sense of smell is one of our earliest evolved traits. Conceptually, you can think of smell as being one step up the ladder from pain. Like our sense of pain, our sense of smell evolved to help us avoid danger, only from a slightly greater distance (i.e., if pain tells you that fire hurts, smell tells you that something is on fire!)