The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Romantic Relationships

This handbook showcases the empirical and theoretical advancements in the evolutionary study of romantic relationships, tracing the psychological mechanisms that shape strategic computation and behavior across the lifespan of an intimate partnership. Written by global experts in their fields, each chapter provides an overview of historic and contemporary research on the psychological mechanisms and processes underlying initiation, maintenance, and dissolution of romantic relationships. The volume discusses popular and cutting-edge methods for data analysis and theory development, critically analyzing the state of evolutionary relationship science. It provides discerning recommendations for future research and integrates a broad range of topics (e.g., partner preference and selection, competition and conflict, jealousy and mate guarding, parenting, partner loss and divorce, and post-relationship affiliation) that are discussed alongside major sources of strategic variation in mating behavior, such as sex and gender diversity, developmental life history, neuroendocrine processes, technological advancement, and culture. The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Romantic Relationships enriches students' and established researchers' views across a diverse cross-section of relationship scholars and clinicians to incorporate evolutionary theorizing into their professional work, including those interested in social change and continuity in social and cultural psychology, sociology, political science, healthcare, and related fields.

Justin K. Mogilski earned his Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology from Oakland University in 2017. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Carolina, Salkehatchie. He researches how evolution has shaped brain computation to adaptively guide the decisions that people make to initiate, maintain, and dissolve intimate relationships. He has published evolutionary, social, personality, and sexual psychology journals on topics spanning mate poaching, infidelity, cross-gender friendship, intimate partner conflict, moral decision-making, morphometric cues of partner attractiveness, and multivariate statistical analyses of human mate preference. Todd K. Shackelford received his Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. Since 2010, he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Shackelford has published around 400 journal articles and his work has been cited around 28,000 times. Much of Shackelford's research addresses sexual conflict between men and women, with a focus on men's physical, emotional, and sexual violence against their intimate partners.