Home | People |

Paul Eastwick

Education

  • Ph.D., Social Psychology, Northwestern University, 2009
  • M.S., Social Psychology, Northwestern University, 2005
  • B.A., Psychology, Cornell University, 2001

About

Paul Eastwick joined the UC Davis psychology department faculty in 2016, where he serves as the principal investigator for the attraction and relationships research laboratory. Through his research, he has sought to build connections between attraction/close relationships research, evolutionary psychology, social psychological perspectives on person perception and implicit social cognition. He is currently an associate editor at Psychological Bulletin, and he serves on the editorial boards of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Social Psychological and Personality Science, The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

Research Focus

Paul Eastwick’s research investigates how people initiate romantic relationships and the psychological mechanisms that help romantic partners to remain committed and attached. One of his research programs examines how the qualities that people say are critically important to them in a romantic partner—their ideal partner preferences—direct romantic partner selection and retention. He is also interested in exploring how close relationships research can inform evolutionary psychological approaches (and vice versa), especially with respect to the way that relationships grow and develop over time (see a brief description of the ReCAST model). Additionally, his work draws from anthropological data on the time course of human evolution to make novel psychological predictions.

Selected Publications

Finkel, E. J., Simpson, J. A., Eastwick, P. W. (in press). The psychology of close relationships: Fourteen core principles. Annual review of psychology.

Eastwick, P. W. (2016). The emerging integration of close relationships research and evolutionary psychology. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 183-190.

Durante, K. W., Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., Gangestad, S. W., Simpson, J. A. (2016). Pair-bonded relationships and romantic alternatives: Toward an integration of evolutionary and relationship science perspectives. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (pp. 1-74). Burlington: Academic Press.

Eastwick , P. W. & Hunt, L. L. (2014). Relational mate value: Consensus and uniqueness in romantic evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 728-751.

Eastwick, P. W., Luchies, L. B., Finkel, E. J, & Hunt, L. L. (2014) The predictive validity of ideal partner preferences: A review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 140, 623-665.

Teaching

Dr. Eastwick teaches General Psychology as well as graduate and undergraduate courses on close relationships and evolutionary psychology.  

Awards

Caryl Rusbult Close Relationships Early Career Award, 2016

University of Texas, College of Natural Sciences Teaching Excellence Award, 2014

Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology SAGE Young Scholar Award, 2014

Association for Psychological Science (APS) Rising Star, 2013

Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) Dissertation Award, 2010