The primary aim in the MacLab right now is to better understand well-being in singlehood. Although it’s true that the average person in a romantic relationship is higher in well-being than the average person who is single, there is also considerable variability among single people. We're interested both in that within-group variability among single people and in getting a better understanding of how single people do (and do not) differ from partnered people. We try to take a non-judgemental approach to understanding when, for whom, and in what life domains singlehood versus partnership improves well-being.

 

Our research so far has started to paint a portrait of the happy single person; a happy single person is more likely to be happy with their friendships (Park et al., 2021), to be happy with their sex life (Park & MacDonald, 2022), to be older than 40 (Park et al., 2022), to be low in desire for a partner (Hill Roy et al., 2023), to be a woman (Hoan & MacDonald, under review), to be queer (Canaletti et al., in progress), to be strongly motivated by independence (Park et al., 2023), and to be high in secure attachment (MacDonald & Park, 2022).

 

Meanwhile, people who are more likely to be single than partnered include those who are more introverted (Hoan & MacDonald, in press), and those who were higher in life and sexual satisfaction as singles (Qin et al., under review). Also, our longitudinal research suggests than when people transition from being single to being partnered, they experience increases in life and sexual satisfacation (Qin et al., under review), but decreases in satisfaction with work-life balance (Park et al., 2023).

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If understanding single people is a puzzle, we don’t think it’s one we’re ready to solve because we’re still in the process of finding all the pieces. There’s a lot of exciting work to do in this direction!

 

Much of the research in my lab is student-driven, so it is difficult to anticipate what direction the lab’s work will take in the future. Singlehood is a broad topic, and my students have studied aspects including personality, sexuality, sexual orientation, age, culture, and work life. We work with a lot of different starting points in the MacLab so we hope to continue to learn and grow into the future.

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Please note I am accepting graduate students for Fall 2025.

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Photo credit: Me!