Here's something I hear a lot: "I've never thought of it that way before." Sometimes it's meant as a compliment, and sometimes it's meant as a polite, Canadian way of expressing befuddlement and disagreement. But it is what we strive for in the MacLab, a unique perspective.

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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, 2025), to be asexual (Canaletti et al., under review), 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 partnered than single include those who are more wealthy (Peetz & MacDonald, 2025), more extraverted (Hoan & MacDonald, 2025), who see partnership as bringing strong intimacy (Wells et al., 2026), and those who were higher in life and sexual satisfaction as singles (Qin et al., 2026). 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., 2026), but also decreases in satisfaction with work-life balance (Park et al., 2023).

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We have an interest in understanding singlehood from multiple perspectives, and our guests at lab meetings have included scholars from sociology, gender studies, anthropology, business, and English. We take working and thinking from cross-disciplinary perspectives seriously. 

 

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, 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 2027.

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Photo credit: Me!