PEOPLE
Principal Investigator
GEOFF MACDONALD, PHD
Professor of Psychology
I am a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. I am a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the International Association for Relationship Research. I am a former Lead Editor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and a former Department Chair. I am also the recipient of the 2024 International Association for Relationship Research Mentoring Award.
ELAINE HOAN
PhD, Year 4
My research interests revolve around how people foster social connection. I am fascinated by how individual differences, like personality traits, can interact with interpersonal factors to sustain well-being in relationships and singlehood. My other interests include how individuals maintain meaning in life, magnanimity, and resilience through social connections.
Graduate Students
LAURA HAWKINS
PhD, Year 2
I am interested in the intrapersonal and contextual antecedents to relationship formation. I seek to understand how singles’ pre-relational intentions (e.g. relationship goals) and sociocultural factors (e.g. socioeconomic class) influence well-being and predict transitions in relationship status. I am particularly interested in how gender differences influence these processes and aim to explore how single men and women reconcile their evolved mating incentives with contemporary shifts in gender norms.
Undergraduate Students
Undergraduate Honours Thesis Student
Charm Lee
Research Assistants
Bethany Yeung
Hayden Azim Wong
Aelish Dindayal
Ilil Guttman-Visoker
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