Eli J. Finkel

About

Eli J. Finkel is a professor at Northwestern University with appointments in the psychology department at the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences and the Kellogg School of Management. His research spans a range of topics including marriage, interpersonal attraction, conflict, forgiveness, self-control, and social interaction, with a focus on understanding the predictors and dynamics of relationships and social behavior. He is the author of The All-or-Nothing Marriage, a co-host of the Love Factually podcast, and a guest essayist for The New York Times. His work has been recognized by The Economist as that of a leading figure in relationship psychology. Finkel's academic background includes a PhD in Social & Quantitative Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with a master's degree from the same institution and a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Northwestern University. He has held positions as a Professor of Management and Organizations at Kellogg and as a Professor of Psychology at Northwestern, with previous roles as an Associate and Assistant Professor. His research interests include interpersonal attraction, conflict, forgiveness, and self-control, and he teaches courses related to negotiation, relationships, and psychology. Finkel has received numerous awards for his research and teaching, and he serves in editorial roles for prominent psychology journals.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Social Science
• Public relations
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Psychiatry
• Law

Selected publications

• Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2020 · 5046 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Political sectarianism in America

  Science · 2020 · 875 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  A poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion, and moralization poses a threat to democracy

  DOI

• Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response

  2020 · 661 citations

  The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on…

  PublisherDOI

• Machine learning uncovers the most robust self-report predictors of relationship quality across 43 longitudinal couples studies

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 293 citations

  Given the powerful implications of relationship quality for health and well-being, a central mission of relationship science is explaining why some romantic relationships thrive more than others. This large-scale project used machine learning (i.e., Random Forests) to 1) quantify the extent to which relationship quality is predictable and 2) identify which constructs reliably predict relationship quality. Across 43 dyadic longitudinal datasets from 29 laboratories, the top relationship-specific…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Multisite Preregistered Paradigmatic Test of the Ego-Depletion Effect

  Psychological Science · 2021 · 211 citations

  = 0.08); Bayesian analyses showed that the data were about equally likely under the null and informed-prior hypotheses. Exploratory moderator tests suggested that the depletion effect was larger for participants who reported more fatigue but was not moderated by trait self-control, willpower beliefs, or action orientation.

  DOI

Recent grants

• Advancing Understanding About One Form of Interpersonal Violence

  NSF · $492k · 2007–2012

Frequent coauthors

• Paul W. Eastwick

  University of California, Davis

  76 shared

• James N. Druckman

  University of Rochester

  42 shared

• Jay Joseph Van Bavel

  Norwegian School of Economics

  42 shared

• Rick H. Hoyle

  38 shared

• Alexander Landry

  36 shared

• Caryl E. Rusbult

  Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  33 shared

• Madoka Kumashiro

  32 shared

• Laura B. Luchies

  Healthwise

  20 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Social Psychology

  Northwestern University

  2002

• M.A., Social Psychology

  Northwestern University

  1998

• B.A., Psychology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1995

Awards & honors

• Journal of Consumer Research "Editors' Choice" recognition f…
• Northwestern Undergraduate Students, “Faculty Honor Roll” (“…
• Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences’ “Distinguished Teachi…
• Martin J. and Patricia Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Professo…
• George A. Miller Award for an Outstanding Recent Article on…

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Dean Karlanh-97
• Mark Finnh-95
• Torben Gustav Andersenh-85