About

Margaret Clark is the John M. Musser Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She earned her Ph.D. in 1977 from the University of Maryland. Her research interests focus on intra- and interpersonal processes that enable people to initiate and maintain mutually supportive close interpersonal relationships, as well as on obstacles to doing so. An overlapping area of her research concerns the nature of emotion and the interpersonal functions it serves.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Developmental psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Medicine

Selected publications

• How Communal Relational Contexts Shape (and Are Shaped by) Emotional Lives

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2026-02-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Development and Validation of the Broadened Fear of Being Single (B-FOBS) Scale: A Brief Measure for Use Across Relationship Statuses

  PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) · 2026-03-11

  preprintOpen access

  Fear of being single (FOBS) refers to concern, anxiety, or distress about being without a romantic partner. The legacy measure of FOBS (Spielmann et al., 2013) has limited temporal scope, embeds assumptions about antecedents within item content, and requires separate versions for single and partnered individuals. We therefore developed and validated the 8-item Broadened Fear of Being Single (B-FOBS) scale, an assumption-free measure that captures both present- and future-focused FOBS and functions equivalently across relationship statuses. Across five independent samples (total N = 2,607), an EFA sample (n = 498) supported a two-factor structure, which was confirmed via CFA in another sample (n = 702) with excellent fit and measurement invariance across age, gender, relationship status, and sexual orientation. We also found strong convergent and discriminant validity, including specificity to singlehood-relevant constructs beyond the legacy measure, and good 8-week test-retest reliability (n = 486). Demographic comparisons revealed that younger individuals reported higher future-focused FOBS, whereas partnered (vs. single) individuals reported higher present-focused FOBS. An additional sample (n = 665) linked B-FOBS to several theorized antecedents (e.g., singlehood stigma, peer influence, media exposure) and consequences (e.g., settling for less, self-sacrificing, and inauthenticity in dating). A final sample of recently single individuals (n = 256) showed that higher FOBS was associated with greater post-breakup difficulty. Findings support the B-FOBS as a psychometrically robust and inclusive measure for studying FOBS across diverse populations.

  Publisher

• Development and Validation of the Broadened Fear of Being Single (B-FOBS) Scale: A Brief Measure for Use Across Relationship Statuses

  2026-03-12

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Fear of being single (FOBS) refers to concern, anxiety, or distress about being without a romantic partner. The legacy measure of FOBS (Spielmann et al., 2013) has limited temporal scope, embeds assumptions about antecedents within item content, and requires separate versions for single and partnered individuals. We therefore developed and validated the 8-item Broadened Fear of Being Single (B-FOBS) scale, an assumption-free measure that captures both present- and future-focused FOBS and functions equivalently across relationship statuses. Across five independent samples (total N = 2,607), an EFA sample (n = 498) supported a two-factor structure, which was confirmed via CFA in another sample (n = 702) with excellent fit and measurement invariance across age, gender, relationship status, and sexual orientation. We also found strong convergent and discriminant validity, including specificity to singlehood-relevant constructs beyond the legacy measure, and good 8-week test-retest reliability (n = 486). Demographic comparisons revealed that younger individuals reported higher future-focused FOBS, whereas partnered (vs. single) individuals reported higher present-focused FOBS. An additional sample (n = 665) linked B-FOBS to several theorized antecedents (e.g., singlehood stigma, peer influence, media exposure) and consequences (e.g., settling for less, self-sacrificing, and inauthenticity in dating). A final sample of recently single individuals (n = 256) showed that higher FOBS was associated with greater post-breakup difficulty. Findings support the B-FOBS as a psychometrically robust and inclusive measure for studying FOBS across diverse populations.

  PublisherDOI

• How the Risk of Exploitation in Human-Ai Relationships Depends on Relationship Type

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Whether Emotions are Engaging or Disengaging Depends on Relationship Functions

  Affective Science · 2025-11-11

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Relational Norms for Human-AI Cooperation

  ArXiv.org · 2025-02-17 · 6 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  How we should design and interact with social artificial intelligence depends on the socio-relational role the AI is meant to emulate or occupy. In human society, relationships such as teacher-student, parent-child, neighbors, siblings, or employer-employee are governed by specific norms that prescribe or proscribe cooperative functions including hierarchy, care, transaction, and mating. These norms shape our judgments of what is appropriate for each partner. For example, workplace norms may allow a boss to give orders to an employee, but not vice versa, reflecting hierarchical and transactional expectations. As AI agents and chatbots powered by large language models are increasingly designed to serve roles analogous to human positions - such as assistant, mental health provider, tutor, or romantic partner - it is imperative to examine whether and how human relational norms should extend to human-AI interactions. Our analysis explores how differences between AI systems and humans, such as the absence of conscious experience and immunity to fatigue, may affect an AI's capacity to fulfill relationship-specific functions and adhere to corresponding norms. This analysis, which is a collaborative effort by philosophers, psychologists, relationship scientists, ethicists, legal experts, and AI researchers, carries important implications for AI systems design, user behavior, and regulation. While we accept that AI systems can offer significant benefits such as increased availability and consistency in certain socio-relational roles, they also risk fostering unhealthy dependencies or unrealistic expectations that could spill over into human-human relationships. We propose that understanding and thoughtfully shaping (or implementing) suitable human-AI relational norms will be crucial for ensuring that human-AI interactions are ethical, trustworthy, and favorable to human well-being.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Links between partnering, relationship quality and mental well-being among sexual minority and straight individuals

  Psychology and Sexuality · 2025-04-10 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• More real together: conversation predicts realness through shared reality

  Self and Identity · 2025-12-09

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Impartial Beneficence Predicts Greater and More Uniform Concern for Others Across Social Relationships

  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · 2025-12-12

  article

  The principle of impartial beneficence (IB) holds that we should strive to maximize others’ well-being regardless of their relationship to us. But does endorsement of IB in principle translate to more uniform concern for others irrespective of relationship type? Three pre-registered studies in online samples of U.S. participants (total N =1,716) found IB endorsement predicts greater and more uniform concern for others across social relationships varying in social distance: in care prescriptions (Study 1), as well as blame judgments (Study 2) and guilt expressions (Study 3) when care norms are violated or care is not provided. Heightened concern for others in socially distant relationships was not “offset” by less concern for those in close ones. IB was not associated with a motive to be generally admired, but was linked to a motive to form communal relationships. Across different types of moral judgments, a commitment to IB thus entails caring much more than average about the well-being of socially distant others, while maintaining a high level of concern for socially close ones.

  PublisherDOI

• "I see the light": The role of seasonal photo period in the development of immune regulation, a potential explanation for the latitude gradient of autoimmunity and allergy

  Archives of Autoimmune Diseases · 2025-11-08

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Prevalence of common autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease and allergies such as food allergies or eczema affect approximately 20% of the human population.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH040390

  NIH · $200k · 1988

• Distributive Justice Norms in Marriages

  NSF · $187k · 2006–2008

Frequent coauthors

• Lorraine Dennerstein

  University of Melbourne

  28 shared

• Edward P. Lemay

  University of Maryland, College Park

  27 shared

• Victor W. Henderson

  Aarhus University Hospital

  17 shared

• Joanne Ryan

  Monash University

  16 shared

• John A. Bargh

  14 shared

• Joan K. Monin

  Yale University

  14 shared

• Patricia Noller

  14 shared

• Judson Mills

  University of Maryland, College Park

  13 shared