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When it comes to relationships, there's no shortage of advice from self-help 'experts', pick-up artists, and glossy magazines. Based on science rather than self-help clichés, psychologist Viren Swami debunks these myths and draws on cutting-edge research to provide a ground-breaking and evidence-based account of relationship formation.
List of contents
Preface to the Second Edition
- Cupid’s Arrow. Or, a brief history of attraction theories, why we need a science of relationship formation, and what this book is all about
- Getting up close and personal. Or, why geography matters, how the Internet is (and isn’t) changing how we form relationships, and a beauty-map of London
- Appearance matters. Or, how we judge books by their covers, how men aren’t from Mars and women aren’t from Venus, and why what is beautiful is good
- Appearance matters, part II. Or, how other things matter too, why nice guys don’t always finish last, and how love is sometimes blind
- Liking those who like us. Or how I like you because you like me, thirty-six questions that may (or may not) change your life, and why playing hard-to-get is… hard
- Birds of feather. Or why we like people who are similar to ourselves, how we match on attitudes (and other traits), and why opposites sometimes attract
- The end of the beginning. Or, why life outside the lab makes fools of all of us and, to conclude, some life-changing advice
About the author
Viren Swami is Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and Perdana University in Malaysia. He is an international expert on attraction and body image and has written and edited several books on these topics.
Summary
When it comes to relationships, there’s no shortage of advice from self-help ‘experts’, pick-up artists, and glossy magazines. Based on science rather than self-help clichés, psychologist Viren Swami debunks these myths and draws on cutting-edge research to provide a ground-breaking and evidence-based account of relationship formation.
