Welcome to Our Project Blog, Where Science Meets the Heart!
Hello everyone, and welcome to our blog page! We’re thrilled to get started and share monthly updates, fun tidbits, and exciting scientific findings from our project on love. Whether you’re a fellow scientist or a curious mind, you’ll find something you’ll enjoy here. We promise to keep things interesting, informative, and illuminating. So grab your favorite snack and dive in with us!
What’s Our Project All About?
Our team is embarking on an exciting journey to understand something that touches every single one of us—love! Yes, you read that right. Love isn’t just for the poets and songwriters, we researchers write about it too!
We recently received a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation which has allowed us to kickstart this cross-cultural project. Because of this amazing opportunity, we will be digging deep into the cultural, emotional, and universal aspects of love across the globe.
Now here’s the big question: What makes people feel loved in everyday life in different parts of the world?🌍
In this project, we will be studying how love is experienced in everyday life across six culturally diverse countries: India, Japan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Kenya. We will be examining love as it happens in people’s everyday lives across close ties (e.g., family, friends, and partners) as well as weak ties (e.g., co-workers, neighbors, etc.) and even strangers. Then we will see how these everyday experiences of love are linked to mental health, social connectedness, and life satisfaction. We will also look to see if there is a link between love and well-being.
What Can You Expect From This Blog?
Every month, we will share updates on our progress, behind-the-scenes insights, and maybe even a few fun stories from the project! We know that all this science talk can get complex sometimes so we’re all about sharing our findings and science in an accessible and fun way.
Meet the Brains Behind the Project
Dr. Saida Heshmati (Principal Investigator)
If there’s anyone who knows how to mix science and heart, it’s the person leading our project, Dr. Saida Heshmati! She is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Claremont Graduate University, studying love, positive relationships, and well-being.
Professor Zita Oravecz
(Co-Principal Investigator)
Working alongside Dr. Heshmati is the brilliant Professor Zita Oravecz, who brings her expertise in research methods and love itself to the team. She is an Associate Professor at Penn State, developing statistical tools for scientists to study emotions and cognition in daily life.
Jaymes Paolo Rombaoa (Graduate Research Associate)
Jaymes is a graduate research associate on the project and a PhD student in Positive Developmental Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. He has broad research interests in topics such as well-being, emotions, emerging adulthood, and love; also, he loves learning and using unique research methods, such as experience sampling methods, bibliometric methods, and multilevel modeling.
Lindy Williams (Graduate Research Associate)
Lindy is a graduate research associate on this project and is currently a PhD student at Penn State working with Dr. Zita Oravecz. Her research interests include measuring and modeling love using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data across romantic and non-romantic contexts.
Reina Alvarez (Project Coordinator)
Reina Alvarez is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at The School of Arts and Humanities. Before embarking on this academic journey, she gained significant experience in project management within international business psychology consulting firms, as well as in coordinating events for global finance and nonprofit organizations.
Andrew Villamil (Graduate Research Assistant)
Andrew is a graduate research associate on the project and a PhD student in Positive Developmental Psychology at Claremont Graduate University. He completed his first Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology and training in Therapy. His research interests include well-being, emotions, technology, Identity, young adulthood, and love. He also has unique research experience in cross-cultural, mixed methods, and community-based participatory research.
Baohua Liu (Graduate Research Assistant)
Baohua is an international first-year PhD student in the Positive Developmental Psychology program at CGU. Her research interests include close relationships, positive education, and resilience especially among adolescents and emerging adults. She firmly believes that love/positive social connections are the core strength and resilience of an individual, which may have a profound impact on one’s well-being across the lifespan.
Catalina Oselio (Graduate Research Assistant)
Catalina is a first-year PhD student in the Positive Developmental Psychology program at CGU whose research interests surround love, resilience, and creativity. She plans to pursue a career in academia and working with people for people, not working with people on people–with a particular interest in understanding how love can be expressed both to oneself and to others.
Saina Salamati (Undergraduate Research Assistant)
Last but not least is our research assistant, Saina Salamati. Saina is an undergraduate researcher at the University of California, Irvine, majoring in Psychological Science. She is finishing her bachelor’s and looking into applying to multiple graduate schools at the moment. She’s interested in clinical and positive psychology, and she loves love!
(And stay tuned, there might be more awesome people joining us soon!)
Whether you’re here for love (literally) or just curious about how we’re studying it, we’re happy to have you along for the ride. It’s going to be a fun time, so buckle up and stay tuned for our next post. Let’s explore the science of love together! 💖
