Eli Finkel

📢POSTDOC POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT📢

@nourkteily.bsky.social & I are recruiting a postdoc in the #LitowitzCenter for Enlightened Disagreement. We seek research excellence regarding navigating conflict.

Application deadline: Nov. 17.

Salary: ~$80k.

facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu/apply/MjQzNw==

Opinion | You’re Probably Doing Small Talk Wrong

What kinds of conversations spark instant connection?

Excited to share my first NYT Guest Essay, with @ericaboothby.bsky.social.

We argue that playful riffing — creating a little world together — forges and deepens relationships through shared reality.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/o...

Northwestern trustee and husband gift $20 million to Center for Enlightened Disagreement A Northwestern University trustee and her husband have donated $20 million to support the school’s Center for Enlightened Disagreement.

📢 MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT 📢

@nourkteily.bsky.social and I are delighted to introduce the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement, supercharged by a $20M gift from Jennifer and Alec Litowitz.

The #LitowitzCenter helps people harness the power of difference.

www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/03/n...

Enlightened Disagreement Northwestern professors Eli Finkel and Nour Kteily, co-founders of the Center for Enlightened Disagreement housed in the Kellogg School of Management, discuss polarization in the U.S. and how Democrat...

The Center employs scientific evidence to help people, organizations, and societies leverage the power of disagreement for good.

To learn more about the Center, see this Northwestern Magazine cover story.

2/2

magazine.northwestern.edu/features/cen...

📢JOB POSTING: Senior Director for the Center for Enlightened Disagreement (CED).📢

@nourkteily.bsky.social and I seek a strategic leader to help us build the Center (see ensuing post for information about CED).

Target salary range: $125,000-$155,000.

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careers.northwestern.edu/psc/hrnu_er/...

Welcome, Eric -- thanks for subscribing to the show!

And good question. I'd love to listen to such a podcast, too. To my knowledge, no such show exists, but I've tagged @pauleastwick.bsky.social in case he might have any leads.

YANSS 319 – What movies often get wrong about romantic love, relationships, and human mating in general Two psychologists who study love, relationships, and human mating behavior pick apart the movie “The Notebook” and tell us what it gets right and what it gets wrong when it comes to por…

A big THANK YOU to @davidmcraney.bsky.social for featuring the #LoveFactually podcast on #YouAreNotSoSmart!

The episode delves into #TheNotebook, figuring out what the movie gets right -- and what it gets wrong -- about how relationships work.

Enjoy!

youarenotsosmart.com/2025/08/04/y...

Love Factually

Dive into the science behind your favorite rom-coms with
@elijfinkel.bsky.social and Paul Eastwick’s "Love Factually" podcast. Discover what Hollywood gets right—and wrong—about love. ❤️ 🎥

Listen now: www.lovefactuallypod.com

🎉Life update🎉

After 6 wonderful years at Princeton, I am officially *Dr.* Oktar!

Next: Postdoc at Meta FAIR w/ @asli-celikyilmaz.bsky.social; then, postdoc at Kellogg studying disagreement w/ @elijfinkel.bsky.social & @nourkteily.bsky.social!

Thanks @tanialombrozo.bsky.social for the hood :)

Agree to disagree? That's the goal of Kellogg's Center for Enlightened Disagreement, led by @elijfinkel.bsky.social and Nour Kteily. Read more about how two leading scholars of conflict and polarization want to help us have more productive conversations. magazine.northwestern.edu/features/cen...

If you'd like to read the chapter -- or even if you'd just like to see more of the quotes I use to illustrate the principles of relationship science -- you can read it here:

openpublishing.princeton.edu/read/romantic-

Time won’t fly
it’s like I’m paralyzed by it
I’d like to be my old self again
But I’m still trying to find it

— Taylor Swift (2012), All Too Well

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain.

— bell hooks (2000), All About Love

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

— Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history.

— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

The chapter quotes liberally from major thinkers and pop-culture icons alike -- from Leo Tolstoy to Ursula Le Guin to bell hooks to Taylor Swift. Here are some examples:

Finally, the chapter considers three major challenges confronting relationship science: (1) biased research samples, (2) the chasmic divide separating the field from evolutionary-psych perspectives on relationships, and (3) measurement challenges that hamper our theory-testing.

Next, the chapter considers three emerging topics in relationship science: (1) consensual nonmonogamy, (2) relationships-as-microcultures, and (3) singlehood.

The chapter then considers the dissolution of romantic relationships, including a discussion of whether a relationship that breaks up is necessarily a failure.

The second batch encompasses 12 interpersonal tendencies that we can cultivate to strengthen our relationships, including constructive patterns of thought and behavior.

Then the chapter gets into the field's major ideas and findings, discussing them in two batches. The first batch encompasses seven exogenous constraints that impinge upon our relationships, including the nature of human psychology, human sociality, and time itself.

The chapter then considers the methods of relationship science -- how researchers design studies and use empirical evidence to test falsifiable hypotheses about the nature of romantic relationships.

"[I]f the sociologists and psychologists can get even a suggestion of the answer to our pattern of romantic love, marriage, disillusions, divorce—and the children left behind—it would be the best investment of federal money since Jefferson made the Louisiana purchase.”

The chapter discusses the fraught history of relationship science, including attacks from Congressmen and clergy, such as: “Who granted these ‘scientists’ the ability to see into men’s minds and hearts?"

It also discusses forceful defenses of the field, including in the NYT:

🎇NEW PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENT🎇

“Love may be a many-splendored thing, but it’s also a battlefield.”

So begins my "Romantic Relationships" chapter in the new, OPEN-ACCESS, Handbook of Social Psychology (6e). The chapter synthesizes what I've learned in my 28 years in the field.

🧵

The Rules of Attraction and the Psychology of Romance Plain English with Derek Thompson · Episode

Great chatting with @dkthomp.bsky.social about relationship science and what it can tell us about online dating, soul mates, and Julia Roberts movies!

More on the science behind your favorite rom coms on the Love Factually Podcast with me and Eli at: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/l...

spsp.org/news-center/...

Cover of the Handbook of Social Psychology 6th edition 2025

Since 1954, "The Handbook of Social Psychology" has been the field’s most authoritative reference work, and today is the launch of the 6th edition with 50 new chapters by 100 leading scholars. Best news? The HSP is now an open-access public resource—free to read, download, and share. the-hsp.com

When I was in grad school, this was THE resource...and it cost a ton. Now it's free. Amazing.

#PsychSciSky

📣very thrilled to see the new, open access (!) edition of the Handbook of Social Psychology is now online! With 50 chapters, this is an amazing collective effort brought to everyone by @danielgilbert.bsky.social, Susan Fiske, @elijfinkel.bsky.social, and Wendy Mendes and Situational Press. 👏🎉🙏