Up to speed on the power of attraction

Eli J. Finkel was still an undergrad when he realized 'somebody could spend his life asking questions about relationships, trying to find the answers to those questions and then teaching interested young minds about the research.' But when, as a newly minted psychology professor teaching a course on romantic relationships, he faced questions from a discerning student about how couples paired off, he was stumped. 'I kept being like, 'I don't know and the field doesn't really know,' ' he recalls. Research on attraction had been done in the '50s and '60s but was largely abandoned after that. It has come back into academic fashion in recent years, however, led in part by Finkel's work with that former student, Paul W. Eastwick, now an assistant professor at Texas A&M.