Our Funding Impact & Partnerships
31
RESEARCH GRANTS AWARDED
$313,325
AWARDED
60
CROSS-INSTITUTION COLLABORATIONS
CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES
Request for Proposals
Early Career Research Grants to
Advance the Science of Love
2027–2028
The Love Consortium is pleased to announce a competition to fund innovative research on foundational questions about love. This call for proposals is supported by a broader initiative that seeks to understand whether and how love may serve as the basis for ethical behavior and decision-making processes across ages, relationship types, groups, and geographies.
FUNDING PER GRANT
Up to $20,000
USD in direct research costs
PROPOSAL DEADLINE
January 15, 2027
11:59 PM IDLW
FUNDING PERIOD
May 2027 – April 2028
Supporting early career scholars
IN THIS OPPORTUNITY
Areas of Funding
The purpose of the award is to assist early career scholars with costs associated with conducting collaborative and groundbreaking research on love. We recognize that scholars approach the construct of love from many different perspectives and definitions. You may study love as a discrete emotion, a behavior (or set of behaviors), or a virtue, to list a few possibilities.
Whichever perspective you take, the focus should be on the construct of love, operationalized in a way the researcher can measure, observe or manipulate in their research. We do not adopt a single definition because establishing what love is remains part of the empirical work that needs to be done, and a researcher may make the case that an existing measure (e.g., for secondary data analysis) represents the construct of love.
We are particularly invested in fundamental research that would illuminate the role of love in caring connections across relationship types and across the developmental trajectory. It is our belief that such research will lend itself best to deepening our understanding of love in general as well as its ethical implications more specifically. We provide more information about the latter in the next section.
Proposals are due by January 15, 2027 to fund research projects conducted between May 2027 and April 2028.
The Love Consortium intends to award multiple grants of up to $20,000 USD in May 2027. Awardees will be expected to submit quarterly reports of their progress, publish at least one peer-reviewed paper within three years of their funding period, and present their work at an in-person TLC conference in North Carolina in mid-2028 (expenses paid by TLC, separate from the grant itself; some well-reasoned exceptions may apply) and at least one other major disciplinary conference or workshop.
FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
Check out a selection of published papers from our fellows using data described on The Love Consortium Dataverse.
Baxter, A., Maxwell, J. A., Bales, K. L., Finkel, E. J., Impett, E. A., & Eastwick, P. W. (2022).
Initial impressions of compatibility and mate value predict later dating and romantic interest. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(45), e2206925119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206925119
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Included 3 speed-dating studies with longitudinal follow-ups
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Tested an age-old question about factors that contribute to the romantic initiation process
Park, Y., Gordon, A., Humberg, S., Muise, A., & Impett, E. A. (2023).
Differing levels of gratitude between romantic partners: Concurrent and longitudinal links with satisfaction and commitment in six dyadic datasets. Personality Science, 4(1), e10537. https://doi.org/10.5964/ps.10537
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Leveraged 6 longitudinal datasets with over 500 romantic couples
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Tested a critical question about the dyadic nature of gratitude and relationship quality
Sasaki, E., Overall, N. C., Reis, H. T., Righetti, F., Chang, V. T., Low, R. S. T., Henderson, A. M. E., McRae, C. S., Cross, E. J., Jayamaha, S. D., Maniaci, M. R., & Reid, C. J. (2023).
Feeling loved as a strong link in relationship interactions: Partners who feel loved may buffer destructive behavior by actors who feel unloved. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(2), 367–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000419
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Included 5 dyadic observational studies, love in various live contexts
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Tested a critical question about love, the construct, and its association with behavior
DiGiovanni, A. M., Peters, B. J., Tudder, A., Gresham, A. M., & Bolger, N. (2024).
Physiological synchrony in supportive discussions: An examination of co‐rumination, relationship type, and heterogeneity. Psychophysiology, 61(7), e14554. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14554
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Included 2 experimental studies with friendship dyads and romantic couples
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Tested a novel question about physiological synchrony in social support conversations
Brady, A., Baker, L. R., Maxwell, J. A., Algoe, S. B., Birnie-Porter, C., Brownstein, M., Carswell, K. L., Cross, E. J., Debrot, A., Finkel, E. J., Harasymchuk, C., Impett, E. A., Kim, J. J., Leavitt, C. E., MacDonald, G., Maniaci, M. R., Mark, K. P., McNulty, J. K., Meltzer, A. L., Muise, A., Overall, N. C., Park, Y., Reis, H. T., & Righetti, F. (2026).
Women are slightly more sexually satisfied in their romantic relationships than men: An integrative data analytic approach. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 55, 239–311. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-025-03317-w
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Leveraged 28 cross-sectional and 8 daily-experience datasets with over 13,000 partnered individuals
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Tested a long-standing assumption about gender differences in sexual satisfaction within romantic relationships