Bella DePaulo is the author of Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). You can read more about it at http://www.belladepaulo.com/singledout.htm.

She also writes the Living Single blog for Psychology Today.

In contributions to Alternet, and to the op-ed pages of Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New York Times, DePaulo has written about the place of singles in contemporary American society. She is a social psychologist (Ph.D., Harvard, 1979) who has published scientific papers on singlehood in professional journals.

Bella DePaulo is also an expert on the social psychology of deceiving and detecting deceit. She discussed her deception research on the Today show and on Anderson Cooper 360, and in previous years, on other programs such as NBC Nightly News, and the ABC and CBS morning shows.

DePaulo lives in Summerland, CA. For more information, visit her website at www.belladepaulo.com.

Blog Entries by Bella DePaulo

Sarah Palin and Her Lies (And Her Fans Who Attack Her Critics)

Posted November 20, 2009 | 08:58 PM (EST)


I've been blogging since June of 2006 and have not avoided controversial issues or people. But something I recently posted at Psychology Today, "Sarah Palin's Lies" (now posted in full below), elicited more vitriolic comments and personal e-mails than anything else I've ever written. Here are a few examples:

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Who's Really Nuts, 20/20 or the 'Crazy Cat Ladies'?

5 Comments | Posted November 15, 2009 | 03:26 PM (EST)


The ABC show 20/20 recently treated its viewers to an all-out condescending pity-party for the women it calls 'crazy cat ladies.' The segment hosted by Elizabeth Vargas, with an accompanying article online, was so over-the-top that it was almost a parody of itself.

The article begins this way:

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Pundit Contest Would Have Gone Down Better with a Spoonful of Psychology

Posted November 13, 2009 | 06:16 AM (EST)


I've been following "America's Next Great Pundit Contest" over at the Washington Post. I love the idea. Once upon a time there were well-worn paths to the top of the press pile. The Post's contest, though, is based on the populist premise that smart, engaging, well-informed voices could come...

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Advocacy on Behalf of All Unmarried Americans -- Single or Coupled, Gay or Straight

1 Comments | Posted October 31, 2009 | 03:40 AM (EST)


Think for a moment or two, and you can probably come up with the names of GLBT advocacy groups, and even the names of leaders who pursue same-sex marriage rights and broader social justice on behalf of the GLBT community. But if, for example, same-sex marriage became legal nationwide, that...

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Shriver Report: Get Married, Have Kids, Then We'll Speak to Your Issues

14 Comments | Posted October 23, 2009 | 10:03 PM (EST)


The Shriver Report Serves Up Compulsory Marriage and Mothering. That was the claim I made in my previous post. The report, I argued, seemed simply to assume that just about every woman wants to marry and have children and just about every woman does. It then puts those women...

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'David misses his schmoopy' and Other Cringe-Worthy Facebook Status Updates

Posted October 19, 2009 | 02:48 AM (EST)


As I was writing Singled Out and mocking couples who take those sappy love songs seriously, I occasionally stopped to wonder whether I was unfairly caricaturing them. "You are my everything." "I just want to be your everything." Does anyone really buy that?

Turns out, the answer is yes....

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Do Relationships Need Lies to Survive?

8 Comments | Posted October 12, 2009 | 09:47 PM (EST)


Recently, a reporter from the Daily Mail discovered my new book, Behind the Door of Deceit: Understanding the Biggest Liars in Our Lives, and got in touch about an interview. She had a hunch, she said, that relationships need a dash of deceit to survive. When she said relationships,...

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The High Price of Being Single

Posted October 5, 2009 | 04:38 AM (EST)


When marriage is our primary financial fix, justice is denied.

Did you see the recent New York Times story titled, "The high price of being a gay couple"? The article describes, in detail, many ways in which gay couples are financially disadvantaged compared to married heterosexual couples. For example,...

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What Do You Know? It's National Singles Week

2 Comments | Posted September 20, 2009 | 05:51 PM (EST)


It is so not 1950 anymore! Singles don't have to wait until marriage to have houses, sex, children, travel experiences, or furniture from actual stores. In fact, they don't have to marry at all. And they can choose to skip over or around any or all of the steps and...

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Pursuit of Vicki or Justice for All? Media Says Marriage Was Ted Kennedy's 'Best Decision'

2 Comments | Posted August 30, 2009 | 04:36 PM (EST)


Time magazine called Vicki "The Woman Who Saved Ted." Reporter Karen Tumulty said that "Ted Kennedy was redeemed in his third act, and that redemption couldn't have happened without Vicki...Giving his heart one more chance was probably the best decision Ted Kennedy ever made." A story in the New...

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Romantic Relationships Are Hotbeds for Serious Lies

Posted August 19, 2009 | 12:46 PM (EST)


Mark Sanford. John Ensign. Newt Gingrich. Silvio Berlusconi. Bill Clinton. John Edwards. James McGreevey. Rudy Giuliani... They are a diverse cast of characters, all tied together by their affairs and their lies about them. They may never tell us the unvarnished truth about what they were thinking (or not thinking)...

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New York Times Reporter Thinks Single Women Fear Intimacy; I'm Afraid He's Wrong

1 Comments | Posted August 14, 2009 | 05:50 PM (EST)


New York Times reporter John Tierney recently described a study that supposedly showed that "single women are particularly drawn to other people's partners." The main point of this post is to shoot down the interpretation he offers of the results, which is dripping with singlism and - more importantly...

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Marriage and Health: Et Tu, New York Times?

1 Comments | Posted August 4, 2009 | 05:33 PM (EST)


The New York Times has just published a piece on that same marriage and health study that Newsweek discussed so misleadingly. Sadly, this piece isn't what it should be either. I am especially disappointed with this one because I've read some of the reporter's previous work and liked...

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Newsweek's Misleading Account of Latest Marriage Study

6 Comments | Posted July 29, 2009 | 02:58 AM (EST)


A new day has dawned, and with it another study of marriage misrepresented in the media. As always, the inaccuracies are in one direction only -- implying that getting married results in better outcomes than it actually does. I've been at this for a while, and I have yet to...

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First Friends, Barack Style

1 Comments | Posted July 24, 2009 | 08:24 PM (EST)


It was past midnight on Inauguration Day, after the balls and all of the other events had ended. It had been an exhilarating and exhausting day. Michelle and the kids headed to bed. Barack Obama, the new president, was still up. Right there with him were the people who for...

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Marital Mentality #2: The More Profound Historic Change

2 Comments | Posted July 15, 2009 | 03:28 PM (EST)


Previously, I started to describe the historic changes that are occurring around the way we think about marriage and single life. The first set of transformative changes, discussed in my last post, focus on marriage itself. How important is it to your life experiences whether you ever marry and...

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Marital Mentalities: The Changes are Historic, and We're Living Them

5 Comments | Posted July 12, 2009 | 03:48 PM (EST)


I think this is a moment in social history that scholars and critics will be analyzing long into the future. There's a lot of matrimania going on -- the over-the-top hyping of weddings and marriage. But as I argued in Singled Out, I suspect that's not a sign of...

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TIME's Misleading Cover Story on Marriage

6 Comments | Posted July 4, 2009 | 07:24 AM (EST)


There's a lot not to like in the cover story for Time written by the smugly-married Caitlin Flanagan. There is, for example, the predictable singlism (Mark Sanford's soulmate is not just a single woman but an "emotionally needy single woman," because really, what other kind could there be), the...

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"Avoid Marriage," Advises Atlantic Writer

23 Comments | Posted June 26, 2009 | 06:22 AM (EST)


The Atlantic magazine has peddled its share of misguided matrimania and scolding of singles - both mothers and others - but not this month. Just look at this tease for a story by Sandra Tsing Loh: "The author is ending her marriage. Isn't it time you...

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For the Love of Blogging

Posted June 19, 2009 | 05:49 AM (EST)


When I first started blogging - more than a year ago at Psychology Today, and three years ago here at the Huffington Post -- I never imagined that it would become one of my favorite things to do. But I do (mostly) love it. Let me count the...

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