There is no marriage penalty. There is only a singles penalty.

That's what I discovered when I was researching Singled Out. (I also wrote about it here). To be sure, I have no expertise on taxes. So I felt reassured that I got...

I should be embarrassed. I'm a social psychologist and my field seems to be in a heap of trouble these days. All of the squishy sciences are getting battered.

"Squishy" isn't an insult. To me, it is more of a term of endearment. I use it to refer to...

A recent essay published here at The Huffington Post is titled, "It's complicated: The psychology of 'singlism.'" Author Wray Herbert discussed some intriguing research in his post but his description of singlism -- a concept I introduced -- is inaccurate.

Herbert begins by saying that he...

The hand-wringing, advice-dispensing screeds aimed at people who are "still" single are, well, a bit dopey. In contemporary society, there are few ways of living more ordinary than living single. In the U.S., we are closing in on the point when married people will be in the minority....

Suppose I challenged you to write the most cliché-drenched ode to marriage you could possibly imagine. Don't do any critical thinking. Don't worry about whether what you have to say is true, or logically consistent, or whether it could be potentially offensive to millions, or whether it might serve as...

A just-published study followed the lives of more than 2,700 Americans, all of whom who started out single and not cohabiting. By the time the study ended six years later, some of them had cohabited, others got married and still others stayed single.

In some ways,...

What were they thinking? Did Herman Cain really think he could keep his 13-year friends-with-financial-benefits arrangement with Ginger White a secret? Did Ginger White think that she would never have to tell her (now grown) children about the alleged affair? What about the plagiarists, fraudulent memoirists, fake warriors, and all...

Who lies? My best guess is that everyone does. That's what my research, and other work, too, suggests. For example, in one of the sets of studies that my colleagues and I conducted, two groups of people -- 77 college students and 70 people from the community --...

If you are an adolescent or a young adult, what could you do that could put you at risk for becoming more depressed, more sexist, and more likely to have problems with drinking and delinquency? If you are a young woman, what related experience might turn you off to science,...

A just-published article claims that people who stay single are headed straight to the grave -- and fast. Faster than people who are currently married. The media is already on it, as with today's MSNBC headline, "Single people may die younger, new study finds""and the many...

Credibility is a fraught issue these days. Playing out in one courtroom is the debacle of the discredited accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. In another is the Casey Anthony trial with its holiday parade of potential liars. Maybe you are confident that you are a terrific lie detector --...

No, that title is not my advice. It is my riff on Pamela Haag's provocative new book, Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules. The 21st century, she argues, is a post-romantic age of melancholy...

Christine Carter's recent post asked, "Does Marriage Make Us Happier?" Her answer is yes, and she refers to a published study to make her case. I'll explain why that study does not show that getting married makes you happier.

An Analogy

First, let's set aside the matrimania and...

"DePaulo says that 'singlism' -- a term she coined and for which we are prepared to forgive her -- is not just aimed at unmarried women." -Gail Collins, New York Times, December 4, 2008

That quote sums up what it has been like to be the...

Stop telling single people why they are not married. If you are so sure that becoming unsingle is the ultimate and tyrannically powerful life goal of most single people, you probably believe a lot of other things about singles that just aren't true. It's time for some debunking.

Here...

Have you heard about the latest survey of single people? It is based on a nationally-representative sample of more than 5,000 Americans, ages 21 to 65+, who are divorced, widowed, or have always been single. It has been all over the media, and I've gotten numerous emails about it from...

Larry King was absolutely obsessed with marriage. Not only did he marry time and time again, but he peppered just about all of his guests with a barrage of questions about their marital status and aspirations -- especially if they were single.

Now Piers Morgan has taken...

If you love food, friends, and camaraderie, and if you would like to hear the story of a club for singles that has nothing to do with dating and has lasted nearly four decades (and is still going strong), you are going to love this guest essay. It was contributed...

We do not honor a remarkable friendship by proclaiming that it has "all the best qualities of the happiest and most resilient marriages." We honor it by recognizing that it is its own special thing.

Midway through her New York Times review of Gail Caldwell's Let's...

Time magazine calls marriage a 'luxury yacht.' Remember what happened on the last cruise ship?

The cover of Time magazine asks, in big bold letters, "Who needs marriage?" Sounds skeptical, doesn't it? In many ways, the article is skeptical. But when I got to the end of...