Award-winning social scientist, Harvard Ph.D., and acclaimed author of “Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After,” Bella DePaulo turns her attention in this collection to one of the most significant and underappreciated relationships in our lives – friendship. She finds, for example, that: Two friends look at the same facial expression and interpret it the same way – if they are women. Over time, two friends can spot each other’s lies more accurately – but only if they are emotionally close. Sometimes one friend does not want the other to notice feelings of sadness or anger – then the closer friends are actually less likely to recognize that distress than the less close friends. Ordinarily, though, friends are more likely to know the truth about each other than are strangers, and that’s because friends less often lie to each other in their everyday lives. Those discoveries and more are described in the five articles in this collection. All were originally published in scholarly journals. 1. Similarities between Friends in their Understanding of Nonverbal Cues 2. Familiarity Effects in Nonverbal Understanding: Recognizing Our Own Facial Expressions and Our Friends’ 3. Reading Nonverbal Cues to Emotions: The Advantages and Liabilities of Relationship Closeness 4. Everyday Lies in Close and Casual Relationships 5. The Development of Deception Detection Skill: A Longitudinal Study of Same-Sex Friends
I'm Bella DePaulo. I'm a 50-something year old and I have always been single. I love my single life. But I do not love all of the ridiculous assumptions people make about me when they first meet me and learn that I am single. (No, I do not spend my evenings crying in my beer.) I'm also a social scientist (with a PhD in social psychology from Harvard). I write about singles with a passion. My work on this topic (and others) has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Time magazine, and many others. There have been feature stories in Psychology Today and the AARP magazine. I've also been on the Today show and other morning shows, CNN, NPR, and many others. I've written op-eds for publications such as the New York Times, Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. I have been a visiting professor of psychology at UC Santa Barbara since 2000. I think that makes me a permanent visitor. Get in touch if you would like to hire me to speak at your event.
My first book on singles was "Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After." My second is a collection of 89 essays, "Single with Attitude: Not Your Typical Take on Health and Happiness, Love and Money, Marriage and Friendship."
I am also an expert on the social psychology of lying. I wrote a short book, "Behind the Door of Deceit: Understanding the Biggest Liars in Our Lives." I also published a collection of professional papers, "The Lies We Tell and the Clues We Miss." You can read more about all of my work on my website, www.BellaDePaulo.com.
