Professor Wins Prize for Thesis On Psychology of Romantic Love

Zick Rubin, assistant professor of Social Relations, has won a $1000 prize for a paper entitled "The Social Psychology of Romantic Love."

The prize was awarded to Rubin last month by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Rubin had submitted the paper as a doctoral thesis at the University of Michigan last June.

Using a questionnaire and laboratory study of 182 dating student couples, Rubin attempted to determine "the thoughts feelings, and behavioral predispositions which constitute love."

Rubin advertised for student participation in the University of Michigan Daily. "Only dating couples can do it!" the advertisement cautioned. "I got tremendous crowds," Rubin later commented.

Experiments confirmed the prediction that "couples in which the two partners love each other a great deal would spend more time gazing into one another's eyes than would couples who love each other relatively little." This prediction was based on the definition of love as an attitude of mutual absorption, predisposition to help, and affiliative need.

Rubin stressed that the purpose of his study was not to reveal any basic discovery, but rather to develop a number of preliminary techniques for a study of love.

In a follow-up survey which Rubin designed to determine the effect of the original study upon its participants, one man replied, "The program has caused the girl to think too much about marriage. This is not healthy, for me."