Author

Katherine Fiori & Amy Rauer

Amy Rauer, Ph.D., (Left) is an Associate Professor in Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. She is trained as a developmental psychologist and her work focuses on how intimate relationships develop as the individuals within them grow and change over the lifespan. She has published widely in developmental and relationship journals, and her work has been recognized multiple times by the National Council on Family Relations. She previously served as the director of the Marriage and Retirement Study (MARS), a longitudinal project funded by the Fetzer Institute to examine the role of compassionate love in older couples’ lives. More recently, she founded the Relationships & Development Lab to explore the role of developmental timing in determining the costs and benefits of romantic relationships, as the behaviour that promote couples’ adjustment and well-being earlier in the lifespan may, in fact, undermine it later in life. Katherine Fiori, Ph.D., (Right) is an Associate Professor and Chair of Undergraduate Psychology at the Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University in Garden City, NY. She is trained as a developmental psychologist and studies interpersonal relationships and health across the lifespan. She has published widely in both gerontology and relationship journals, most recently in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. She is the author of over 40 referred articles and book chapters, and is currently focusing her research on the intersection of social networks and romantic relationships. Some of the questions she explores are: How do couples ‘merge’ (or fail to merge) their social networks, and what are the implications for their relationship satisfaction and longevity? What happens in a relationship when one partner does not approve of the other partner’s friends or family? In what ways can friends interfere in a romantic relationship? How do our social networks change as we age?