Elaine Hatfield

Elaine Catherine Hatfield is Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawai‘i. Dr. Hatfield was born in Detroit on October 22, 1937. She earned her B.A. at the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. at Stanford University. She is well known as the scholar who pioneered the scientific study of passionate love and sexual desire.

In recent years she has received Distinguished Scientist Awards (for a lifetime of scientific achievement) from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex (SSSS), and the University of Hawai‘i, and the Alfred Kinsey Award from the Western Region of SSSS. For the past two decades she has been ranked in citation reviews as one of the most frequently quoted social psychologists in the world. She has often appeared on national T.V., interviewed by Barbara Walters, Phil Donahue, Hugh Downs, Tom Snyder, and others, and has written many books on her research, among them two books which both won the American Psychological Foundation's National Media Award: A New Look at Love; and Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Looks in Everyday Life.

Recently, Drs. Hatfield and Richard L. Rapson (who are husband and wife) have collaborated on three books: Love, Sex, and Intimacy: Their Psychology, Biology, and History (HarperCollins), Emotional Contagion (Cambridge University Press), and Love and Sex: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Allyn & Bacon.)

Dr. Hatfield has published three serious novels: Rosie, Recovered Memories, and Darwin’s Law, and four detective stories: two Kate MacKinnon murder mysteries (Deadly Wager and Vengeance is Mine) and two Firefly mysteries (The Adventures of Firefly: The World’s Tiniest Detective and Take Up Serpents). She has also published more than 45 poems and short stories in American, Canadian, Australian, and Indian literary magazines.