FEMALE STATUS

My primary research program is to explore women’s status hierarchies, with a central focus on conspicuous/luxury consumption as one method women use to jockey for status. To date, conspicuous consumption has been primarily studied as mate-attraction tactic used by men. I intend to broaden the knowledge base concerning what motivates women to conspicuously consume by identifying the interpersonal benefits accrued by women who display cues indicative of high status.

PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS

In collaboration with Carin Perilloux and David Buss, I study the relative importance of a potential mate’s facial and bodily attractiveness across various mating contexts. We also explore how individual differences in physical attractiveness give rise to a myriad of adaptive problems, particularly in domains relating to intrasexual competition and sexual conflict.

In addition, I have spearheaded several projects examining perceptions of the ideal waist-to-hip ratio historically (in collaboration with Dev Singh) and currently (in collaboration with               Carin Perilloux), using participant sketches of the body types considered to be most attractive across opposite and same sex individuals.

ROMANTIC JEALOUSY

Together with my father, Mark Cloud, I’ve researched sex differences in romantic jealousy using   a novel methodology that assessed behavioral outcomes rather than emotional distress. Moreover, we compared the patterns of sexual and emotional jealousy evoked by a partner's heterosexual affair to those evoked by a partner’s homosexual affair to isolate circumstances that pose a relatively greater threat to one’s paternity or commitment certainty.

REPRODUCTION EXPEDITING

A line of research, on which I collaborate with Judith Easton and Cari Goetz, concerns how various aspects of female sexuality fluctuate as a function of fertility decline. We find that women past peak fertility but pre-menopause think about sex, have more intense sexual fantasies, and engage in sexual intercourse more frequently than women of other age groups.