Appendix F: Glossary

This glossary collects the key terms you have encountered throughout The Science of Seduction. Entries are organized alphabetically. Each definition is followed by a chapter reference in parentheses — but many terms reappear across multiple chapters; the reference points to where the term is first introduced or most thoroughly discussed.

Technical terms are defined accessibly without sacrificing precision. Where a term is used differently across disciplines (psychology vs. sociology vs. popular culture), the dominant scholarly meaning is given, with popular usage noted where it diverges meaningfully.

Activation energy (romantic) — The psychological and situational effort required to initiate a romantic or sexual interaction; used metaphorically to describe how features of dating apps, social environments, and individual anxiety affect the likelihood that attraction translates into approach behavior. (Ch 16)

Affect regulation — The processes by which people manage their emotional states; in relationship contexts, partners often serve as "external regulators," which is why attachment disruptions (breakups, rejection) can produce intense emotional dysregulation. (Ch 11)

Age of consent — The legally defined minimum age at which a person is considered capable of consenting to sexual activity; varies by jurisdiction. Treated in this text as a legal floor, not a relational ideal — coercion, power imbalance, and manipulation can occur between people both above the age of consent. (Ch 5)

Agreeableness — One of the Big Five personality dimensions, characterized by cooperativeness, empathy, and warmth; moderately positively correlated with relationship satisfaction across partner, particularly in long-term partnerships. (Ch 15)

Ambiguous solicitation — A flirtatious or romantic signal deliberately structured so that it can be plausibly denied, allowing the sender to retreat if the signal is not reciprocated without the social cost of explicit rejection; identified as a key feature of flirtation across cultures. (Ch 19)

Amygdala — A subcortical brain region centrally involved in threat detection, fear processing, and the emotional salience of stimuli; activated during both attraction (reward anticipation) and social rejection (threat response). (Ch 6)

Anxious attachment — An adult attachment style characterized by high anxiety about relationship security and low avoidance of closeness; individuals with anxious attachment seek frequent reassurance, fear abandonment, and are hypervigilant to signs of rejection. Contrast with secure and avoidant attachment. (Ch 11)

Approach motivation — A motivational orientation toward pursuing positive outcomes (connection, pleasure, closeness); in attraction contexts, high approach motivation is associated with initiation behavior and openness to new relationships. Contrasted with avoidance motivation. (Ch 16)

Assortative mating — The tendency for individuals to pair with partners who are similar to themselves on attributes including education, income, values, ethnicity, and physical attractiveness; one of the most robust patterns in partner selection research. (Ch 26)

Attachment anxiety — The first dimension of adult attachment, measuring fear of abandonment and preoccupation with relationship security; measured by the ECR-R (see Appendix E). High anxiety is associated with more conflict, lower satisfaction, and greater emotional volatility in relationships. (Ch 11)

Attachment avoidance — The second dimension of adult attachment, measuring discomfort with closeness and dependency; measured by the ECR-R. High avoidance is associated with emotional distancing, dismissing partner needs, and suppressing vulnerability. (Ch 11)

Attachment behavioral system — John Bowlby's term for the evolved motivational system that drives proximity-seeking to caregivers (and, in adult life, to romantic partners) when individuals feel threatened, uncertain, or distressed. (Ch 11)

Attachment theory — A developmental theory originated by John Bowlby and elaborated by Mary Ainsworth, proposing that early experiences with caregivers create internal working models that shape expectations and behaviors in close relationships throughout life. (Ch 11)

Attractor pool — The set of potential partners to whom a person has realistic access, shaped by geography, social networks, dating platform algorithms, and cultural norms; a structural constraint on "choice" that individual-level theories of attraction often underestimate. (Ch 26)

Avoidance motivation — A motivational orientation toward preventing negative outcomes (rejection, loss, humiliation); in attraction contexts, high avoidance motivation reduces approach behavior even when interest is genuine. (Ch 16)

Avoidant attachment — An adult attachment style characterized by low anxiety and high avoidance; individuals minimize emotional dependency and tend to pull back when relationships become intense. (Ch 11)

Beauty premium — The wage and social advantage empirically documented for people rated as physically attractive; documented across hiring decisions, salary negotiations, and legal proceedings, illustrating that attractiveness operates as social capital with real material consequences. (Ch 8, Ch 26)

Big Five personality traits — The five-factor model of personality: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN); the dominant framework in trait personality psychology, used extensively in attraction and relationship research. (Ch 15)

Body surveillance — In objectification theory, the ongoing self-monitoring of one's physical appearance from a third-person perspective, as if watching oneself be watched; associated with diminished body satisfaction and increased self-consciousness. (Ch 31)

Breadcrumbing — A digital dating behavior in which someone sends intermittent, minimal signals of interest (a "like," a brief message) to keep someone engaged without any real intention of developing a relationship; exploits variable reinforcement schedules to maintain the other person's investment. (Ch 20)

Cognitive dissonance — The psychological discomfort experienced when beliefs and behaviors are inconsistent, or when two beliefs conflict; in relationship contexts, relevant to how people rationalize staying in relationships that contradict their stated values. (Ch 12)

Coercive control — A pattern of behavior identified by sociologist Evan Stark in which a partner (typically but not exclusively male) uses surveillance, isolation, micromanagement, and intermittent reward and punishment to dominate and entrap an intimate partner; distinguished from situational couple violence by its ongoing, strategic character. (Ch 30)

Colorism — Differential treatment based on shade of skin color, typically disadvantaging darker-skinned individuals even within the same racial or ethnic group; extensively documented in dating preferences, with darker-skinned Black and South Asian women experiencing compounded disadvantage. (Ch 25)

Commitment escalation — A cognitive and behavioral pattern in which prior investment in a relationship makes it increasingly difficult to exit even when the relationship is harmful; related to the sunk cost fallacy and entrapment dynamics. (Ch 30)

Companionate love — A form of love characterized by deep affection, commitment, and intimacy without the intense passion of early romantic love; thought by many theorists (including Hatfield and Walster) to be the foundation of lasting partnership. Contrasted with passionate love. (Ch 37)

Confirmation bias — The tendency to search for, favor, and recall information that confirms pre-existing beliefs; in attraction contexts, leads people to over-interpret ambiguous signals as consistent with their hopes or fears about a person's interest. (Ch 12)

Conscientiousness — One of the Big Five traits, characterized by organization, reliability, and impulse control; one of the strongest personality predictors of long-term relationship stability and satisfaction. (Ch 15)

Consent — An affirmative, ongoing, freely given, reversible agreement to engage in a specific activity; treated in this text not merely as a legal threshold but as an ethical practice requiring mutual attention to context, power dynamics, and the possibility that people can agree to things that are still not good for them. (Ch 5)

Coolidge effect — An apparent tendency in some species (documented more strongly in non-human animals) for sexual arousal to be renewed by novel partners; sometimes inappropriately extrapolated to humans without accounting for the profound role of culture and context. (Ch 7)

Courtship display — Any behavior, signal, or adornment used to attract a mate; in evolutionary psychology, analyzed as honest or dishonest signals of genetic fitness or resource quality. In sociology, analyzed as culturally scripted performance. (Ch 7, Ch 19)

DARVO — Acronym for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender; a manipulation tactic identified by Jennifer Freyd in which a person who has caused harm denies responsibility, attacks the person making the accusation, and repositions themselves as the real victim. (Ch 30)

Dark Triad — A constellation of three personality traits — narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy — studied in relation to manipulation, exploitative mating strategies, and intimate partner violence perpetration; more strongly predictive of sexual coercive behavior than most other personality variables. (Ch 29)

Default mode network — A brain network active during mind-wandering, self-referential thought, and social cognition; activated when thinking about other people's mental states, including in romantic idealization and jealousy. (Ch 6)

Demand-withdraw pattern — A conflict dynamic identified by John Gottman and colleagues in which one partner escalates emotional demands while the other withdraws; one of the strongest predictors of relationship deterioration and dissolution. (Ch 37)

Desirability asymmetry — The empirically documented tendency in heterosexual dating apps for women to receive far more matches and messages than men — often by an order of magnitude — leading to qualitatively different app experiences by gender and reinforcing male frustration and female overwhelm. (Ch 20)

Disorganized (fearful-avoidant) attachment — An adult attachment style characterized by both high anxiety and high avoidance; associated with histories of relational trauma and producing contradictory impulses toward and away from closeness. (Ch 11)

Display rules — Culturally specific norms governing which emotions can be expressed, to whom, in what contexts, and with what intensity; highly relevant to cross-cultural variation in flirtation, confession of feelings, and public affection. (Ch 22)

Dominance hierarchy — A rank-ordering within social groups based on access to resources, status, and mates; studied in evolutionary psychology as a shaper of attraction (particularly female preference for high-status males), but critiqued for underestimating agency, cultural variation, and how hierarchies are actively constructed. (Ch 7)

Effect size — A statistical measure of the practical magnitude of a finding, independent of sample size; common measures include Cohen's d (comparing means) and r (correlation); a statistically significant finding with a small effect size may be real but trivial for practical purposes. (Ch 3)

Ego depletion — The hypothesis that self-regulation draws on a limited cognitive resource that can be exhausted; relevant in rejection contexts, where emotional regulation demands following rejection may reduce decision-making quality. (Note: replication of original ego depletion studies has been weak.) (Ch 14)

Embodied cognition — The theoretical position that thought and emotion are shaped by bodily states and sensations, not just abstract mental processes; in attraction research, relevant to findings on physical warmth, posture, and incidental environmental cues affecting social judgment. (Ch 18)

Emotional contagion — The transfer of emotional states between people through facial mimicry, vocal tone, and body language; a mechanism underlying both genuine rapport and the manipulative mirroring techniques promoted in pickup artist manuals. (Ch 18)

Empathy gap (hot-cold) — The difficulty people have in accurately predicting their behavior or feelings when in a different emotional state than the current one; relevant to how people underestimate how they will feel during actual rejection or overestimate how they will behave when aroused. (Ch 12)

Erotic capital — Sociologist Catherine Hakim's controversial term for the social and economic value derived from physical attractiveness, charm, and sexual appeal; critiqued for reinforcing commodification of the body and ignoring structural inequalities. (Ch 26)

Evolutionary mismatch — The hypothesis that psychological mechanisms evolved for ancestral environments may produce maladaptive responses in modern contexts; used to explain phenomena like jealousy, status-seeking on social media, and food cravings — but sometimes invoked too broadly to explain any modern behavior as "mismatched." (Ch 7)

Evolutionary psychology — A theoretical framework applying principles of natural and sexual selection to explain psychological traits and behaviors, including mate preferences, jealousy, and love; treated in this text as one explanatory lens among several, not a master framework. (Ch 7)

Extraversion — One of the Big Five traits, characterized by sociability, assertiveness, and positive affect; moderately positively correlated with approach behavior in dating contexts; extraverts are more likely to initiate romantic interactions. (Ch 15)

Fear of intimacy — A habitual tendency to avoid emotional closeness due to anticipated vulnerability, loss, or inadequacy; often overlaps with avoidant attachment but can also appear in individuals with anxious attachment who desire closeness but fear what it will reveal. (Ch 11)

Feminist standpoint epistemology — The methodological position (associated with scholars including Sandra Harding and Dorothy Smith) that knowledge is shaped by the social position of the knower, and that marginalized perspectives offer important epistemic advantages for studying systems of power; Dr. Okafor's methodological orientation in the Global Attraction Project. (Ch 3)

Field theory (Bourdieu) — Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical framework treating social life as structured fields in which agents compete using different forms of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic); applied in this text to analyze romantic "markets" as structured inequality, not free choice. (Ch 26)

File drawer problem — The publication bias problem in which studies finding null (non-significant) results are less likely to be published, inflating the apparent strength of effects in published literature; introduced in Ch 3 and a recurring concern in evaluating attraction research. (Ch 3)

Flirtation — Playful or ambiguous behavior that signals romantic or sexual interest while maintaining deniability; studied as both a universal human behavior and a culturally scripted performance with significant variation in form, context, and acceptable targets. (Ch 19)

Four Horsemen (Gottman) — John Gottman's term for four communication patterns predictive of relationship dissolution: contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling; contempt (conveying disgust and disrespect for a partner) is the single strongest predictor. (Ch 37)

Ghosting — Ending a relationship or ceasing communication without explanation; most common in early-stage digital dating but documented in longer relationships; associated with higher rejection sensitivity and avoidant attachment in the ghoster, and with emotional confusion and self-blame in the ghosted. (Ch 20)

Good genes hypothesis — The evolutionary hypothesis that female preference for symmetrical, masculine, and otherwise costly-to-produce traits reflects selection for genetic quality; supported by some research but complicated by the finding that most female mate choice benefits appear to be non-genetic (compatible immunity, resource investment, parental effort). (Ch 7)

Halo effect — The cognitive bias in which a positive evaluation in one domain (e.g., physical attractiveness) inflates evaluations in unrelated domains (e.g., intelligence, kindness); physically attractive individuals are often assumed to have more positive personality traits. (Ch 8, Ch 12)

Harassment (sexual) — Unwanted sexual attention, advances, or conduct that creates a hostile, intimidating, or offensive environment; legally defined in employment contexts (Title VII, etc.) but treated in this text as a broader pattern of boundary violation. (Ch 32)

Heteronormativity — The cultural assumption that heterosexuality is the normal, default, or superior form of sexual orientation, and that gender is binary; a structuring assumption in most historical and much contemporary attraction research that is actively challenged in Part V. (Ch 23, Ch 24)

Hormones (attraction-relevant) — Key molecules discussed include testosterone (associated with libido and, in some contexts, dominance behavior), estrogen (cycles that may affect short-term mate preferences), oxytocin (bonding and trust after physical contact), and dopamine (reward anticipation in early infatuation). (Ch 6)

Hypergamy — The tendency, documented most strongly in heterosexual populations and historically grounded contexts, for women to prefer partners of equal or higher social status; often invoked in evolutionary psychology; critiqued for relying on heavily WEIRD samples and for ignoring how economic inequality structures "preference." (Ch 26)

Idealization — The tendency in early romantic attraction to perceive a partner more positively than their behavior warrants; serves attachment functions (inhibiting critical evaluation that might terminate a newly forming bond) but becomes problematic when sustained as a defense against acknowledging incompatibility. (Ch 12)

Implicit association — An automatic, unconscious association between concepts that influences behavior and judgment without deliberate reflection; used in research on racial bias in attraction to measure preferences that participants may not report consciously. (Ch 25)

Intersectionality — A theoretical framework introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) arguing that systems of oppression (racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism) interact and compound each other, producing experiences of discrimination that cannot be understood by examining single axes of identity; applied throughout this text to analyze who gets to desire and be desired. (Ch 1, Ch 25)

Internal working model — In attachment theory, a mental representation of self, others, and relationships formed through early caregiving experiences, which guides expectations and interpretations in adult relationships. (Ch 11)

Jealousy (romantic) — An emotional response to perceived threat to a valued relationship; distinguished from envy (wanting what another has); evolutionary psychologists argue for sex differences in jealousy type (emotional vs. sexual infidelity); these claims have been substantially contested methodologically. (Ch 7)

Linguistic style matching (LSM) — The tendency for conversational partners to unconsciously align their use of function words (pronouns, articles, prepositions) over the course of an interaction; James Pennebaker and colleagues found that higher LSM predicts greater mutual interest and relationship formation. (Ch 17)

Love bombing — A manipulation tactic in which a person overwhelms a potential or current partner with intense affection, flattery, and attention early in a relationship, creating dependency and gratitude before gradually withdrawing that attention to establish control; associated with narcissistic and coercive personality patterns. (Ch 29, Ch 30)

Lust (triangular theory) — In Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love, passion or physical attraction; one of the three components alongside intimacy and commitment. (Ch 37)

Machiavellianism — A personality trait in the Dark Triad characterized by strategic manipulation, cynical worldview, and willingness to exploit others for personal gain; associated with exploitative short-term mating strategies. (Ch 29)

Male gaze — A term introduced by film theorist Laura Mulvey (1975) to describe the way women are positioned in media as objects of (implicitly male) visual pleasure; extended by feminist scholars to describe a broader cultural structure in which women internalize the habit of viewing themselves from an outside, evaluative perspective. (Ch 31, Ch 35)

Mate copying — The tendency to find a person more attractive after learning that others find them attractive; functions as an information shortcut, particularly in contexts where direct assessment is difficult; documented in multiple species and human experimental studies. (Ch 8)

Mere exposure effect — The finding by Robert Zajonc (1968) that repeated exposure to a neutral stimulus increases liking for it; relevant to proximity effects in attraction and the way advertising and social media exposure affect perceived attractiveness. (Ch 8)

Microaggression — Subtle, often unconscious communications that express prejudice toward members of marginalized groups; in dating contexts, includes racially fetishistic "compliments," infantilizing attention to exoticized characteristics, and casual erasure of queer or nonbinary identities. (Ch 25)

Misattribution of arousal — The tendency to attribute physiological arousal from one source to another; demonstrated in Dutton and Aron's (1974) suspension bridge study, where arousal from fear was attributed to attraction to the experimenter. (Ch 12)

Neuroimaging (fMRI) — Functional magnetic resonance imaging; a brain scanning technique that measures blood oxygenation as a proxy for neural activity; used in studies of romantic love (Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron) to identify brain regions activated by viewing photos of partners; discussed with appropriate caveats about inferring mental states from brain activations (reverse inference problem). (Ch 6)

Neuroticism — One of the Big Five traits, characterized by emotional instability, negative affect, and anxiety; one of the strongest personality predictors of relationship dissatisfaction; associated with more negative conflict behaviors and more frequent jealousy. (Ch 15)

Nonverbal communication — Communication through body language, facial expression, touch, proxemics, paralanguage (vocal tone, pace), and appearance rather than words; arguably carries more information about emotional states and relationship dynamics than verbal communication. (Ch 18)

Objectification theory — A feminist psychological theory developed by Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts (1997) proposing that cultural environments that objectify the female body lead women to internalize an observer's perspective on their own bodies (self-objectification), producing shame, anxiety, and reduced cognitive resources. (Ch 31)

Openness to experience — One of the Big Five traits, characterized by intellectual curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, and willingness to engage with novel ideas; associated with attraction to unconventional partners and non-traditional relationship structures. (Ch 15)

p-value — The probability of obtaining a result at least as extreme as the observed result, assuming the null hypothesis (no effect) is true; conventionally, p < .05 is treated as statistically significant; widely misunderstood as the probability that a finding is true — it is not. (Ch 3)

Paradox of choice — Barry Schwartz's (2004) argument that an abundance of options produces decision paralysis, lower satisfaction with choices made, and regret; directly applied to dating app markets, where effectively unlimited partner options can paradoxically reduce satisfaction and increase loneliness. (Ch 20)

Parental investment theory — Robert Trivers's (1972) evolutionary theory proposing that the sex that invests more in offspring (typically females in mammals) will be the more selective mate-chooser, while the less-investing sex will compete for access to the investing sex; foundational to much evolutionary psychology of mate choice, but critiqued for oversimplifying human flexibility. (Ch 7)

Passionate love — Intense, emotionally aroused, often obsessive romantic love characterized by strong desire for union with a partner; associated with early attachment formation, activation of dopamine reward circuits, and the neural signatures Helen Fisher documents in neuroimaging studies; typically decreases in intensity over time in long-term partnerships. (Ch 37)

Peer norming — The process by which individuals adjust their beliefs and behaviors to match perceived social norms of their peer group; in hookup culture research, students consistently overestimate how much casual sex their peers are having, and this overestimation itself shapes behavior. (Ch 36)

Personality — The relatively stable individual differences in thoughts, feelings, and behavior that characterize a person across situations; the Big Five model is the dominant research framework; personality predicts relationship quality more reliably than demographic variables in most studies. (Ch 15)

Pickup artist (PUA) industry — A commercial ecosystem of coaches, books, online communities, and boot camps teaching scripted manipulation strategies to (primarily) heterosexual men seeking to increase their sexual success; treated in this text as a cultural phenomenon to be analyzed critically rather than a source of relationship advice. (Ch 29)

Power (relational) — The degree to which one partner can influence the other's behavior and outcomes in a relationship; unequal power dynamics are central to understanding coercive control, sexual coercion, and the ethics of seduction. (Ch 5, Ch 30)

Pre-registration — A research practice in which a study's hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans are publicly documented before data collection, preventing post-hoc hypothesis generation ("HARKing") and selective reporting; advocated throughout this text as a methodological gold standard. (Ch 3)

Propinquity effect — The finding that people are more likely to form relationships with those who are geographically or functionally nearby; one of the most robust predictors of relationship formation, though dating apps partially disrupt this proximity constraint. (Ch 8)

Psychological reactance — The motivational state aroused when freedom feels threatened; in romantic contexts, can manifest as increased desire for someone when they become less available — a phenomenon pickup artists exploit deliberately and unethically. (Ch 12)

Rape myth — A false belief about sexual assault that excuses perpetrators and blames victims (e.g., "if she didn't fight back, it wasn't really rape"; "men can't control themselves when aroused"); studied extensively as predictors of perpetration and barriers to survivor disclosure. (Ch 32)

Reciprocity norm — The social expectation that positive gestures should be returned; in attraction contexts, the knowledge that someone finds us attractive tends to increase our attraction to them ("reciprocity of liking"), though this effect is modulated by self-esteem and prior interest. (Ch 13)

Rejection sensitivity — A cognitive-affective processing disposition involving anxious expectations, ready perceptions, and overreactions to rejection; introduced by Geraldine Downey; measured by the RSQ (see Appendix E); associated with hostility, controlling behavior, and relationship instability. (Ch 14)

Replication crisis — The widespread failure of many high-profile findings in psychology (and other sciences) to reproduce when independent labs attempt to replicate them; the Open Science Collaboration (2015) found that only ~39% of 100 psychology studies replicated with similar effect sizes; treated in this text as a call for methodological humility, not nihilism about psychological science. (Ch 3, Ch 40)

Relationship market — The metaphor (and, increasingly, the literal structure) in which partners are "evaluated" and "selected" according to market logics of supply and demand, value, and competition; critiqued by Eva Illouz and others as transforming human connection into economic calculation. (Ch 26)

Romantic jealousy — See jealousy.

Script theory (sexual/romantic) — William Simon and John Gagnon's sociological theory (1973) proposing that sexual and romantic behavior is guided by culturally learned "scripts" specifying who does what, when, with whom, and how to interpret the interaction; contrasts with biological explanations by emphasizing the learned, performed nature of desire. (Ch 23)

Secure attachment — An adult attachment style characterized by low anxiety and low avoidance; securely attached individuals are comfortable with closeness and dependency, do not fear abandonment, and can regulate emotions effectively during relationship stress. (Ch 11)

Self-disclosure — The act of sharing personal information with another person; in relationship formation, gradual mutual self-disclosure is associated with increasing intimacy and liking (Jourard, Altman & Taylor's social penetration theory); overly rapid self-disclosure can violate norms and reduce attraction. (Ch 17)

Self-esteem — A person's overall evaluation of their own worth; sociometer theory (Leary & Baumeister) proposes that self-esteem functions as a monitor of social inclusion, dropping when rejection signals are detected; low self-esteem is both a predictor and consequence of romantic failure in a feedback loop. (Ch 13)

Self-monitoring — The tendency to regulate one's behavior to match the expectations of specific situations and audiences; high self-monitors are more responsive to situational cues in attraction contexts and more likely to engage in strategic self-presentation; associated with more short-term but less stable relationships. (Ch 15)

Self-objectification — The internalization of an observer's perspective on one's body, leading to ongoing self-monitoring of appearance rather than attending to bodily function, sensation, or competence; a key construct from objectification theory. See also Appendix E. (Ch 31)

Sexual fluidity — Lisa Diamond's term for the capacity for variation in sexual attraction over time, context, and relationship, particularly documented in women; challenges essentialist models of sexual orientation as fixed and categorical. (Ch 24)

Sexual script theory — See script theory.

Sociometer theory — Mark Leary and Roy Baumeister's theory that self-esteem is a psychological gauge of one's social inclusion and relational value; provides a mechanism for why romantic rejection feels so threatening — it registers as a drop in one's sense of belonging. (Ch 13)

Stalking — Repeated, unwanted contact or monitoring of a person that causes fear; often begins with behaviors that are individually ambiguous (appearing at the same places, frequent messages) and escalates; significantly underreported and often trivialized. (Ch 32)

Sternberg's triangular theory — Robert Sternberg's model proposing that love consists of three components — passion, intimacy, and commitment — and that different combinations produce qualitatively different relationship types (companionate love = intimacy + commitment without passion; consummate love = all three). (Ch 37)

Stranger-on-a-train effect — The well-documented phenomenon of people sharing deeply personal information with strangers they will never see again; illustrates that intimacy can arise rapidly under conditions of anonymity and perceived safety, complicating assumptions about self-disclosure requiring long-term relationship development. (Ch 17)

Structural racism — Systems, policies, and institutional practices that produce racial inequities regardless of individual intent; in the context of this text, relevant to how racial hierarchies in dating preferences and beauty standards are not merely individual "tastes" but outcomes of structural socialization. (Ch 25)

Sunk cost fallacy — The cognitive bias of continuing an investment because of past costs already incurred, even when rational assessment suggests stopping; in relationship contexts, explains why people remain in harmful relationships because of time, emotion, or money already invested. (Ch 12, Ch 30)

Swipe fatigue — The exhaustion, emotional numbness, or cynicism that develops from prolonged high-volume use of swiping-based dating apps; associated with decreased hope, increased body dissatisfaction, and treating potential partners as interchangeable consumer goods. (Ch 20)

Testosterone — A steroid hormone associated with libido, competitive behavior, and (in some studies) facial masculinity; produced in testes and, in smaller amounts, ovaries and adrenal glands; effects on human attraction are real but far smaller and more context-dependent than popular accounts suggest. (Ch 6, Ch 9)

Terror management theory — Jeff Greenberg and colleagues' theory that awareness of mortality drives much human behavior, including status-seeking, group identification, and romantic attachment; some researchers propose that romantic love serves, in part, as an existential buffer against mortality salience. (Ch 37)

WEIRD bias — The overrepresentation of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic populations in psychological research, identified by Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010); the Global Attraction Project explicitly counters WEIRD bias through its 12-country design. (Ch 3)

Working memory — A cognitive system for holding and manipulating information in conscious awareness; reduced by rejection, social anxiety, and self-consciousness, which is why people sometimes perform poorly in conversations they care about too much. (Ch 14)

Zero-sum thinking (relational) — The assumption that another person's gain in the relationship market comes at one's own expense; fuels much online discourse about dating inequality and pickup artist ideology; empirically, attraction is not zero-sum. (Ch 29)

This glossary covers the primary terms introduced in the main chapters. For terms specific to the Swipe Right Dataset and its variables, see Appendix C. For key studies referenced throughout the text, see Appendix B.