Despite variation in their social needs and experiences, all humans require social connections to thrive. When humans lack fulfilling connections, they experience loneliness. However, while seemingly simple, loneliness is a multidimensional construct arising from varied social deficiencies and leading to varied psychological experiences. This chapter reviews the literature on loneliness, describing what it is, why we experience it, its prevalence and consequences, and what is being done globally to address it. In doing so, we highlight the considerable impacts of loneliness on individuals and society, its complexity, and the opportunities for future work. We close acknowledging the significant advancements made in loneliness research over the past several decades and highlight how this knowledge is being mobilized to advance the prevention and treatment of loneliness. In doing so, we hope this chapter serves as a useful starting point for understanding the problem of loneliness and the challenge of addressing it.

The fairness of criminal jury trial is predicated on the jury being able to clearly understand and accurately apply the criminal standard of proof. Among legal scholars, there is a strong international consensus that the criminal standard of proof as a legal concept is a very high standard that must be met by the prosecution and judged subjectively by the jury after hearing and assessing all the evidence. There is very little consensus, though, on how best to convey this standard to the jury. In this chapter we consider the practice in the jurisdiction of England & Wales of using sure as an ordinary language legal synonym of beyond reasonable doubt. In doing so, we outline a set of legal-discursive practices that transform the notion of ‘being sure’ from a simple gut assessment to an immensely confusing legal prescription. These practices are then exemplified through a judge’s excruciating attempt to clarify the use of sure and the Court of Appeal’s misreading of the fundamental issue. The chapter ends with some recommendations.

The current chapter focuses on basic properties of communication that inform the ways that the study of communication and the study of relationships intersect. These properties include interdependence (the idea that messages simultaneously influence and are influenced by messages that precede and follow them), reflexivity (the notion that communication creates and is constrained by structure), complexity (the concept that communication conveys multiple messages and functions at different levels of analysis), ambiguity (the notion that any given message has various meanings), and indeterminancy (the idea that messages can have multiple and diverse outcomes on relationships). Research on relationship narratives, message features, multiple goals, and message processing, among other topics, is reviewed and challenges for researchers who study communication and relationships are discussed.

Part III covers the period from the end of the Popular Front in 1938 through the German occupation of France. The Popular Front had led to the marginalization and disarticulation of neo-socialism as a distinct position in the political field. Déat and the neo-socialists became unmoored from the left and thus “available” for political conversion in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Popular Front. The vector through which this happened was the reclassification of the political field around the question of war and peace. As a leading pacifist, Déat took up an anti-anti-fascist position and rallied to the politics of collaboration after the 1940 armistice. Initially seeking his place within Vichy’s “national revolution,” his failure to impose himself there led him to occupied Paris, where he came to adopt an increasingly radicalized form of collaborationist fascism modeled on Nazism through his leadership of the Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP).

In this chapter I focus on the nature of theories in the social sciences, some philosophy of science behind the validation of theories (e.g., falsifiability, approaches to deciding the value of evidence for/against a theory), and some issues to consider with respect to the research process and theory development and evaluation. I discuss the value of deconstructing theories to assess their core and auxiliary assumptions and determine aspects of a theory that have yet to be examined. I also discuss modern approaches to assess the evidentiary value of this body of research. I suggest that in our interdisciplinary field, researchers should consider generating hypotheses, as well as research explorations, through carefully evaluating and questioning the assumptions of the theories typically applied in the study of personal relationships. This discussion includes the use of modern approaches such as computational models. The overarching theme of the chapter is that as a field we need to evaluate and develop our theories using some recommendations put forward for decades combined with recently developed techniques in order to advance our theories beyond vague verbal statements that are interesting yet not precise to theories that allow for more consistent deductions of specific hypotheses.

What is the effect of one’s personality on one’s close relationships? In this chapter, we review the literature on this topic, focusing especially on the personality dimensions of self-esteem and the Big 5 traits of neuroticism and agreeableness. We review empirical studies of each of these three traits as predictors of (a) interpersonal processes and (b) relationship outcomes, including relationship satisfaction and dissolution. We also summarize any existing theoretical perspectives on these associations, including the most complete theoretical account offered for the influence of any of these traits on relationships—namely, the Self-Esteem-Infuses-Relationships-through-Trust (SIRT) model. We expect that two core assumptions of the SIRT model would be fundamental to theoretical accounts concerning any personality dimension’s influence on relationships. Specifically, (a) any trait?s influence must exert its influence through a causal chain of mediators, and (b) one of the essential mediators is behaviors between partners. Finally, we also evaluate how complete theoretical accounts concerning neuroticism and agreeableness that are likely to be offered in the future are likely to differ from or be similar to the account for self-esteem offered by the SIRT.

This chapter addresses intimate relationships of Black populations, as well as the sociocultural and economic contexts in which they are embedded. The authors underscore the heterogeneity of Black populations both in, and outside of, the United States. How racial discrimination is experienced, and the impact of that experience, differs across Black populations – underscoring heterogeneity. While some research suggests that racial discrimination contributes to negative relationship dynamics, other work suggests that when some individuals experience racial discrimination their partners engage in supportive behaviors. Despite declines and delays in marriage, many U.S.-born Blacks are still pursuing marital unions and are happily married (Skipper & Taylor, 2021; Skipper et al., 2021). This is likely a function of relational resilience, or even the Black Advantage Vision as many U.S. Black couples adapt and strive in spite of seemingly unsurmountable stressors over which they have little control.

Relationship development and growth have long drawn the interest of relationship scholars. This chapter focuses on the theoretical frameworks that have guided inquiry. We begin by explicating the term relationship development, including different ways researchers have studied it. Traditional theories (e.g., relational dialectics, relationship stage models, social exchange, social penetration, relational turning points) are described, alongside recently developed perspectives on relationship development and growth (e.g., relational turbulence theory, the relationship trajectory framework). The chapter also discusses current research associated with the theories and how this scholarship informs our understanding of the initiation of relationships and how relationships develop over the lifespan. Special attention is paid to the development and maintenance of marginalized relationships. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research, including the need to assess the ability of current theories to describe development in different relationship contexts (e.g.., friendships, courtship, families) and in different communication contexts (e.g., online, offline).

This chapter highlights the significance of intercultural communication in immigration contexts, focusing on how migration practitioners develop the specialised professional communication skills needed to successfully do their work. The data comes from the 12-month graduate course required for non-lawyers to register as migration agents in Australia. Drawing on a collection of role-play activities, where students practice conducting client interviews, and debriefing discussions following the role-plays, the analysis examines how (mis)understanding is produced and navigated. The chapter argues that language proficiency, linguistic diversity and gaps in contextual knowledge cannot fully explain the inception or under-detection of misunderstandings; but rather that these are also produced through the participants’ ongoing discursive choices. This has important implications for the design of teaching and learning materials for training migration practitioners who assist migrant applicants to complete complex and demanding legal processes.

Part II covers the period from the emergence of neo-socialism as an independent political force in late 1933 with the formation of the Parti Socialiste de France (PSdF) to its incorporation into, and marginalization by, the anti-fascist Popular Front in 1936. The period immediately following the 1933 schism is often taken to be one in which neo-socialism, unburdened by the doctrinal shackles of the SFIO, could express itself freely and reveal its true colors. Moreover, the fact that the neo-socialists embraced “order, authority, nation” as their watchwords and the fact of their experimentation with a fascisant discourse during a period of political crisis in 1934 appear to lend credence to the notion that neo-socialism was always-already a proto-fascist ideology and thus at the root of Déat’s collaborationist fascism during the occupation. A closer look at this period, however, suggests a more complex and crooked path for the neo-socialists.

This chapter introduces the case of Marcel Déat, a leader of the French Socialist Party who founded one of the main collaborationist parties during the German occupation of France. I define political conversion and argue that accounts of it tend to be marked by a continuity bias. This is true of extant accounts of Déat’s conversion, which emphasize the significance of neo-socialism in determining his trajectory. I argue that this explanatory emphasis on ideological continuity is theoretically and empirically unsound. As an alternative approach, I introduce what I call the practical logic of political conversion, drawing on anti-essentialist and relational theories of political ideologies that treat these as articulated products of classification struggles within political fields. I argue further that the fundamentally discontinuous and relational character of political conversion means that it should be analyzed in terms of what Bourdieu calls “trajectory.” I end with an overview of the book.

As the political crisis of 1934 passed, Déat and the neo-socialists dropped their equivocal posture and returned to the parliamentary preoccupations of their past, merging with other independent reformist socialist parties to form the Union Socialiste et Républicaine (USR). The USR was drawn into the orbit of the anti-fascist Popular Front coalition, but the Popular Front would prove to be a political disaster for the neo-socialists. With the Socialists willing to govern and the Communists emerging as the primary bearers of the Popular Front’s popular-democratic and national-popular mystique, the neo-socialists struggled to distinguish themselves within the political field, resulting in a poor showing in the 1936 elections that brought the Popular Front to power. The Popular Front period was significant for Déat and the neo-socialists’ trajectory, not because it provided a bridge between neo-socialism and fascism, but because it led to the marginalization and disarticulation of neo-socialism.

Aggression in an intimate relationship violates commonly held expectations that a romantic partner will be loving and supportive. Partner aggression erodes the quality of a relationship and can cause people to experience significant psychological distress and pain. This chapter critically examines research on features of aggression in relationships, how partner aggression is regulated and maintained, and interventions and efforts to address partner aggression. We aim to convey the current state of research on partner aggression and suggest new directions for research.

This chapter reviews the literature on responses to wrongdoing in close relationships. We begin by discussing what we know about transgressions as they occur in relationships. We then explore research and theorizing on three related but distinct ways of responding to wrongdoing (forgiveness, unforgiveness, and revenge) that vary in the nature of the response, the research attention they have attracted among those who study relationships, and the extent to which they are viewed as appropriate, desirable, and healthy. We also consider directions for future research and comment on how current methodology and theory can be extended in this area. We ultimately encourage relationship scholars to approach investigation of relational wrongdoing with openness to the possibility that forgiveness may not always and inevitably be the best way forward by exploring when, for whom, and under what circumstances both forgiveness and its less favourably viewed alternatives produce desirable versus undesirable outcomes.

This chapter examines the ways in which barristers signpost new topics and topic changes when they cross-examine vulnerable witnesses in criminal trials. Topic signposting is recommended in professional good practice guidelines and toolkits when questioning vulnerable witnesses to avoid the rapid changing of topics that can be seen in traditional cross-examination. Rapidly changing topics can potentially confuse or disorient vulnerable witnesses and topic signposting is thought to help in focusing witness attention and give them time to adjust to new topics. Drawing on transcripts of 56 cross-examinations in criminal trials across the UK and Ireland, the analysis in this chapter explores the extent to which barristers are using topic signposting when questioning vulnerable witnesses, what the most common forms of signposting are, and whether it helps witnesses give their best evidence. The chapter also reveals instances in which topic signposting can give rise to unexpected difficulties in interactions with vulnerable witnesses.