About Us

Founded with the belief that healthy couples and strong families are the cornerstone of our society, the Relationship Institute at UCLA provides people from all walks of life with the information they need to understand and strengthen their relationships.

With support and funding from the National Institute of Health and National Science Foundation, we have spent decades researching relationships to understand how and why they change. Over the years, our work has been cited and used by hundreds of educators, agencies, psychologists, and mental health experts around the world.

Our mission is to share practical, research-based knowledge that serves individuals, couples, families and the greater community.

Director Biographies

Tom Bradbury, Ph. D.

Thomas N. Bradbury, Ph. D. is a Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology. After earning his PhD in Clinical Psychology in 1990 from the University of Illinois, he moved to Los Angeles to start the Marriage and Family Development Laboratory at UCLA. Since then, Bradbury and his team have conducted several longitudinal studies that help explain how marriages change and how couples can keep their relationship healthy and strong. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation, Bradbury and his collaborators have published more than 100 research articles and three edited books, including The Psychology of Marriage.

Recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the UCLA Psychology Department, Bradbury has also been honored with several awards for his research on marriage and intimate relationships, including the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Achievements from the American Psychological Association. Bradbury is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at eHarmony.com, and he is an affiliated professor at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He speaks regularly at universities and conferences in the US, and he has presented his research findings in London, Cambridge, Tel Aviv, Milan, Heidelberg, Zurich, Geneva, Wellington, Christchurch, Toronto, and Vancouver. Married since 1988, Dr. Bradbury lives in Westwood with his wife, a neuroscientist, and their two children.

Ben Karney, Ph.D.

Benjamin R. Karney, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology, and an adjunct behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation. After receiving his doctorate in Social Psychology from UCLA in 1997, he joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Florida, where he was director of the Florida Project on Newlywed Marriage and Adult Development. In 2004, he returned to Los Angeles where he continues to study how relationships are constrained or enhanced by the environments in which they take place. To date, this research has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the Administration on Children and Families, and the Fetzer Institute. Dr. Karney is co-author of an undergraduate textbook and video series on Intimate Relationships used by relationship experts around the world.

While consulting on family issues for a range of clients, Karney serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Marriage and Family, the Journal of Family Issues, the Journal of Family Psychology, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In addition to numerous awards for his teaching, Karney has twice received the National Council on Family Relation's Reuben Hill Research and Theory Award for outstanding contributions to family science. He lives north of Los Angeles with his wife, a dietician and health educator, and their daughter.