Saida Heshmati is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Division of Behavioral & Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University, where she directs the Human Emotions and Relationships across Time and Culture (HEART) Lab. Her research examines how culture, relationships, and emotions dynamically shape well-being across daily life, the lifespan, and diverse societies.
Her work has advanced two interconnected lines: (1) developing the Cultural Consensus Theory of Love to map shared cultural beliefs about love and connection, and (2) modeling well-being as a dynamic process using intensive longitudinal designs, computational tools, and machine learning. Across these areas, Heshmati’s contributions combine substantive advances in relationship science with methodological innovations such as Ecological Momentary Assessment, dynamic network analysis, and Bayesian time-series models.
She is currently Principal Investigator of a Templeton-funded cross-cultural study of love spanning six countries and has received recognition including the International Positive Psychology Association Early Career Researcher Award. Through this work, she aims to build culturally grounded and methodologically rigorous frameworks for understanding human flourishing.
Co-authored with Z. Oravecz, et al. “Psychological well-being and personality traits are associated with experiencing love in everyday life.” Personality and Individual Differences (2020): 153.
Co-authored with Zita Oravecz, et al. “What does it mean to feel loved: Cultural consensus and individual differences.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (2017): 1-30.
Co-authored with Dave A. Sbarra and Ashley E. Mason. “The contemptuous breakup: Facial expressions of emotion and breakups in young adulthood.” Personal Relationships 24, no. 2 (2017): 453-469.
Co-authored with Timothy R. Brick, Robert W. Roeser, and Zita Oravecz. “EMA-adapted PERMA as a correlational network: Empirical evidence for daily measures of well-being via network analysis.” (Under review)
Co-authored with Timothy R. Brick and Zita Oravecz. “Developing an ecological momentary assessment measure of psychological well-being: A multilevel factor analysis.” (Under review)
Co-authored with Zita Oravecz. “Individual differences in beliefs on indicators of love relates to personality characteristics and well-being.” (Pending final review)
Academic Conference Presentations
Co-presented with Zita Oravecz. “Dynamical interplay of wellbeing elements based on the PERMA model in ecological momentary assessment settings.” Individual podium presentation at the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA), Montreal, CA. July, 2017.
“The effect of Positive Psychology and mindfulness interventions on well-being in daily life.” Workshop at the Association for Psychological Science (APS), Boston, MA. May, 2017.
Positive Relationships Across the Lifespan
Positive Education, The Science of Human Flourishing (transdisciplinary course), Emotions, Longitudinal Methods