Caryl Rusbult

Caryl E. Rusbult was a professor and chair of the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She died from uterine cancer on January 27, 2010. Rusbult received her B.A. in Sociology from UCLA (1974) and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1978). During her time as a professor at Chapel Hill (1986–2004) she made seminal contributions to theoretical social psychology including the investment model of commitment processes, a theoretical model of accommodation processes, and the Michelangelo effect.