astronomy

Omri Gillath

Omri Gillath is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Omri Gillath rather than just read about it. In short: Omri Gillath (Hebrew: עמרי גילת; born 1970) is an Israeli-American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, where he directs the Gillath Lab.

Key takeaways

Omri Gillath belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Omri Gillath to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Omri Gillath from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Omri Gillath (Hebrew: עמרי גילת; born 1970) is an Israeli-American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, where he directs the Gillath Lab. His research applies attachment theory to adult relationships, using methods drawn from social psychology and social neuroscience, and addresses close relationships, caregiving, sexuality, prosocial behavior, friendship, social networks, and Artificial Intelligence. Gillath has co-authored two books, Relationship Science (2012) and Adult Attachment: A Concise Introduction to Theory and Research (2016), and has served as an associate editor of several journals in the field of personality and social psychology.

Early life and education Gillath was born in 1970. He received a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Haifa in 1997, where as an undergraduate he worked in the stress laboratory of psychologist Shlomo Breznitz. He then studied at Bar-Ilan University, earning a Master of Arts in experimental psychology in 2000 and a PhD in 2003 under the supervision of Mario Mikulincer, a prominent attachment researcher. From 2003 to 2006, Gillath was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Davis, where he worked with attachment researcher Phillip Shaver and the cognitive neuroscientist Silvia Bunge. During this period he used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain processes associated with adult attachment.

Career Gillath joined the University of Kansas in 2006 as an assistant professor of psychology. He was promoted to associate professor in 2011 and to full professor in 2016. In 2013 he was a visiting associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Between 2022 and 2024 he served as associate chair and director of graduate studies in the Department of Psychology at Kansas, and the social program director. Since 2023 he has served as the associate director of the Center for Cyber-Social Dynamics He has held a number of editorial roles, serving as associate editor of Personal Relationships (2012–2018), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2018–2021), and the interpersonal relations and group processes section of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (from 2023).

Research Gillath's work extends attachment theory—originally developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth to describe infant–caregiver bonds—to adult relationships, integrating measures of individual differences in attachment style with experimental, neuroscientific, and genetic methods. According to the academic database Research.com, his publications had received more than 12,000 citations by 2026, with a D-index of 45.

Attachment, the brain, and genetics Working with Shaver, Bunge, and Mikulincer, Gillath used neuroimaging to examine how people differing in attachment style regulate emotion, reporting that attachment-related anxiety and avoidance were associated with distinct patterns of brain activity when participants tried to suppress negative thoughts. In a 2008 study with Shaver and colleagues, he reported associations between attachment insecurity and polymorphisms of the dopamine (DRD2) and serotonin (5-HT2A) receptor genes, one of the first studies to investigate molecular-genetic correlates of adult attachment.

Attachment security priming Gillath has studied "security priming," the experimental technique of briefly exposing people to cues of safety and support to temporarily heighten felt security. In 2022 he and colleagues published a meta-analysis in Personality and Social Psychology Review synthesizing 120 studies (about 19,000 participants), reporting that security priming produced a moderate positive effect across affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes, while also addressing concerns about the replicability of priming research.

Friendship and social networks Gillath has applied attachment theory to friendship and social networks. A 2017 study he led, combining attachment theory with social network analysis, reported that the patterns governing romantic and parent–child relationships also shape people's broader networks of friends; the work received coverage in outlets including ScienceDaily. Related research has examined "relational mobility" and people's willingness to dissolve social ties.

Attachment, technology, and artificial intelligence More recently, Gillath has extended attachment research to human interactions with technology. In a 2021 study he and colleagues reported that boosting attachment security could increase people's willingness to trust artificial intelligence, suggesting that the psychology of human relationships also informs how people relate to machines.

Public engagement Gillath communicates attachment research to general audiences. He has written for the public-facing magazine Psychology Today and delivered a TEDx talk, "The Power of (Secure) Love," at TEDxOverlandPark.

Books Gillath, Omri; Adams, Glenn; Kunkel, Adrianne (2012). Relationship Science: Integrating Evolutionary, Neuroscience, and Sociocultural Approaches. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. ISBN 978-1-4338-1123-4. Gillath, Omri; Karantzas, Gery C.; Fraley, R. Chris (2016). Adult Attachment: A Concise Introduction to Theory and Research. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-420020-3.

Awards and honors J. Michael Young Academic Advisor Award, University of Kansas (2009) Caryl Rusbult Close Relationships Early Career Award, Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2011) SAGE Young Scholars Award, Foundation for Personality and Social Psychology (2011) Gerald R. Miller Award for Early Career Achievement, International Association for Relationship Research (2012) John C. Wright Graduate Mentor Award, University of Kansas (2016)

Fellowships Gillath has been elected a fellow of two major professional societies in his field:

Fellow, Society of Experimental Social Psychology (2009) Fellow, Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2015) Earlier in his career he held a Positive Psychology Summer Institute Fellowship (2003) and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis (2003–2006).

Personal life Gillath is married to Irit Gillath and has two children.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Omri Gillath

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Omri Gillath claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Omri Gillath before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Omri Gillath ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Omri Gillath

In research: Omri Gillath appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Omri Gillath in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Omri Gillath is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1970 births, American social psychologists, Attachment theory, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Omri Gillath outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Omri Gillath in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Omri Gillath means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Omri Gillath out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Omri Gillath in simple terms?

Omri Gillath (Hebrew: עמרי גילת; born 1970) is an Israeli-American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, where he directs the Gillath Lab.

Why does Omri Gillath matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Omri Gillath?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Omri Gillath.