[4] Murray received the Wegner Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in 2007[5] for collaborative work with John G. Holmes and Nancy Collins.
[6] Murray's 1996 paper on the benefits of positive illusions in close relationships(with Holmes and Griffin as co-authors) received the Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Scientific Impact Award in 2021.
[8][9] This book introduces a motivation management model for understanding how romantic partners accommodate each other's needs for commitment, reciprocity, and responsiveness, and establish habitual ways of relating to one another.
[10] Murray attended graduate school at the University at Waterloo in Canada where she received her Ph.D. in Psychology and began her long-term collaboration with Holmes.
Murray and her colleagues have explored whether having an idealized view of one's romantic partner contributes to relationship satisfaction or whether it might set people up for disappointment.