H UMAN BE H AVIOR & EVOLUTION SOCIETY Summer-Fall 2007 Newsletter In This Issue View From the President’s Window Featured Interview The next HBES conference will be held at Kyoto University, Japan, June 4 - June 8, MisMannered 2008. The conference website is http://beep.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~hbes2008/index.htm. Abstract submission will be open soon. March 15 is the deadline for all submissions. The Student Voice Conference News HBES 2007 HBES 2007 CONFERENCE COMPETITION WINNERS HBES 2008 Congratulations to the winners of the HBES Conference Competitions! Announcements Winner of the New Investigator Competition: Thomas Currie Members in the News Winner of the Postdoctoral Investigator Competition: Thomas Hills Jobs & Collaborations Start an EVOS Program Winners of the Poster Competition: Brian Bergstrom & Pascal Boyer Special Features SPECIAL FEATURES Letters From the Editors Does Evolutionary Training Make Students Smarter? by David Sloan Wilson Resources The 2007 European Human Behaviour & Evolution Conference The North Eastern Evolutionary Psychology Society Meeting View Interview MisMannered Students From the President’s Window | David Buss Elaine Hatfield Doug Kenrick The Student Voice | Aaron Blackwell In this issue, out-going The featured interview is with Out in the deserts of Tempe Student representative Aaron HBES president David Buss Elaine Hatfield, Professor of There works a true devotee Blackwell takes a look at the reflects on the maturation Psychology at the University Who’s clever and keen breakdown of HBES student of our society and the road of Hawaii. Well known to the Good proof of his genes members by discipline. In Read, you’ll laugh I guarantee ahead. Thank-you, David, for evolutionary crowd for her addition, read the Featured your service to our society!! publication with Clark on sex Student Profile of Amy Welcome to in-coming HBES differences in receptivity to Christmas has come early! Cavanaugh, president sexual offers, You’re not Steve Elaine has going to a doctoral Gangestad, helped pave want to miss student in Professor of the way for the new Biology at the Psychology at the scientific MisMannered University of UNM. study of love. piece. Louisville. Read more... Read more... Read more... Read more... © Copyright HBES 2007 - All Rights Reserved | email: [email protected] | web: www.hbes.com View From the President’s Window | David Buss The Evolution of HBES to evolutionary work had mushroomed; collectively, citations to s HBES moves into its 19th year, it’s worthwhile evolutionary work in the leading textbooks to reflect back on its infancy and look ahead to its number in the thousands. Topics such as mating strategies, A transition to adulthood. The first official HBES meeting parental investment, kin selection, and altruism, all formerly occurred in 1989 at Northwestern University. By unanimous vote, absent, became topics critical to cover. The tone shifted in a W.D. Hamilton was elected first President. During Hamilton’s decidedly positive direction; and treatments were judged to be presentation, he expressed surprise and dismay at how little more often accurate than not. In 1989, there existed not a single modern evolutionary theory had penetrated the social sciences, textbook in evolutionary psychology. Now there are more than especially given how rapid the transformation had occurred a dozen, some translated into other languages such as German, in evolutionary biology. Perhaps, he mused, we will always Polish, Korean, and Chinese. In 1989, PhD’s with a focus on remain a small and tattered group, ignored and dismissed by evolution and human behavior rarely got placed in academic mainstream social scientists. He hoped for more, though, which positions. Now, the top evolutionary students regularly secure is why he agreed in 1989 to serve as HBES’s first President. tenure track jobs at colleges and universities from coast to coast. I do not underestimate the obstacles, hostilities, and forces The infant HBES certainly met Hamilton’s description. But a that oppose this scientific revolution. They are real, and sense of excitement filled the air during that 1989 meeting. It many of us are forced to spend too much time battling them. felt like a birth of something grand. It seemed like the beginning And the adolescent HBES struggles with many issues other of an exhilarating scientific revolution, one that would transform adolescents struggle with—a sense of identify and figuring profoundly the scientific understanding of human behavior. I out what sort of adult it wants to be. But I like to think that remember asking my friend Frank Sulloway, a Harvard-trained Bill Hamilton, whose life was cut tragically short in the year historian of science, for his prognostication for the field. “Your 2000, would have been happily surprised at how deeply stock will rise over time,” he said “but it will rise very slowly.” A evolutionary theory has penetrated the social sciences. And by few years later, when HBES became a toddler, I asked him again. how many have now joined our once small and tattered band. This time, Frank said “Your stock is rising faster than I thought.” As HBES reached puberty in the early 2000’s, Frank’s forecasts became increasingly optimistic. Appropriately so. A few indications signaled the shift. In 1989, students interested in evolution and human behavior had few places I would like to thank to go—perhaps Michigan, Northwestern, McMaster, with a members of HBES for the smattering of isolated evolutionists elsewhere. In 2007 the HBES home page lists 52 universities to study evolution honor of allowing me to serve and human behavior in the North America alone, and many as president for the past two others throughout the world. New interdisciplinary programs are formed nearly every year as more and more universities years, and best wishes to my reach a critical mass of evolutionists across departments. successor Steve Gangestad. Another indication from mainstream psychology centers on citations in introductory textbooks. According to an analysis published by R. Elizabeth Cornwell and her colleagues (2005), reference David M. Buss to work in evolution and human behavior in the late 1980’s was practically non-existent. When it was discussed, the tone, more often than not, was decidedly negative. And the treatment, more often than not, was scandalously inaccurate. By 2004, citations Featured Interview | Elaine Hatfield laine Hatfield is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii. Elaine is perhaps most well-known in our evening chats. within the HBES community for her publication with E Because of the bravery Russell Clark (Clark, R. D. & Hatfield, E. 1989. Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers. Journal of Psychology & Human and generosity of my mentor, Leon Festinger, Sexuality, 2, 39-55). Today, Elaine is one of the most cited social I was afforded the opportunity to attempt a rigorous psychologists having published many articles, chapters, and investigation of passionate love as part of my graduate books on love and emotional contagion. Throughout her career work. she has witnessed a number of changes including the increase in the number of women in psychology and the establishment The first signs of trouble appeared in the Spring of 1963, of scientific programs of research on love and attraction. when I tried to find a faculty position. I came on the (Elaine was awarded Senator Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Award job market during the “Sputnik era.” America was in for studying companionate and passionate love!!). I hope you a race—fueled by misinformation and terror—with the have a chance to meet her one day -- she is truly a wonderful USSR, and huge amounts of money were being poured person with a gigantic heart. Please enjoy this special interview. into education. Anyone could get a job—or so I thought. Festinger told me that I was the “best graduate student” DL: Can you describe what it was like starting off he’d ever had—probably he told everyone that—and, in as a female academic interested in passionate love a burst of hubris, promised that he could get me a job and sexual desire? What was the atmosphere like at anywhere I wanted. Stanford? I wanted the best—which at that time meant Harvard, EH: In 1959, I entered the Ph.D. program at Stanford Yale, or Bell Labs. We soon discovered that it was not University. By then, I had developed an intellectual to be as easy as we had supposed. Chairs were frank in interest in passionate love, sexual desire, and mate saying that a woman would not fit in at their universities. selection. I knew, of course, that theorizing about such They assured us that they were personally in favor of topics was “taboo.” Passionate love was considered to hiring women, but lamented that their colleagues or their be a trivial phenomenon; it wasn’t a respectable topic of students would never accept such an appointment. study; it wasn’t amenable to scientific investigation; there wasn’t any hope of finding out very much about love in I finally accepted a job paying $8,200 a year at the my lifetime. And it wasn’t “hot”—the hot topic in the University of Minnesota, at the Student Activities Bureau, 1960s was mathematical modeling. arranging dances!! (Anyone who knows how shy and non-social I am finds that a big joke!) Trying to spin Math modeling and rat runways. If we ignored the first gold from straw, I embarked on a program of scientific and last thirds of the runway in rat experiments (too research on close relationships in dating situations. I much variability in rat behavior there) and concentrated volunteered to teach two social psychology courses and on the middle third (where rat behavior generally settled to supervise psychology graduate students.