Editor Spotlight

Catherine Salmon, PhD, is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Redlands.

With expertise in evolutionary psychology and human sexuality, Dr. Salmon has served as associate editor of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, as well as book review editor for Evolutionary Psychological Science.

Dr. Salmon is also the treasurer for the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES).

Dr. Salmon received her BSc in Biology and PhD in Psychology from McMaster University.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

My overall perspective is an evolutionary one, and my specific interests fall into the following areas: how birth order influences family and other close relationships, the role of reproductive suppression in eating disorders and dieting behavior, sex differences in interest in erotica and pornography, and how studies of pop culture can inform our view of human psychology.

I have a BSc in Biology and a PhD in Psychology.

My most recent journal editing work has been as an associate editor with Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and as the book review editor at Evolutionary Psychological Science.

Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?

Growing readership is certainly a priority. I think there are several ways this can be done. Utilizing social media to highlight papers that will have broad interest is one way, and engaging in more outreach at conferences in the area, (including NEEPS, HBES, and SPSP) is another.

Personally, I'd like to see more new, cutting edge work: interdisciplinary approaches to topics that haven't been examined in that way much before.

I want Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences to be the journal where new and novel work that's interesting and sometimes controversial is found. In doing that, we will grow our readership and gain the attention of scholars in a variety of disciplines beyond psychology.

This journal should serve as a nexus for work in any field that can benefit from using an adaptationist lens to examine behavior and behavioral mechanisms.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now?

At Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, we have a much broader scope than many, if not all, of the other journals in the field. This includes providing an interdisciplinary forum to bring together psychologists with scholars in other fields to further an evolutionary understanding of not only human universals but also of individual differences.

The goal is to provide a venue for theoretical work that is a true synthesis of disciplines that can then be assessed empirically.

The relevance to society really varies with the type of articles submitted. For example, articles examining the dysfunction approach to mental health have clear implications for how we might better manage depression in our current environment.

More broadly, a more complete and accurate understanding of human behavior can inform a wide variety of public policy issues. A lack of accurate understanding of human nature is pretty much a guarantee that policy relevant to that behavior will fail.

There has been a shift away from the very theoretical work, with people testing assumptions that have been made in the past and finding some contradictory results. Darwinian Medicine approaches to mental health and cancer, casual sexual behavior and hooking up, sibling conflict and relatedness, and hormone research have been picking up a lot over the past few years.

There is still a significant interest in the mismatch between modern and ancestral environments and how ancestral adaptations function (or not) in the current environment.

What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?

The anti-science bias that we currently see in the U.S. certainly isn't helping the field in the broad sense, especially when it comes to financial support for primary or basic research as opposed to applied research.

In a narrow sense, the evolutionarily informed approach is facing some challenges in terms of finally being big enough that small factions have developed. In addition, while many of us feel an evolutionary approach can be applied broadly across all subfields of psychology as well as many other disciplines, some people in the field hold a very narrow focus.

In this sense, I think Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences can provide a forum to help meet this challenge by bringing together interdisciplinary work that is relevant across these boundaries.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Are you making any changes?

I do not have any plans at this point for major changes to the process, though I am planning to have a meeting with the associate editors in the spring to discuss our mission more generally and to discuss interest in working on special issues on "hot" topics in the field.

We currently have two special issues in the pipeline under Dan's editorship, so I feel that we have some time to discuss and plan for more in the future. One possibility that I would like us to consider is a special issue on aging.

We will also be adding a new associate editor to fill my previous position and she will bring a developmental (EVODEVO) perspective to the associate editor group (and might consider leading such a special issue effort).

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