Northeastern Evolutionary
Psychology Society
society officers
(2024-2027)
President: Catherine Salmon
Dr. Catherine Salmon is a Professor at the University of Redlands. She is the co-author (with Donald Symons) of "Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution and Female Sexuality" as well as “The Secret Power of Middle Children” in collaboration with Katrin Schumann. She has written chapters in numerous books including “The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology” and is an associate editor at the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, as well as the co-editor of the books “Evolutionary Psychology: Public Policy and Personal Decisions” (with Charles Crawford) and “Family Psychology: An Evolutionary Perspective” (with Todd Shackelford).
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She was the Editor in Chief of NEEPS' flagship journal: Evolutionary Behavioral Science, and was the Keynote Speaker in 2017.
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Vice President: Rebecca Burch
Dr. Rebecca Burch is a Full Professor at SUNY Oswego. She received her Ph.D. at SUNY Albany in Evolution and Human Behavior. Her main research interests are the evolution of sexual behavior, sexual signaling, domestic violence, and cultural differences and similarities in various human behaviors, including sex, parenting, play, gender, and development. She also has an interest in evolution’s effect on popular culture. She has previously taught at SUNY Albany and Colby College.
Dr. Burch has publications on the topics of seminal composition and human physiology and behavior, genital morphology, intimate partner violence (focusing on the role of sexual jealousy and prevention strategies), and sexual signaling. These publications have garnered interest from the media, including nonfiction books (e.g., “Why is the Penis Shaped like that?”, “Bonk”, “The Dangerous Passion”), novels (“The Hitchhiker’s Child”), and innumerable websites, blogs, new outlets, and magazines.
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Membership Chair: Anastasia Makhanova
Dr. Anastasia (Stacey) Makhanova is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas. She first came to NEEPS, by herself, when she was an undergraduate student at Hendrix College and has attended every conference since. Stacey received her Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her research focuses on the ways that people's social perceptions are affected by different fundamental motives (e.g., pathogen avoidance, affiliation, relationship maintenance, parenting) and biological processes (e.g., hormones, immune system activity, genetics). Her favorite part of NEEPS is the friendly environment that focuses on helping students advance their research.
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Treasurer: David Widman
David Widman is a Professor of Psychology at Juniata College in Central Pennsylvania. He received his B.S. in Psychology from the University of Wyoming and his Ph. D. in Biopsychology from The University at Albany, SUNY. His research interests have always been looking toward an evolutionary framework for behavior, whether that was in rats and Pavlovian conditioning to spatial skills in both humans and rats to religious behavior in humans and currently mating and dating behavior in humans. His first NEEPS was the infamous third NEEPS at Oswego where he was hooked on the community and welcoming nature of NEEPS.
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Communication Officer: Mitch Brown
Dr. Mitch Brown is faculty at University of Arkansas. He received his PhD in experimental psychology from The University of Southern Mississippi. His research primarily considers the interplay between social perception and fundamental social motives, focusing primarily on pathogen avoidance, mate preferences, and formidability. Mitch appreciates the opportunity that NEEPS provides to ensure students feel like they are actively part of scientific discourse in addition to how the Society encourages his pro wrestling antics at conferences as the "Forklift".
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Communication Officer: Toe Aung
Dr. Toe Aung, is an Assistant Professor at Immaculata University. As a Social Officer with NEEPS, Toe strives to create engaging visuals and informative social media posts to make our special NEEPS experiences more accessible to the academic community. Toe attended his first NEEPS conference in 2016 and felt inspired to continue his journey in Evolutionary Psychology. Outside of research and teaching, Toe enjoys spending his free time with his wife and toddler, taking his two dogs to the park, and playing Scrabble.
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Student Representative: Rebeckah Hahnel Peeters
Rebecka Hahnel-Peeters is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. She uses an adaptationist perspective to study sexual conflict, men's rape proclivity, and women's adaptations against sexual exploitation. As the student representative of NEEPS, Rebecka strives to create an inclusive and accessible NEEPS community for undergraduate and graduate students alike. Rebecka attended her first NEEPS conference in 2021. Outside of academia, Rebecka enjoys spending her free time crocheting and camping with her husband.
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Member at Large: Hannah Bradshaw
Dr. Hannah K. Bradshaw is a visiting professor in the department of psychology at Monmouth College. She received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Texas Christian University. Her research crosses a wide range of topics, but she tends to use an evolutionary theoretical lens to investigate research questions related to disgust sensitivity, women’s social relationships, and consumer preferences and behavior. Hannah’s favorite part of NEEPS is the people.
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Member at Large: Hidenori Komatsu
Dr. Hidenori Komatsu is a Senior Researcher at Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Tokyo. Since his first NEEPS 2012 in New Hampshire, he has been flying from Japan and joining most NEEPS conferences every year. His ultimate goal is to establish a meta-theory for the intersection of Behavioral Science and Evolutionary Psychology, with the help of evolutionary simulation models, such as a methodology for designing nudges based on altruistic motivations. He is an Academic Editor of PLOS One.
Member at Large: Gordon Bear
Gordon grew up in Minnesota. Educated at Yale University in the 1960s, he became intrigued by the social sciences – anthropology, psychology, and sociology – and chose experimental social psychology for his life’s work. The standard social-science model (SSSM) with its denial of human nature was already under dispute at other universities, but at Yale in that decade it prevailed as an implicit ideology that Gordon acquired uncritically. Only in the 1990s did the fish discover that he had been swimming in the SSSM all his life. His mind was opened by two books: David Buss’s treatment of mating psychology, The Evolution of Desire; and Robert Wright’s biography of Darwin, The Moral Animal.
When NEEPS was founded at SUNY New Paltz in 2007, Gordon was an hour south, teaching at Ramapo College, where he had created a course in evolutionary psychology that vexed some of his colleagues. Through NEEPS he now met congenial scientists and came to appreciate the wisdom of David Hume’s dictum that “Truth springs from argument amongst friends.”
Gordon has attended every one of NEEPS’s thus far 14 annual meetings and has presented eight talks or posters, seven of them with students as collaborators. He has also reviewed manuscripts (16 and counting) submitted to the journals Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Evolution & Human Behavior, the EvoS Journal, Frontiers in Psychology, and Human Ethology Bulletin.
In 2021 the Executive Board of NEEPS honored Gordon by naming two awards after him: those for the best talk by a student and the best poster by a student. Gordon is proud to have thereby become eponymous.