Glenn Geher’s research while affiliated with SUNY New Paltz and other places

The American social and political climate has become increasingly polarized. To explore the effects of politically based ingroup biases as they relate to intended helping of others, we designed a study in which we hypothesized that people who are extreme on the political spectrum will intend to help in-group members more so than out-group members. Using an experimental manipulation, we asked participants to choose if extremely progressive (N = 212; mean age = 22.9; 69% female), extremely conservative (N = 47; mean age = 32.8; 55% male), or neither represented their political beliefs. Participants were randomized to one of two vignettes, each depicting either a pro-blue lives matter or pro-black lives matter scenario. Results showed that, controlling for both age and gender, progressives were less likely to help out-group members compared with individuals in any other condition. Dispositional variables were also measured with dark and light triad traits. Light triad traits tended to positively predict helping intentions across conditions. Implications for understanding the psychology of helping are discussed.

This book provides a cutting-edge overview of emotion science from an evolutionary perspective. Part 1 outlines different ways of approaching the study of emotion; Part 2 covers specific emotions from an evolutionary perspective; Part 3 discusses the role of emotions in a variety of life domains; and Part 4 explores the relationship between emotions and psychological disorders. Experts from a number of different disciplines—psychology, biology, anthropology, psychiatry, and more—tackle a variety of “how” (proximate) and “why” (ultimate) questions about the function of emotions in humans and nonhuman animals, how emotions work, and their place in human life. This volume documents the explosion of knowledge in emotion science over the last few decades, outlines important areas of future research, and highlights key questions that have yet to be answered.

Science is among humanity’s greatest achievements, yet scientific censorship is rarely studied empirically. We explore the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship (defined as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality). Popular narratives suggest that scientific censorship is driven by authoritarian officials with dark motives, such as dogmatism and intolerance. Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups. This perspective helps explain both recent findings on scientific censorship and recent changes to scientific institutions, such as the use of harm-based criteria to evaluate research. We discuss unknowns surrounding the consequences of censorship and provide recommendations for improving transparency and accountability in scientific decision-making to enable the exploration of these unknowns. The benefits of censorship may sometimes outweigh costs. However, until costs and benefits are examined empirically, scholars on opposing sides of ongoing debates are left to quarrel based on competing values, assumptions, and intuitions.

A review of the book “Evolutionary science of human behavior: an interdisciplinary approach”, edited by Peter LaFreniere and Glenn Weisfeld (2014).

Since the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859), evolutionary theory has been both venerated and ridiculed by countless scholars throughout academia and beyond. Beyond just the basic evolutionary theory present in Darwin’s classic books, there is the hotly contested idea of an evolutionary basis of psychology. This idea, while endorsed by Darwin himself, continues to endure through attacks even today. This chapter focuses on the rocky history as well as the political present of evolutionary psychology. Not only is evolutionary psychology faced with political outrage vis-à-vis Christian fundamentalism, but this field also faces hostility from social psychologists and their insistence on a “blank slate” model of the human mind. The perceived partisanship of evolutionary psychology in the Nature vs. Nurture debate that has raged over the past few decades has not helped the reputation of the field. All of this takes place as evolutionary psychologists work to push back against intellectual efforts to tear it down. The modern heterodox movement that is emerging across the world of academia is, in an interesting way, facilitating a broader understanding and acceptance ofapplying evolutionary approaches to behavior. Herein, we describe the politics that currently surround the field of evolutionary psychology as well as some potential future that this field may realize in the ever-treacherous landscape of the academy.

Over the past few decades, evolutionary psychology has shed light on such features of the human experience as mating, love, religion, aggression, warfare, physical health, mental health, and more. The field of positive psychology has progressed along a parallel trajectory, using behavioral science techniques to help our understanding of human thriving at the individual and community levels. Positive Evolutionary Psychology is dedicated to the integration of positive and evolutionary psychology, with an eye toward using Darwinian-inspired concepts to help advance our understanding of human thriving. This Element describes the basic ideas of this new approach to behavioral science as well as examples that dip into various aspects of the human experience, including such topics as health, education, friendships, love, and more–all with an eye toward providing a roadmap for the application of Darwinian principles to better understanding human thriving and the good life.

Research on heterosexual mating has demonstrated that acoustic parameters (e.g., pitch) of men’s voices influence their attractiveness to women and appearance of status and formidability to other men. However, little is known about how men’s tendency to clearly articulate their speech influences these important social perceptions. In the current study, we used a repeated-measures design to investigate how men’s articulatory clarity or conformity influenced women’s (N = 45) evaluations of men’s attractiveness for both short- and long-term relationships, and men's (N = 46) evaluations of physical formidability and prestige. Results largely supported our hypotheses: men who enunciated phonemes more distinctly were more attractive to women for long-term relationships than short-term relationships and were perceived by other men to have higher prestige than physical dominance. These findings suggest that aspects of articulatory behavior that influence perceptions of prestige and long-term mating attractiveness may indicate an early social history characterized by high socioeconomic status, likely owing to crystallization of articulatory patterns during the critical period of language development. These articulatory patterns may also be honest signals of condition or disposition owing to the nature of complex, multicomponent traits, which deserve further empirical attention.