Evolutionary Psychology And Pop Culture w/ Catherine Salmon

Hello, everybody! To end the week, I bring you an interview with Dr. Catherine Salmon. She is a Full Professor in the psychology department at the University of Redlands. She is the co-author (with Donald Symons) of Warrior Lovers: Erotic fiction, evolution and female sexuality. She has written chapters in numerous books including Buss' Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and The Literary Animal. She is also a co-editor of the books Evolutionary Psychology: Public Policy and Personal Decisions (with Charles Crawford) Family Psychology: An Evolutionary Perspective and the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology (both with Todd Shackelford), and co-author with Katrin Schuman of The Secret Power of Middle Children. Her primary research interests include birth order and the family, reproductive suppression and dieting behavior, and female sexuality, particularly with regard to prostitution and pornography. Her interest in pop culture also led to co-authoring a chapter on female wrestling fans and their fantasies in Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling.

In this episode, we cover several different topics of Dr. Salmon’s work. We first talk about birth order, parental investment and sibling conflict, and also how there might be parent-offspring conflict over mates. We also refer to evolutionary approaches to dieting behavior and anorexia in women. And then we get into topics of popular culture and consumer behavior, like pornography, romance novels, and slash fiction. Near the end, Dr. Salmon tells us about her upcoming book, co-authored with Barry Kuhle, On the Origin of the Evolution Revolution: Conversations with the Pioneers of Evolutionary Biology, Anthropology, and Psychology.

https://youtu.be/pz9XQeX33Kk

Link to podcast version (Anchor): http://bit.ly/32N07TX