HBES Executive Council Statement in Defense of Science

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HBES stands in defense of the values of scientific inquiry and in opposition to censorship and the defunding of peer-reviewed research projects in the US whose grants were awarded by agencies and processes that have been subject to congressional oversight for decades. We support worldwide rallies in March 2025 calling for continued public funding of scientific research.

The Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) is an international, nonprofit, non-partisan organization that welcomes scholars with diverse backgrounds, viewpoints, and areas of expertise who investigate the evolutionary bases of psychology and behavior. Our mission is to foster and support evolutionary research and researchers around the world, and we stand in support of efforts in all countries to protect scientific research and researchers from interference and threats to scientific freedom. Importantly, research projects on many phenomena that are key to the study of human evolution, such as sex and gender differences and cultural diversity, face the possibility of systematic defunding in the US, directly impacting the work of HBES members.

Historically, the United States Government has allocated funds to government agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and many others, to finance research that has been a foundation for scientific knowledge and the health and prosperity of U.S. citizens. Hindering the disbursement of approved funds and disrupting the operations of these agencies jeopardizes the U.S. scientific enterprise, and the health and well-being of U.S. citizens.

HBES calls for an immediate return to the bipartisan overview of, and investment in, scientific research that has long characterized US policy.

Signed,

The HBES Executive Council

Announcing HBES on Bluesky – @HumBehEvoSoc.bsky.social

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As a celebration of Darwin’s birthday, HBES is proud to announce our presence on a new social media platform – HBES now has an account on Bluesky! We will start posting news and updates under our Bluesky account name (@HumBehEvoSoc.bsky.social). This is the same as our Twitter (X) handle (@HumBehEvoSoc), except formatted for Bluesky. The account is new, so it’s still a little empty, but this will change as a we post more and more news and updates.

Bluesky is quickly becoming one of the major social media platforms. As many of you know, many people find that Twitter (X) has become increasingly unpleasant to use in recent years. This is not just political: many people have commented that it’s a less user-friendly experience than it used to be, with more ads, more spam, more bots, worse algorithms, irrelevant feeds, unwanted interjections from its owner, among other complaints. As the HBES Communications Officer, this declining experience has made me yearn for an alternative to Twitter for years. After all, HBES should be about the science, and few of us want to wade through reams of irrelevant stuff to get our information. But which platform? Bluesky seems to be coming out on top, and many HBES members have already switched. As such, I’m very happy to create the new HBES Bluesky account and start posting there.

Due to this experience, I will gradually search less and less for HBES-relevant information on Twitter and do so more on HBES Bluesky. For now, I will post all important HBES announcements on both platforms and on our Facebook account. However, I will check the Twitter feed less often because it is increasingly filled with irrelevant junk despite my efforts – I can only sort through so many ads and Twitter-sponsored intrusions to see what to re-post. Please remember that the HBES Communications Officer is a volunteer position! I will monitor engagement on both platforms, but if the worsening experience with Twitter (X) continues, then I will use it less and less unless the “engagement to irrelevance ratio” remains high. Ultimately, it comes down to where we get enough engagement to make it worth the hassle. The next HBES Communications Officer – whoever that is – will determine their own social media policy. Thank you for your understanding.

Looking forward to interacting with everyone on Bluesky!

Sincerely,

Pat Barclay (HBES Communications Officer)

An issue of EHB

Print subscriptions to E&HB are ending

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HBES has recently had to renegotiate our contract for our society’s journal, Evolution and Human Behavior (EHB), with the publisher, Elsevier. It had traditionally been part of this contract that HBES pays for the mailing of print copies to members who request a print copy. This costs the society a fair bit of money in mailing fees. Given that our royalties are lower than in previous years, and the majority of people read articles on a computer nowadays, HBES has opted to phase out print copies of EHB (details TBD). New subscriptions will only have the options of online subscriptions. This will allow us to redirect those funds towards other things like subsidizing the annual conference.

Your membership will still grant you access to our journal online, especially if you don’t have access via an institution. We are working on making this process as simple as possible, and eventually hope to have it integrated through our society’s website (www.hbes.com). Eventually this will give easy online access for all members.

Sincerely,

The HBES executive

HBES 2025 website (abstracts due Feb 15)

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We are happy to announce that the website for #HBES2025 is up and running and is now accepting abstracts! The 36th Annual Human Behavior & Evolution Society Conference will be held June 4th-7th 2025 at Stockton University’s Atlantic City campus and nearby Tropicana Resort. It will be hosted by Josh Duntley, Margaret Lewis, Liz Shobe, and Bobbi Hornbeck.

Here’s the conference website:
https://stockton.edu/human-behavior-evolution-society-conference/

Abstract submission is open until Feb 15th, 2025, for all talks, posters, symposia, and panel discussions. Feb 15th is also the deadline to submit your manuscript for the New Investigator Award (best graduate student talk) and Postdoctoral Award (best talk by someone <5 years post-PhD); you can upload your manuscript when you submit your abstract. All posters are automatically considered for the Poster Award. Submit your abstract here:
https://stockton.edu/human-behavior-evolution-society-conference/conference-details.html

Registration is now open. The website is not yet ready to accept payment, but you can complete the rest of your registration and we will link it with your payment later. Early Registration ends April 1st, Regular Registration ends June 3. More info is forthcoming.

Atlantic City is known for its entertainment, dining, nightlife, and boardwalk. (If you’ve ever played Monopoly, yes it is that Boardwalk.) Atlantic City is 1h from Philadelphia and 2h from New York City, and there three nearby airports: Atlantic City International (20 min), Philadelphia International (1h), and Newark Liberty International (1.5h); the latter two have trains to Atlantic City. Travel details are here:
https://stockton.edu/human-behavior-evolution-society-conference/travel.html

The hosts have reserved accommodation at the Tropicana at reasonable rates – use the conference website for the conference rates. Students can also book accommodation in the Stockton Atlantic City Dorms for $44/night + $18 linens (with no tax or fees).
https://stockton.edu/human-behavior-evolution-society-conference/travel.html

More information will be announced as it becomes available, by e-mails, the newsletter, and social media (currently X and Facebook, and soon-to-be Blue Sky). For questions, contact HBES2025@stockton.edu

We’re looking forward to seeing you all in Stockton in June! But for now, Happy Holidays!

Sincerely,
The HBES Team

 

Nominations for HBES elections 2025

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Dear HBES Community,
2025 is an election year for the Executive Council. We are therefore seeking suggestions for nominees for the following positions:
  • President of HBES
  • Communications Officer
  • Member-at-Large (two positions available)
  • Student Representative (must be current graduate student through spring 2027)
Suggestions for Nominees are due by January 31, 2025.
Elections Process:
  1. HBES community submits suggestions for nominees of particular positions, listed above.
  2. The Elections Committee of the HBES Executive Council will consider the HBES community suggestions and internal suggestions for positions.
  3. The Elections Committee will contact all nominees to confirm their willingness to serve if elected.
  4. The final selection of nominees for all positions will be shared with the HBES community in February 2025.
  5. HBES members will vote during spring of 2025 with voting open for at least 30 days. Your membership MUST be active to be eligible to vote. You can join or renew here.
  6. Results will be announced by the President of HBES.
  7. New officers will assume their roles after the 2025 HBES conference.
Sincerely,
HBES Elections Committee
(President Clark Barrett, Past-President Dave Schmitt, Treasurer Jessica Hehman)

Report on HBES 2024

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HBES 2024 was a success!

From May 22-25, we gathered in Aarhus, Denmark for 3.5 days of great presentations and camaraderie. It was the second in-person HBES meeting post-COVID, and it was lovely to see everyone again. Thanks to the local hosts Mathias Clasen, Elena Miu, & Marc Malmdorf Andersen, all the volunteers for helping it to run smoothly, the Program Committee, all competition judges, and of course all the speakers and presenters.

Plenaries

We enjoyed plenaries from the following researchers:

  • Joseph Carroll told us about how to use evolutionary theory in literary interpretations, which led to much interesting discussion
  • Lisa Feldman Barrett gave us three lessons on emotions: 1) your brain’s job is to predict your body’s future needs; 2) your brain constructs experience as it controls your body – experience is driven by predictions within your head; 3) signals (e.g., emotions observed in others) only have meaning in the context of other signals – the emotions you detect partly come from your own head
  • Dorsa Amir showed why evolutionists need to study children: many populations are mostly kids, and we spend a lot of time as kids. Also, kids learn mostly from other kids, so peer culture differs in interesting ways from vertically-transmitted culture
  • Judith Burkart argues why humans are special: we have an ape legacy of large brains which combines with our cooperative breeding to make us even smarter and extra cooperative. We share many things, including food… and information! Teaching is more common in cooperative breeders and skill-intensive niches, both of which apply to humans. Interesting fact: infanticide of healthy infants only occurs in cooperative breeders… like humans.
  • Manvir Singh presented a new view of cultural evolution: some traditions – call them “attractors” – appeal more to humans, and “super-attractors” are complex cultural packages that themselves attract attractors. He illustrated this with interesting data on the cross-cultural consistency of shamanism, music types, and more
  • Jaimie Krems argued that friendship exists within a network of rivalries over friends, so we need to study friendship “beyond the dyad”. Does someone value you more than your rivals? She presented neat data that competition over friends leads to friendship jealousy, venting to derogate competitors, and more
  • Nicolas Baumard presented a very useful way of seeing cultural evolution. Rather than view it as the transmission of cultural units, his “cultural ecology” sees culture as an expression of humans’ extended phenotype. This view incorporates ecological concepts like legacy effects (i.e., individuals leave traces that affect subsequent generations) and succession (cumulative change). Rather than “what cultural units will colonize new minds”, this flips the question to “which cultural legacies do people adopt?”
  • Brian Nosek (our keynote speaker) proposed a new model of Open Science to fix the problems in publishing that are a legacy of pre-digital (and pre-internet) print publishing, including evaluation of works at all stages and evaluation-based reward structures

Conference Awards

Every HBES conference has three Conference Awards: the New Investigator Award to the best graduate student paper/presentation, the Postdoctoral Award to the best paper/presentation by a recent graduate (<5 years post-PhD), and the Poster Award (best poster by anyone). Here are the winners of the 2024 HBES Conference Awards:

  • New Investigator Award: Olympia Campbell for “Genetic markers of cousin marriages and honour cultures”
  • Postdoctoctdoral Award: Konrad Rudnicki for “Investigating the evolutionary roots of gossip: the effects of gossip on cortisol, beta-endorphins, and cytokine levels”
  • Poster Award: Kasia Pisanski and colleagues for “The role of loudness in vocal intimidation”

Society Awards

HBES also announces the Society Awards: the Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution (best researcher <10 years post-PhD), the HBES Fellows (multiple awardees >10 years post-PhD), the Rising Stars (multiple awardees <8 years post-PhD), and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution. Here are the winners of the 2024 HBES Society Awards:

Paper Awards

And finally, there are the Paper Awards: the Margo Wilson Award for the best paper published the previous year in Evolution and Human Behavior (the official HBES journal), and the Don Symons Adaptationism Award for the best paper in the previous three years in any journal that best exemplifies the adaptationist program (this award is privately sponsored). The 2024 winners of the HBES Paper Awards are:

Announcing HBES 2025

Next year’s HBES will be held from June 4th-7th 2025 at Stockton University at their campus in Atlantic City New Jersey, with local host Josh Duntley. Atlantic City is accessible from Philadelphia and Newark NJ, and should have both dorm accommodation and hotels. Details will be announced soon. See you there!

An issue of EHB

New E&HB article format: Short Reports

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The official HBES journal, Evolution and Human Behavior, has created a new report format: short reports. Short reports, created in honor of John Tooby, are intended to expedite the publication of concise reports of original research. Short reports contain no more than 3000 words in the introduction, methods, results and discussion combined, an abstract of 200 words or less, and a maximum of 30 references. The introduction, only a few paragraphs in length, should state concisely the evolutionary rationale for the project (for example, the relevant selection pressure/adaptive problem and proposed behavioral/cognitive solution), a very brief description of the methods used, and specific empirical predictions. Short reports may have online-only supplements that contain full materials, supplemental tables, and details of complex methods. However, the supplement may not be used to circumvent the word count. A reviewer/reader of EHB should be able to evaluate the science of a short report solely from the main paper. Members of the Editorial Review Board and Invited Reviewers of short reports will be notified of this new format to ensure appropriate appreciation of its concise nature. Details will appear soon on the EHB website.

Take part in a commentary article on John Tooby quotes

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– by Deb Lieberman, Editor-in-Chief, Evolution & Human Behavior

In honor of John Tooby (1952-2023) and his contributions to our field, members of HBES and invited guests are welcome to pick a quote(s) from any Tooby publication of any year and take up to 350 words to state its importance or its impact on science. The 350-word runway is firm, no matter how many quotes you pull. You need not include a discussion of the quote if you do not wish; you can simply include your favorite quotes or passages. Whatever the case, your all-in word limit including any quotes is a firm 350 words. This is to allow as many HBES members to contribute as possible.

FAQ:

How many submissions per scholar?
One

How many authors per submission?
One. Single author submissions only.

Can the same quote be used by multiple contributors?
Yes. Of all the sentences written, we are hoping there is a wealth of options. However, we also know that people will have different interpretations and comments on similar quotes. The editorial team will organize submissions.

How many references are allowed?
The only references allowed will be for the quote(s) used.

What is the word limit?
350 words. All in. Firm.

How do I submit?
Complete the form using the Qualtrics link or QR code below: https://umiami.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bgA7sgv20cJsvmm

QR code for submissions

Will the submissions be reviewed?
Yes, by members of the Editorial Board. HBES membership will be verified. Submissions from non-HBES members (or individuals who have not been personally invited by the Editor) will be rejected. If you’d like to renew your HBES membership prior to submission, visit: https://www.hbes.com/membership-join/

Where can I find all of John Tooby’s publications?
Here is a link to the Center for Evolutionary Psychology Publication list, where you can find most of John’s publications. (https://www.cep.ucsb.edu/publication/)

When are submissions due?
Submissions are due by March 31st and notification of acceptance will be rolling. The link for submissions will be disabled after this date.

When will the tribute be published?
The editorial team will collect and compile the submissions, with the aim of publishing the collection as a single on-line article in the third or fourth issue of 2024. Details will be sent to contributors.

Deb Lieberman
Editor-in-Chief, EHB

Dates, deadlines, & info about HBES 2024 (Aarhus, Denmark)

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We are fast approaching the 35th Annual Meeting of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society in Aarhus, Denmark! It will be held at Aarhus University from May 22-25, 2024. Here are some important dates to know about HBES 2024:

  • Abstract submission deadline: Feb 1st
  • Final abstract acceptance confirmations: March 1st
  • Last day for Early Registration: March 31st
  • Regular Registration begins: April 1st
  • Childcare registration deadline: April 15th
  • Regular Registration ends: May 21st
  • Late Registration begins: May 22nd
  • Conference dates: May 22-25

We have an exciting lineup of plenaries: Brian Nosek will give the keynote, and we will have plenaries by Dorsa Amir, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Nicolas Baumard, Judith Maria Burkart, Joseph Carroll, Jaimie Krems, and Manvir Singh.

Bookmark the conference website for updates and the most recent information.

Looking forward to seeing you in Aarhus!

Evolutionary-friendly job in Social Psychology in Colorado Springs

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The University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, has a faculty position available for a Social Psychologist with the Area of Specialization open. HBES member Laith Al-Shawaf is eager for some evolutionary colleagues, so if you’re looking for something in Social Psychology, you should apply!

Here’s the job ad: https://rb.gy/bfkpam

Priority will be tgiven to applications received before Jan 7th, 2024.