West Trapps Trailhead

In conjunction with the campus’ celebration of the Wilderness Act’s 50^th anniversary, the Evolutionary Studies program will host a hike up the Millbrook Ridge Trail in the Shawangunk mountains on Tuesday, September 16 from 4-6:30 p.m.

This hike will be free for members of the SUNY New Paltz community. Carloads will meet at the West Trapps Trailhead at 4 p.m. This is a moderate rock scramble with amazing views. Remember to wear good shoes and bring water.

Directions to the trailhead can be found here.

To sign up, please contact EvoS Assistant Nicole Wedberg at wedbergn1@hawkmail.newpaltz.edu. Spaces are limited. Please indicate in your reservation whether you will be driving your car.

Also, please note that LAS is sponsoring a talk immediately after this hike by renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben. His talk will take place in Lecture Center 100 at 7 p.m.  Hike coordinators will make sure that participants are off the mountain in time for this major event.

Visit the Facebook site for the EvoS hike.

By Despina Williams Parker
parkerd@newpaltz.edu

A New Paltz psychology professor, a research scientist and an online dating guru walk into a bar. What follows will likely prove to be a fun, stimulating exchange on love and relationships.

The eleventh gathering of the Empiricist League, which “brings together people from scientific backgrounds for the purpose of communicating the power of the scientific method,” will be held Aug. 19 at Union Hall, located at 702 Union Street in Brooklyn. Union Hall is a 5,000 square foot restaurant, bar and live music venue. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., and the first speaker begins at 8 p.m.

Department of Psychology Professor and Chair Glenn Geher joins Dr. Bianca Acevedo, a research scientist at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and Christian Rudder, one of the founders of the online dating service OKCupid, for a contemporary look at evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and data analysis.

The Empiricist League welcomes “writers, filmmakers, and oddballs,” and Geher extends a special invitation to New Paltz students and alumni.

“A student who attends will hopefully learn a bit about the ultimate factors that underlie dating and mate selection – and given the venue, they would have an opportunity to see that the discussion of intellectual ideas can be downright fun and exciting,” said Geher.

Geher’s talk, entitled, “Mating Intelligence: Evolutionary Psychology’s Advice for the Lovelorn,” will offer an evolutionary perspective on human mating systems, with a focus on what factors led to monogamy-like systems in our species. Geher, who directs the Evolutionary Studies program at New Paltz, will discuss how we can best understand the concept of love from an evolutionary perspective.

Geher’s peers will approach love from other interesting angles. Dr. Acevedo will deliver a talk entitled, “Sex on the Brain: What Neuroscience Can Teach Us about Love, Lust and Marriage,” and Rudder will explore what data reveals about the habits and desires of online daters. He will explain how data scientists can reveal, with “unprecedented precision how we fight, how we age, how we love, and how we change.”

For more event information, click here.

Briana Tauber

By Despina Williams Parker
parkerd@newpaltz.edu

Recent graduate Briana Tauber (Psychology, ‘14g) was a very visible and active contributor to New Paltz’s Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program.

The interdisciplinary program introduces students from a variety of disciplines to the core ideas of evolutionary theory. EvoS offerings include courses in anthropology, art history, biology, black studies, communication disorders, English, geology, history, physics and psychology.

Tauber said she was drawn to the EvoS program after taking Psychology Professor Glenn Geher’s Evolutionary Studies course her junior year. Rooted in evolutionary psychology, the course examined the evolutionary origins of human behaviors. “I really loved the material and I wanted to get involved,” said Tauber.

As an undergraduate, Tauber worked as a research assistant in Geher’s Evolutionary Studies lab. During her graduate studies, she continued to contribute to the EvoS program, both as a teaching assistant and president of the campus EvoS Club.

This spring, Tauber took a lead role in organizing the ninth annual Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS) conference, held at New Paltz from April 10-13. Tauber organized student volunteers, tracked registrations and juggled a variety of conference tasks. The approximately 200 participants came from five continents, and participated in a variety of lectures, book signings and other events at the Terrace and Lecture Center.

Tauber (second row from back, second from right), joins Psychology Professor Glenn Geher (front row, left), and fellow EvoS enthusiasts at the Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Society conference in April.

Tauber’s work as the EvoS Club president also garnered the attention of the campus’s Student Association. Tauber accepted the club’s Outstanding Scholarship Award during a ceremony on April 30 in the Student Union Building. The award recognized the club’s efforts in connecting students to distinguished, evolutionary studies speakers.

Tauber’s work in evolutionary psychology culminated with a master’s thesis on the subject of deception detection and trust in mating behaviors. Tauber drew from Geher’s book, Mating Intelligence Unleashed, which she helped edit, in developing her research. Tauber was intrigued by the gaps in the scholarship on how people choose mates, and particularly, their ability to spot the liars from the earnest suitors.

“It’s really relevant now because you have all of this online dating,” Tauber noted. “People fall in love online and they’ve never met this person face to face, and it’s not the person they thought it was.”

Tauber used the online survey generator Survey Monkey to poll over 300 participants on their romantic experiences. Her research revealed several interesting findings. Extroverts proved better at detecting deception than introverts, which Tauber believes speaks to extroverts’ greater experience interacting with people in general, (and presumably, with a greater number of liars.) Women who were more promiscuous were also less trusting of their mates.

Though Tauber graduated this May, she maintains close ties to her psychology mentors. She is slated to co-edit, with Geher and other scholars, a book tentatively titled The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Studies. The book will examine the interdisciplinary nature of evolutionary studies and explore its future in higher education.

Tauber said the opportunities for student/faculty collaborations were among the highlights of her time at New Paltz. She will miss the daily interaction with her psychology professors and peers.

“I’ve spent a quarter of my life here. It’s sad to leave,” she said.

New Paltz’s Evolutionary Studies program will host its last event of the year, a talk on primate sexual behavior, on April 21, 2014 at 5:30 p.m. in Lecture Center room 102.

Dr. Craig Bielert, a psychologist and anthropologist at Oneanta, will deliver a lecture entitled, “Primate Sexual Behavior – Confirmations, Continuums, and Cautions,” which will highlight his experimental work with chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). Extensions into work with humans presented with a rare intersex condition will also be described. Dr. Bielert will also discuss the ways in which societal pressures have impacted the research efforts in this topic in both historic and contemporary times.  The lecture is free and open to the public.  A reception will follow after the talk.

The event is sponsored by the EvoS Program, EvoS Club, Student Association, Campus Auxiliary Services and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  For more information, contact Briana Tauber at btauber25@hawkmail.newpaltz.edu.