Catherine Salmon Ph.D.

Catherine Salmon received her bachelor's degree in biology in 1992 and her Ph.D. in evolutionary psychology in 1997 from McMaster University. After several years as a postdoctoral researcher at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, she joined the faculty at the University of Redlands in Southern California, where she is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology and serves on the advisory board for the Human-Animal Studies program.

She is the co-author (with Donald Symons) of Warrior Lovers: Erotic Fiction, Evolution, and Female Sexuality and The Secret Power of Middle Children (co-authored with Katrin Schumann). Her primary research interests include parental investment and sibling conflict; male and female sexuality, particularly as expressed in pornography and other erotic genres; and human-animal interactions.

She is a founding member of the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences (SOIBS), and served for eight years as editor-in-chief of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. Recent publications address topics such as sibling conflict and closeness; predictors of perceptions of pornography; and the influence of individual differences and ecological conditions on empathy and harm avoidance toward nonhuman animals.

• Ph.D., evolutionary psychology, McMaster University
• B.S., biology, McMaster University

• Postdoctoral researcher, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
• Professor, University of Redlands

• Salmon, C., Hehman, J. A., & Figueredo, A. J. (2023). Pornography’s ubiquitous external ejaculation: Predictors of perceptions. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52, 431–442.
• Salmon, C., & Burch, R. (2023). Popular culture and human mating: Artifacts of desire. In D. Buss & P. Durkee (Eds.), Handbook of Human Mating. Oxford University Press.
• Figueredo, A. J., Steklis, N. G., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Fernandes, H. B. F., Cabeza de Baca, T., Salmon, C., … Sevillano, V. (2022). The influence of individual differences and local ecological conditions on emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and harm avoidance toward nonhuman animals. Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1079/hai.2022.0021
• Salmon, C., & Hehman, J. A. (2021). Good friends, better enemies? The effects of sibling sex, co-residence, and relatedness on sibling conflict and cooperation. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 7, 327–337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-021-00292-y
• Salmon, C., & Burch, R. L. (2020). I’m with you till the end of the line: The romanticization of male bonds. In J. Carroll, M. Clasen, & E. Jonsson (Eds.), Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture (pp. 291–305). Springer.
• Salmon, C. (2020). Multiple methodologies: Addressing ecological validity and conceptual replication. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 14, 373–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000213

• Northeastern Evolutionary Psychology Society Fellow
• Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Best Postdoctoral Paper Award, 1999 HBES Annual Meeting