Erin B. Rasmussen, Ph.D.
Professor, Experimental Psychology - Director of Experimental Training
Office: Garrison Rm 411
B.S. (1994), Utah State University;
M.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2001), Auburn University.
Dr. Rasmussen is accepting one clinical and one experimental graduate student for admission in fall 2025.
Research Interests
Dr. Rasmussen's research interests are broadly in the area of behavioral economics and behavioral pharmacology. Specifically, she has two laboratories (human and animal) that are dedicated to examining behavioral economic and neural correlates of behaviors and decision-making involved in obesity. Her human work focuses on sociocultural factors that influence food-based behavioral processes related to obesity. Her animal work is centered around how dopaminergic, endocannainoid, and opioid neurotransmitter systems affect the value of food reinforcement in diet-induced and genetic rodent models of obesity and binge eating. She has received funding from the National Institutes of Health for her research. She was elected president of the Association for Behavior Analysis International for a three year term (2019-2022) and has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Learning & Behavior, and Perspectives on Behavior Science. She is also coauthor of the 7th edition of the textbook Behavior Analysis and Learning: A Biobehavioral Approach (2023; with C. Clay, D. Pierce, and C. Cheney) and Women in Behavior Science: Observations on Life Inside and Outside of the Academy (2023; with R. Retfeldt and T. Cihon).
You can also access some of Dr. Rasmussen's recently published studies.