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The chronospatial revolution in psychology
Mohammad Atari1, Joseph Henrich2, Jonathan Schulz3
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA. matari@umass.edu.
Abstract:
Psychology's definition and scope have shifted over the discipline's short history, yet it has largely remained ahistorical and geographically narrow. Here we call for psychology to become a historical and geographical science, a transformation we term the chronospatial revolution. We list four barriers to this shift in psychology: problems in scope, data, synergy and theory. We discuss the need for psychology to adopt a more holistic lens and propose a research agenda that integrates historical processes, cultural dynamics and ecological variations into psychological inquiry. Such an integrated approach not only enriches our microscopic understanding of Homo sapiens but also draws a more telescopic map of human psychology that encapsulates the human journey. By embedding psychology within time and space, we can better account for cross-cultural psychological diversity, historical change and evolved psychological mechanisms, ultimately fostering a more globally representative, historically enriched and theoretically robust discipline.
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