Cultural evolution

Evolutionary Psychology and Cultural Evolution

Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand psychological traits and behaviours by understanding the survival and reproductive functions they might have served over the course of evolutionary history, and the advantages that they may have conferred on the species. These ‘adaptations’ might include abilities to infer others' emotions (empathy), identify, prefer and establish relationships with partners, cooperate with others, act morally etc. Evolutionary psychology recognizes the role of natural selection and cultural evolution in developing prosocial traits such as altruism, large scale cooperation and community mindedness.

BPS conference lecture

On October 22nd 2021 I gave a lecture at the BPS Psychotherapy section conference on the cultural evolution of individualism in the western world. The conference was about cross cultural models of mental health and wellbeing, and my part focussed particularly on the development of within person models of mental health and individual psersonal psychotherapy as the prevalent model of trteatment. The article from my lecture can be found in the articles page.
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