The chronospatial revolution in psychology

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.