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The chronospatial revolution in psychology

Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages 1319–1327 (2025)Cite this article

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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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

    Mohammad Atari

  2. Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Joseph Henrich

  3. Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Jonathan Schulz

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  1. Mohammad Atari
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  2. Joseph Henrich
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Contributions

Conceptualization: M.A. Supervision: J.H. and J.S. Writing—original draft: M.A. Writing—review and editing: M.A., J.H. and J.S. All authors have read and agreed to the final version of this manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mohammad Atari.

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Atari, M., Henrich, J. & Schulz, J. The chronospatial revolution in psychology. Nat Hum Behav 9, 1319–1327 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02229-y

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