Evolution, culture, and self -knowledge processing: An integrated conceptual mode

Many writers, both in and outside of the field of psychology, have questioned the way human behavior and thinking are understood. A major concern is that, in general, theory and research from human psychology does not lend itself to cross-disciplinary analysis. There are a number of reasons why this might be so, including the perpetuation of false principles and the predominance of a multitude of theories and representational constructs with little consideration for underlying conceptual integrity. It is argued that psychological science, being largely divorced from other scientific disciplines, ultimately relies on highly limited explanatory models.;In order to address this issue, the author reviews several approaches to understanding human behavior and cognition that are not typically considered in mainstream psychology. Contributions from fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, cognitive/developmental psychology, and chaos theory are considered with two parallel goals in mind. One is to demonstrate how a framework for conceptualizing and researching human behavior could be derived based on possible unifying principles from cross-disciplinary analysis. The second is to demonstrate how such a framework might be used to better organize theory and research in psychology, so that it better interfaces with knowledge from other domains of inquiry. The case of self-knowledge bias research and its application to mental health is used as an illustration.