The interdisciplinarity of evolutionary approaches to human behavior: A key to survival in the Ivory Archipelago

This paper explores the degree of interdisciplinarity of evolutionary approaches to the study of human behavior, and the implications that any such interdisciplinarity may have for the future of evolutionary psychology (EP) as a field of scholarship. To gauge the extent of interdisciplinarity of EP, the departmental affiliation of first-authors from 1000 journal articles evenly distributed across ten leading peer-reviewed psychology journals was assessed. Findings show that journals that are evolutionary-based have more first-authors from outside of psychology, and also include a wider variety of represented disciplines. These findings are discussed in terms of their influence on the future of EP, as a model for interdisciplinary research. EP's future will be successful if it continues to promote interdisciplinarity as well as recognize the epistemological worth of multiple evolutionary paradigms and frameworks. Evolutionary principles have been successfully applied to a broad range of topics, suggesting there is great utility in evolution serving as a common language for interdisciplinary pursuits within the behavioral and social sciences. As such, academic programs such as Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) programs, whose presence continues to increase across academic institutions worldwide, epitomize the future of successful interdisciplinary scholarly training.