Synthesis of Evolutionary and Conventional Psychology: A New Framework

Psychology has traditionally emphasized social constructivism focusing onenvironmental and cultural influences while neglecting Darwinian explanations of the humanmind and behaviour. This paper proposes a theoretical framework with the aim of synthesizingEvolutionary Psychology with Conventional Psychology in an attempt to bridge the gap betweenthe two.The framework operates at three levels of analysis: the ultimate level, which addressesspecies-typical behaviors such as universality of love, sex differences, and an innate sense ofmorality. The Broad level incorporates sociocultural theories in addition to a Darwinian lens toexplain cultural variations. The specific level involves the explanation of individual behavior asanalyzed using evolutionary, cultural, and personal environmental factors. This is the level atwhich the synthesis becomes the most evident as all the prevailing schools of thought: cognitive,sociocultural, behavioral, etc are reorganized within a Darwinian scientific ontology.This paper employs a conceptual synthesis of existing literature from psychology,biology, and social sciences to demonstrate the compatibility between evolutionary psychologyand social constructivism, offering a unified model for understanding human behavior.The implications of such a framework are that psychologists can adopt a morecomprehensive approach, providing a unified picture of the psychological world with each levelproviding a unique insight regarding the nature of reality. For instance, questions of why certainfoods are addictive can be answered more elaboratively rather than relying on just a gene-basedor advertisement-based explanation. Altogether the 3-level framework combines elements ofevolutionary thinking and cultural conditioning in an attempt to produce something novel.Keywords: Evolutionary Psychology, Conventional Psychology, Social Constructivism