The Asian Future of Evolutionary Psychology

Abstract

Asia's population, wealth, cognitive capital, and scientific influence are growing quickly. Reasonable demographic, economic, and psychometric projections suggest that by the mid-21st century, most of the world's psychology will be done in Asia, by Asians. Even if evolutionary psychology wins the battles for academic respectability in the United States and European Union, if it ignores the rise of Asian psychology, it will fail to have any serious, long-term, global influence in the behavioral sciences after the current generations of researchers are dead. I outline a ‘marketing strategy’ for promoting evolutionary psychology in the current Asian powers (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore), the new Asian mega-powers (China, India), and other developing Asia countries (e.g. Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia), in a way that takes advantage of Asia's relative secularism, freedom from political correctness, sex-positive social attitudes, and intellectual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.