About the Centre
Cultural Psychology Network
The Centre for Cultural Evolution and Historical Psychology (CEHP) is an international research network that studies how cultural and historical processes shape human psychology. Anchored at the University of Zurich, CEHP brings together researchers in psychology, cultural evolution, computational social science, history, and the humanities who share an interest in psychological variation across time.
The problem we address
Psychology, for most of its history as a discipline, has studied people in a narrow temporal window. The bulk of empirical research draws on samples born within the last few decades, producing a picture of human cognition, emotion, and behaviour that is detailed but temporally shallow. Cross cultural work over the last two decades has begun to widen this picture, documenting substantial variation across contemporary populations in domains ranging from perception and reasoning to moral judgement and self concept.
Documenting variation, however, is different from explaining it. Where contemporary populations differ, the differences are the outcome of long histories of institutional change, religious reform, economic transformation, migration, and shifting kinship structures. Any explanation of present day psychological diversity that does not engage with those histories is incomplete. The central question for CEHP is straightforward: where does psychological variation come from, and how has it changed?
WHAT WE STUDY
What historical psychology is
Historical psychology is the study of psychological variation across time. It treats the historical record as data, using written, material, and quantitative sources to trace how cognition, emotion, values, and behaviour have shifted across periods and populations. The field draws on cultural evolutionary theory for its account of how psychological traits are transmitted and transformed, on computational social science for its methods, and on history and the humanities for interpretive depth and source expertise.
The term itself has gained traction in recent years, alongside a growing body of empirical work applying psychological questions to historical sources. CEHP takes this emerging field as its core focus, and works to connect it to adjacent traditions in cultural evolution, cross cultural psychology, and the digital humanities.
WHY IT MATTERS
Why Historical Psychology Matters
The case for historical psychology is not only intellectual. Contemporary societies face questions about cooperation, trust, institutional quality, and social change that cannot be answered by studying any single moment. Understanding how psychological patterns have formed, stabilised, and shifted gives us a more realistic picture of what is variable and what is durable. It also disciplines claims about human nature, separating what appears universal because it is widespread today from what appears universal because it has been present across long stretches of the past.
For psychology as a discipline, the stakes are methodological as well as substantive. Taking time seriously forces attention to measurement, translation, and sampling in ways that the standard cross-sectional study does not. The field has much to gain from closer engagement with historians, who have long thought carefully about the limits of their sources.
Our Mission
Build the field
Establish historical psychology as a rigorous, cumulative research area with shared methods and standards.
Connect disciplines
Link psychologists, historians, and computational researchers around shared questions.
Train researchers
Support the next generation of scholars working at this intersection.
HOW WE WORK
A network, not a building
CEHP operates as a distributed network rather than a physical institute. Members hold primary appointments at their home institutions and contribute to the centre through its talks, fellowships, projects, and methodological resources. The model reflects the shape of the field. Historical psychology is practised in small groups scattered across departments of psychology, history, anthropology, linguistics, and computer science. A distributed network lowers the cost of participation and makes it easier for researchers to engage without relocating.
"Distributed, not centralized — coordinated by questions, not by walls."
— CEHP organising principle
Our Activities
Talk Series
Monthly virtual talks across disciplines.
Working Groups
Collaborative methods and theory groups.
Joint Research
Shared datasets and co authored studies.
Publications
Special issues, papers, and resources.