Will there be a clinically useful psychological intervention, approach, or treatment (which is more effective than alternative approaches overall or for a delineated subpopulation) that comes out of the school of evolutionary psychology by the year 2050?
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@NivlacM I am happy to discuss whether something counts. Random stuff that is attributed won't count. Some factors that will be considered:
Whether the evolutionary hypothesis actually makes sense (i.e. it is not just a random guess with evo-jargon tagged onto it)
It is a unique discovery that is grounded in evolutionary psychology (it is very unlikely to have come from non-evolutionary thinking) - this is to do also with the 'fertility' of the field, as a main claim is that it is better at creating novel & sensible hypotheses
It is clinically significant - leading to the best or standard line of treatment for some condition. Cost/benefit ratio may be considered - if it is just as effective as a drug without the side-effects of it then it counts. If it is just as effective but not more than existing standard treatments (e.g. other forms of therapy) then it doesn't.
@TheAllMemeingEye Yes, well it would be the model and theory for understanding how the mind works. This question mainly refers to clinical psychology, not psychiatry - but if it leads to a discovery of clinically useful psychiatric medicine that also qualifies.
@barbarous would you agree that development of clinical treatments is outside the scope of the field of evolutionary psychology, so it can't be done regardless of how credible and effective the field is?
@TheAllMemeingEye No, I think the development of treatments should be informed by the best models we have of reality, otherwise it is just throwing spaghetti at the wall. Treatments for most diseases (e.g. asthma) are informed by the underlying biology (e.g. the lungs). This is not yet the case in psychology / psychiatry, where the "symptom is the disease" and the underlying models are not good enough, so spaghetti to the wall it is.
@barbarous Wait, what? Modern clinical psychology/psychiatry doesn't use the discovered facts, laws, and causes of behaviour to develop its treatments at all? What actually is the wall spaghetti in literal terms? How else is it possible to design treatments at all? You couldn't develop an effective vaccine without germ theory
@TheAllMemeingEye Spaghetti to the wall is trying things until something works. (Whether they even work better than placebo, or on the long term are different questions.)
Exactly, I'm with you here. You'd be surprised. We don't really have a germ theory of the mind, or at least the best (evolutionary) theories we have have not produced much of clinical significance. The interventions we do have are based at best on vague post-hoc theorizing, even if they do work we don't really know why.