The interdisciplinarity of evolutionary approaches to human behavior: A key to survival in the Ivory Archipelago Justin R. Garcia a,b, *, Glenn Geher c , Benjamin Crosier c,d , Gad Saad e , Daniel Gambacorta c , Laura Johnsen c , Elissa Pranckitas c a Departments of Biological Sciences and Anthropology, Binghamton University, USA b Institute for Evolutionary Studies (EvoS), Binghamton University, USA c Psychology Department, SUNY New Paltz, USA d Department of Psychology, University of Florida, USA e Marketing Department, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, Canada 1. Introduction Evolution provides a unifying framework by which to tackle an extraordinarily broad range of topics. This fact is evidenced by the success of published books on varied topics where evolutionary principles guide the primary thesis: love [1,2], the arts [3], music [4], disease [5,6], intelligence [7,8], consumer behavior [9], economics [10], religion [11,12], homicide [13], war [14], parenting [15,16], literature [17], morality [18], skin color [19], language [20], culture [21], politics [22], mate-choice [8,23], family studies [24], sociology [25], archaeology [26], architecture [27], computer science [28], and perhaps most popularly, sex [29–32], just to name a few. This list demonstrates that diverse applications of evolutionary thinking have come to typify modern academia – and we expect that such applications will characterize scholarship in the future. On its own, the world of academia may be as suggested by David Sloan Wilson [33] more aptly called the Ivory Archipelago as opposed to the traditional term Ivory Tower. From this perspective, academia consists of isolated disciplinary islands that Futures 43 (2011) 749–761 ARTICLE INFO Article history: Available online 25 May 2011 ABSTRACT 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. ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author at: Department of Biological Sciences, Binghamton University, PO Box 6000, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA. E-mail address: justin.r.garcia@gmail.com (J.R. Garcia). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Futures journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures 0016-3287/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2011.05.018