A Functional Contextualist Approach to Cultural Evolution: An Introduction to Part IV

This chapter suggests a framework that could organize how one moves from current knowledge to widespread improvements in human well-being. It discusses how the spread of psychological flexibility could contribute to these improvements and what is known about the environments needed to ensure that people thrive. The chapter proposes a research and practice agenda that goes beyond the clinic. The public health perspective can organize what contextual behavioral science needs to do to contribute to widespread improvements in human well-being. The concept of psychological flexibility is well known to the contextual behavioral science community, but will be new to many of the people who helped to delineate the importance of the first three sets of nurturing conditions. The revolutionary progress in our understanding of human behavior over the past 50 years is derived largely from the analysis of the selection of behavior by its consequences.