Growing up in Ukraine and Germany during the time of monumental societal shifts in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, I have long been wondering about how cultures and societies transform and change. Several decades later, the world is once again in an era of dramatic change and upheaval—a reminder that human societies are not static. How and why do cultures change? How do people perceive such change? In recent years, my colleagues and I have begun to use novel methods to document large scale changes in our psychology, behavior, social norms, and societies.

Using archival time series and cross-national data, we have quantified the rise of individualism around the globe over five decades and in the US over the past 2 centuries,the link between rising population density and falling fertility across 174 nations, and the simplification of popular song lyrics over six decades. With Michael Varnum, I argue that psychology should explain and forecast cultural change, not only describe it.