Download or read book Dynamical Systems in Social Psychology written by Robin R. Vallacher and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 1994-01-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dynamical system refers to a set of elements that interact in complex, often nonlinear ways to form coherent patterns. Because of the complexity of these interactions, the system as a whole may evolve over time in seemingly unpredictable ways as new patterns of behavior emerge. This metatheory has proven useful in understanding diverse phenomena in meteorology, population biology, statistical mechanics, economics, and cosmology. The book demonstrates how the dynamical systems perspective can be applied to theory construction and research in social psychology, and in doing so, provides fresh insight into such complex phenomena as interpersonal behavior, social relations, attitudes, and social cognition.
Download or read book Dynamical Social Psychology written by Andrzej Nowak and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 1998-10-09 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional approaches to social psychology have proven highly successful in identifying causal mechanisms underlying human thought and behavior. With the recent advent of the dynamical approach, it is now possible to assemble sets of such mechanisms into coherent systems. This book uses innovative concepts and tools to illuminate the processes by which individuals, groups, and societies evolve and change in a systemic, self-sustaining manner, at times seemingly independent of external influences. Readers learn how the dynamical approach facilitates novel predictions and insights into such social psychological phenomena as attitudes, social judgment, goal-directed behavior, attraction, and relationships. Featuring a wealth of charts and figures derived from original research and computer simulations, the volume is grounded in classic and contemporary theories of social psychology.
Download or read book Chaos and Complexity in Psychology written by Stephen J. Guastello and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-10 with total page 1020 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While many books have discussed methodological advances in nonlinear dynamical systems theory (NDS), this volume is unique in its focus on NDS's role in the development of psychological theory. After an introductory chapter covering the fundamentals of chaos, complexity and other nonlinear dynamics, subsequent chapters provide in-depth coverage of each of the specific topic areas in psychology. A concluding chapter takes stock of the field as a whole, evaluating important challenges for the immediate future. The chapters are written by experts in the use of NDS in each of their respective areas, including biological, cognitive, developmental, social, organizational and clinical psychology. Each chapter provides an in-depth examination of theoretical foundations and specific applications and a review of relevant methods. This edited collection represents the state of the art in NDS science across the disciplines of psychology.
Download or read book Dynamic Patterns written by J. A. Scott Kelso and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: foreword by Hermann Haken For the past twenty years Scott Kelso's research has focused on extending the physical concepts of self- organization and the mathematical tools of nonlinear dynamics to understand how human beings (and human brains) perceive, intend, learn, control, and coordinate complex behaviors. In this book Kelso proposes a new, general framework within which to connect brain, mind, and behavior.Kelso's prescription for mental life breaks dramatically with the classical computational approach that is still the operative framework for many newer psychological and neurophysiological studies. His core thesis is that the creation and evolution of patterned behavior at all levels--from neurons to mind--is governed by the generic processes of self-organization. Both human brain and behavior are shown to exhibit features of pattern-forming dynamical systems, including multistability, abrupt phase transitions, crises, and intermittency. Dynamic Patterns brings together different aspects of this approach to the study of human behavior, using simple experimental examples and illustrations to convey essential concepts, strategies, and methods, with a minimum of mathematics. Kelso begins with a general account of dynamic pattern formation. He then takes up behavior, focusing initially on identifying pattern-forming instabilities in human sensorimotor coordination. Moving back and forth between theory and experiment, he establishes the notion that the same pattern-forming mechanisms apply regardless of the component parts involved (parts of the body, parts of the nervous system, parts of society) and the medium through which the parts are coupled. Finally, employing the latest techniques to observe spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity, Kelso shows that the human brain is fundamentally a pattern forming dynamical system, poised on the brink of instability. Self-organization thus underlies the cooperative action of neurons that produces human behavior in all its forms.
Download or read book Attracted to Conflict Dynamic Foundations of Destructive Social Relations written by Robin R. Vallacher and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict is inherent in virtually every aspect of human relations, from sport to parliamentary democracy, from fashion in the arts to paradigmatic challenges in the sciences, and from economic activity to intimate relationships. Yet, it can become among the most serious social problems humans face when it loses its constructive features and becomes protracted over time with no obvious means of resolution. This book addresses the subject of intractable social conflict from a new vantage point. Here, these types of conflict represent self-organizing phenomena, emerging quite naturally from the ongoing dynamics in human interaction at any scale—from the interpersonal to the international. Using the universal language and computational framework of nonlinear dynamical systems theory in combination with recent insights from social psychology, intractable conflict is understood as a system locked in special attractor states that constrain the thoughts and actions of the parties to the conflict. The emergence and maintenance of attractors for conflict can be described by means of formal models that incorporate the results of computer simulations, experiments, field research, and archival analyses. Multi-disciplinary research reflecting these approaches provides encouraging support for the dynamical systems perspective. Importantly, this text presents new views on conflict resolution. In contrast to traditional approaches that tend to focus on basic, short-lived cause-effect relations, the dynamical perspective emphasizes the temporal patterns and potential for emergence in destructive relations. Attractor deconstruction entails restoring complexity to a conflict scenario by isolating elements or changing the feedback loops among them. The creation of a latent attractor trades on the tendency toward multi-stability in dynamical systems and entails the consolidation of incongruent (positive) elements into a coherent structure. In the bifurcation scenario, factors are identified that can change the number and types of attractors in a conflict scenario. The implementation of these strategies may hold the key to unlocking intractable conflict, creating the potential for constructive social relations.
Download or read book Complex Human Dynamics written by Andrzej Nowak and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, edited and authored by a closely collaborating network of social scientists and psychologists, recasts typical research topics in these fields into the language of nonlinear, dynamic and complex systems. The aim is to provide scientists with different backgrounds - physics, applied mathematics and computer sciences - with the opportunity to apply the tools of their trade to an altogether new range of possible applications. At the same time, this book will serve as a first reference for a new generation of social scientists and psychologists wishing to familiarize themselves with the new methodology and the "thinking in complexity".
Download or read book Dynamic systems theory and embodiment in psychotherapy research A new look at process and outcome written by Sergio Salvatore and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2016-04-11 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an attempt to cease from reducing the world and its (emergent) phenomena to linear modeling and analytic dissection, Dynamic Systems Theories (DST) and Embodiment theories and methods aim at accounting for the complex, dynamic, and non-linear phenomena that we constantly deal with in psychology. For instance, DST and Embodiment can enrich psychology’s understanding of the communicative process both in clinical and non-clinical settings. In psychotherapy, an important amount of research has shown that – next to other ingredients – the therapeutic relationship is the most important active factor contributing to psychotherapy outcome. These findings give communication a central role in the psychotherapy process. In the traditional view, the underlying model of understanding psychotherapy processes is that of a number of components summatively coming together enabling us to make a linear causal prediction. Yet, communication is inherently dynamic. A shift to viewing the communication process in psychotherapy as a field dynamic phenomenon helps us to take into account nonlinear phenomena, such as feedback processes within and between persons. We thus propose an embodied enactive dynamic systems view as a new theoretical and methodological perspective that can more realistically capture what happens among and between two persons in psychotherapy. This view reaches beyond the current narrow model of psychotherapy research. DST and Embodied Enactive Approaches can offer solutions to the loss of non-linear phenomena, the complex dynamics of reality, and the holistic level of analysis. DST and Embodied Enactive Approaches have developed not in a single discipline but in a joined movement based on various fields such as physics, biology, robotics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and psychology, and have only recently entered clinical theorizing. The two new paradigms have already triggered a rethinking of the therapeutic exchange by recognizing the embodied nature of psychological and communicative phenomena. Their integration opens up a promising scenario in the field of psychotherapy research, developing new, profoundly transdisciplinary, theoretical concepts, methodologies, and standards of knowledge. The notion of field dynamics enables us to account for the role of the communicational context in the regulation of intra-psychological processes, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of an ontologization of the hierarchy of systemic organization. Moreover, the new approach implements methodological strategies that can transcend the conventional opposition between idiographic and nomothetic sciences.
Download or read book The Dynamic Perspective in Personality and Social Psychology written by Robin R. Vallacher and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have witnessed the ascendance of a new way to conceptualize and investigate the nature of dynamism at different levels of psychological reality. Areas of inquiry as diverse as cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, organizational behavior, and political sociology are being reframed in terms that allow rigorous and precise insight into basic dynamic processes. There are signs that this new approach to dynamics is emerging as a potentially integrative paradigm for personality and social psychology as well. This special issue highlights this new paradigm and illustrates its relevance to a broad spectrum of topics in personality and social psychology.
Download or read book Handbook of Psychology Personality and Social Psychology written by Irving B. Weiner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2003 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes established theories and cutting-edge developments. Presents the work of an international group of experts. Presents the nature, origin, implications, an future course of major unresolved issues in the area.
Download or read book Dynamical Psychology written by Jay Friedenberg and published by Isce Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past several decades, the sciences have witnessed a significant paradigm shift. Our traditional notions of order, energy, causality and methodology have all been upended. A new set of views has arisen that enables us to better understand and examine the complexity of nature. In this perspective, behavior is nonlinear, order emerges spontaneously and responses are best understood as the movement of trajectories through multi-dimensional space. This book examines the role that dynamical systems, complexity science, networks, and fractals play in helping to explain the most difficult thing of all: ourselves.
Download or read book Complex Dynamical Systems in Education written by Matthijs Koopmans and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book capitalizes on the developments in dynamical systems and education by presenting some of the most recent advances in this area in seventeen non-overlapping chapters. The first half of the book discusses the conceptual framework of complex dynamical systems and its applicability to educational processes. The second half presents a set of empirical studies that that illustrate the use of various research methodologies to investigate complex dynamical processes in education, and help the reader appreciate what we learn about dynamical processes in education from using these approaches.
Download or read book Computational Social Psychology written by Robin R. Vallacher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computational Social Psychology showcases a new approach to social psychology that enables theorists and researchers to specify social psychological processes in terms of formal rules that can be implemented and tested using the power of high speed computing technology and sophisticated software. This approach allows for previously infeasible investigations of the multi-dimensional nature of human experience as it unfolds in accordance with different temporal patterns on different timescales. In effect, the computational approach represents a rediscovery of the themes and ambitions that launched the field over a century ago. The book brings together social psychologists with varying topical interests who are taking the lead in this redirection of the field. Many present formal models that are implemented in computer simulations to test basic assumptions and investigate the emergence of higher-order properties; others develop models to fit the real-time evolution of people’s inner states, overt behavior, and social interactions. Collectively, the contributions illustrate how the methods and tools of the computational approach can investigate, and transform, the diverse landscape of social psychology.
Download or read book A Dynamic Systems Approach to Adolescent Development written by Saskia Elske Kunnen and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dynamic systems approach is a rapidly expanding advancement in the study of developmental research, particularly in the domain of adolescent development. It provides a unique way of examining the subject, and this innovative study of developmental processes helps social scientists to translate dynamic systems conceptualizations into clear empirical research that readers will be able to implement themselves. The first part of this edited book discusses techniques that describe and assess specific process characteristics such as variability, sudden jumps and attractor states. The second part explores the different techniques for building a dynamic systems model, which can simulate the behaviour of a system to investigate the mechanisms behind the processes. Each chapter describes one technique and is based on a specific practical example of its application in adolescent development. Step-by-step instructions for model-building and examples of ready-made models are provided on the website that belongs to the book: www.psypress.com/dynamic-systems-approach. This book provides a clear step-by-step description of theories and techniques that are designed for the study of developmental processes, and is therefore ideal for researchers of developmental psychology who do not specialise in statistics or research methods.
Download or read book Nonlinear Dynamics written by Richard A. Heath and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Additional Resource Materials Human behavior would not be interesting to us if it remained the same from one moment to the next. Moreover, we tend to be sensitive to changes in people's behavior, especially when such change impacts on our own, and other's, behavior. This book describes a variety of techniques for investigating change in behavior. It employs conventional time series methods, as well as recently developed methodology using nonlinear dynamics, including chaos, a term that is not easy to define, nor to confirm. Although nonlinear methods are being used more frequently in psychology, a comprehensive coverage of methods, theory and applications, with a particular focus on human behavior, is needed. Between these covers, the reader is led through various procedures for linear and nonlinear time series analysis, including some novel procedures that allow subtle temporal aspects of human cognition to be detected. Analyses of reaction times, heart-rate, psychomotor skill, decision making, and EEG are supplemented by a contemporary review of recent dynamical research in developmental psychology, psychopathology, and human cognitive processes. A consideration of nonlinear dynamics assists our understanding of deep issues such as: Why is our short-term memory capacity limited? Why do chronic disorders, and also cognitive development, progress through stage-like transitions? Why do people make irrational decisions? This book will be of particular interest to researchers, practitioners, and advanced students in a variety of areas in psychology, particularly in human experimental and physiological psychology. Data analyses are performed using the latest nonlinear dynamics computer packages. A comprehensive WWW resource of software and supplementary information is provided to assist the reader's understanding of the novel, and potentially revolutionary, procedures described in the book.
Download or read book Interpersonal Emotion Dynamics in Close Relationships written by Ashley K. Randall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synthesizes theory, methods, and applications of research on interpersonal emotion dynamics associated with the development and maintenance of close relationships.
Download or read book State Space Grids written by Tom Hollenstein and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-10-28 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human development from birth through adulthood is a complex interplay of many interacting forces. Children’s internal processes are manifest in behaviors that are sculpted by their experiences, most notably with primary caregivers. Because the discipline of psychology explores human behavior and cognition, the techniques employed for developmental analysis must be able to describe, depict, and quantify these complex processes. State Space Grids provides the framework, basic method, rationale, and advanced techniques for translating the behavior of children, adolescents, and parents into visible, traceable data. This seminar-between-covers takes readers step by step from conceptualization through implementation of projects, with examples from a range of current research within and outside child development. Links are included for the GridWare software program and related user resources. And although state space grids need not be used only to analyze dynamic systems, they serve as an excellent tool for honing systemic thinking. Key coverage in this volume includes: Dynamic systems and the origins of state space grids. The state of research using state space grids. Introducing GridWare and how it works. How to use state space grids, from idea through finished project. Within-grid and between-grid analysis. Conducting advanced analysis. State Space Grids is an essential reference for researchers across such disciplines as psychology, neuroscience, economics, computer science, and agricultural science.
Download or read book Modeling Love Dynamics written by Sergio E. T. Al RINALDI and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows, for the very first time, how love stories -- a vital issue in our lives -- can be tentatively described with classical mathematics. Focus is on the derivation and analysis of reliable models that allow one to formally describe the expected evolution of love affairs from the initial state of indifference to the final romantic regime. The models are in full agreement with the basic philosophical principles of love psychology. Eight chapters are theoretically oriented and discuss the romantic relationships between important classes of individuals identified by particular psychological traits. The remaining chapters are devoted to case studies described in classical poems or in worldwide famous films.
