Dynamical Social Psychology: Complexity and Coherence in Human Experience

Human experience reflects the interplay of multiple influences operating on various time scales to promote constantly evolving patterns of thought, emotion, and action. Although the complexity and dynamism of personal and social phenomena have long been recognized, they are difficult to investigate using traditional research methods. This article provides an overview of dynamical social psychology, an approach adapted from dynamical systems theory that is designed to capture the complementary tendencies of stability and dynamism at different levels of social reality, from private thoughts to intergroup relations. Utilizing time-series analyses and computer simulations, this perspective documents the emergence of global properties from the interaction of basic elements in mental and social systems and investigates the time-dependent relation between external influences and a system’s internally generated dynamics. The dynamical approach enables social psychology to advance as a precise science while preserving the basic insights that launched the field over a century ago. While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out the back of the theater. And if only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab, Daisy and her friend would’ve crossed the street, and the taxi would’ve driven by. But life being what it is – a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone’s control – that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed. This scene from ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ illustrates both what is arguably the signature feature of human experience and what is fundamentally wrong with social psychological theory. Life as it is experienced, even in the most banal of circumstances, is complex and dynamic. Every momentary thought or action represents a punctuation point in a continuous flow of events that interact over time, producing a complex trajectory of points that defines our personal and interpersonal lives. To understand human thought and behavior is to identify meaningful patterns in the flow of experience, while acknowledging the potential for transformation of these patterns owing to the particular confluence of forces at any point in time. However, a recognition that temporal patterns and their potential for change represent the essence of human experience has yet to find a secure home in social psychology. Largely for reasons of convenience, the standard approach to personal and interpersonal processes essentially stops the clock to isolate static features of mind and action that are tethered to a small number of external causes. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4/11 (2010): 1018–1030, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00319.x a 2010 The Authors Social and Personality Psychology Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd This state of affairs shows signs of changing, with the emergence of a new paradigm for psychology that pays homage to the complexity and dynamism of human thought and behavior (cf. Guastello, Koopmans, & Pincus, 2009). Fields as diverse as cognitive neuroscience (cf. Port & Van Gelder, 1995), developmental psychology (e.g., van Geert, 1991; Smith & Thelen, 1993; Thelen & Smith, 1994), organizational behavior (Axelrod & Cohen, 1999; Guastello, 1995), and political sociology (e.g., Axelrod, 1984) are being reframed in terms that allow insight into basic dynamic properties that were routinely overlooked for want of appropriate tools. Dynamical social psychology is an instance of this approach that attempts to reframe the topical landscape of social psychology – from micro processes within the individual to macro processes within social systems – in terms of basic principles of dynamical systems and complexity science (cf. Nowak & Vallacher, 1998; Vallacher & Nowak, 1994a, 1997, 2006, 2007). The dynamical approach is distinguished from the traditional approach in two ways. First, it recognizes that an external force does not simply ‘cause’ a one-step response in a person or group, but rather triggers a process that unfolds over time, and does so through its interaction with the internal dynamics of the person or group. Focusing only on a response at some arbitrary (but convenient) point in time may be uninformative, even misleading. The immediate aftermath of an external force may diminish, perhaps rapidly or perhaps slowly, or it may become intensified – again, perhaps rapidly or slowly. A person who is insulted at time 1, for example, may experience anger or intimidation at time 2 (e.g., right away) but over time this experience may evolve in completely different directions – diminishing, intensifying, or perhaps oscillating between these feelings. The second distinguishing feature of dynamical social psychology is the recognition that external forces do not operate in isolation but rather interact with each other in complex ways to promote a trajectory of thought, emotion, and behavior. Narrowing the playing field to a small number of factors makes sense from a pragmatic point of view – after all, no one wants to decompose the statistical interaction among more than three independent variables. But in principle – and perhaps in reality as well – the effect of a set of variables may change dramatically when considered in light of other relevant variables in a particular context. The trajectory of thoughts and feelings generated by an insult, for example, may differ dramatically depending on an untold number of other factors – the way in which the insult is delivered, the relationship between the insulter and ‘insultee,’ the mood or self-esteem of the insultee, the presence or absence of witnesses, and so forth. The interplay of these factors, moreover, is not simply a combination of their separate influences but rather may represent an ‘emergent’ phenomenon that would not occur if any of the factors were not operative at that moment. Dynamical Social Psychology in Context Taken together, the emphasis on temporal patterns and the complex interplay of influences on these patterns represents a dramatic change in the way social psychological processes are conceptualized and investigated. This new approach to social psychology, however, actually has old roots. For one, it represents an application of ideas and methods developed in the natural sciences under the rubric of dynamical systems and complexity (cf. Haken, 1978; Holland, 1995; Johnson, 2001; Schuster, 1984; Strogatz, 2003; Weisbuch, 1992). But dynamical social psychology can also be traced, ironically, to the very earliest days of social psychology. Complexity and Coherence in Human Experience 1019 a 2010 The Authors Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4/11 (2010): 1018–1030, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00319.x Social and Personality Psychology Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Roots in dynamical systems Many areas of science have found it useful to conceptualize their respective topics as nonlinear dynamical systems. In its most basic sense, a dynamical system is simply a set of interconnected elements that evolve in time, with the elements continually influencing each other to achieve a coordinated state that characterizes the system as a whole. Depending on the topic, elements can represent anything from atoms and molecules to animals and planets. The task of dynamical systems theory is to specify how the elements interact with each other over time to promote properties and behavior at a higher level of understanding. In physics and chemistry, a fundamental question is how subatomic particles interact to produce visible matter and forces; in ecology, a central concern is how animals interact to generate and maintain a balance between predator and prey; in cosmology, the focus is how celestial bodies such as planets influence each other to produce stable orbits. The higher-order property or behavior that results from the mutual influence among elements has emergent properties, which simply means that the higher-level property or behavior cannot be reduced to the properties of the elements. The stable pattern of planetary orbits in our solar system, for example, depends on the mutual gravitational influences among the planets, not on the properties of the planets in isolation. Because emergence is attributed to the interactions among elements over time, the process is referred to as self-organization. Rather than being imposed on the system from above or from outside the system altogether, in other words, the higher-level properties and behaviors emerge from the internal workings of the system itself. Once a higher-level state emerges in a dynamical system, it constrains the behavior of the elements that give rise to it. When a stable orbit emerges in a planetary system, for example, new elements (e.g., a passing asteroid) are captured by the orbit and lose their original trajectory. Because a system-level property or behavior ‘attracts’ the behavior of both existing and new elements, it is referred to as an attractor. A system’s attractor stabilizes the system and actively resists change owing to outside influences. If change occurs, it is because mutual influences among the elements are weakened, increasing the independence of the elements and thereby undermining the coherence and stability of the higher-order state. But from this disassembled state of affairs, the system is primed for emergence to a new higher-order state that provides a different configuration of the lower-level elements. Dynamical systems, in other words, tend to display periods of stability and resistance to change, punctuated by periods of disassembly that set the stage for a new round of self-organization and emergence. Roots in classic social psychology The formative years of social psychology are replete with insights into the dynamic nature of human experience, suggesting an early widespread recognition that psychological states are subject to processes of change and transformation. As the 19th century came to a close, William James (1890) coined the term ‘the stream of consciousness’ to capture the endless cascade of thoughts, memories, images, and fantasies competing for conscious attention on a moment-to-moment basis. Soon thereafter, Cooley (1902) emphasized people’s constant press for action, even in the absence of external forces and incentives. Mead (1934) discussed people’s capacity for symbolic representation and the enormous range of interpretation to which this capacity gives rise. Other scholars emphasized the constant reconfiguration of experience in response to the multitude of ever-changing influences in everyday life. Lewin (1936), the father of 1020 Complexity and Coherence in Human Experience a 2010 The Authors Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4/11 (2010): 1018–1030, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00319.x Social and Personality Psychology Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd ‘dynamic psychology,’ suggested that stability and variability in overt behavior reflect the persistent struggle to resolve conflicting motivational forces, including those that operate from within the person – an idea that is at heart of psychodynamic theories as well (e.g., Freud, 1937). Solomon Asch (1946) suggested that social judgment reflects the dynamic interplay of thoughts and feelings, with this interplay giving rise to a unique Gestalt that is not reducible to the additive components of the elements themselves. And in one of the earliest attempts to systematize social psychology in a textbook, Krech and Crutchfield (1948) framed interpersonal thought and behavior in terms of Gestalt psychology, with an explicit emphasis on the constant reconfiguration of experience in response to conflicting fields of psychological forces. Despite this early focus on dynamism, theory and research in subsequent years tended to emphasize tendencies toward achieving a stable equilibrium rather than the role of self-sustaining dynamics. This is apparent in theory and research on the cognitive underpinnings of social behavior. So although James (1890) underscored the dynamic nature of conscious experience in his stream of consciousness metaphor, subsequent cognitive models in social psychology tended to emphasize the function of stable attributions, categories, beliefs, and other mental structures. And while Lewin (1936) offered a broad metatheory that framed human experience in terms of a field of ever-present and conflicting internal forces, for the most part this perspective inspired a host of cognitive theories centering on such notions as cognitive balance, the reduction of cognitive dissonance, and the elimination of incongruity. Stability is clearly central to human thought and behavior, but this feature of our psychology is possible only because of dynamic processes that promote the emergence of higher-level states – and that can undermine these states and promote the emergence of qualitatively different states. A theoretical emphasis on stability thus overlooks half the picture. As we enter a new century, social psychology shows signs of coming full circle, returning to the deep intuitions concerning human experience articulated by the field’s founding fathers. This re-emergence of appreciation for complexity and dynamism was made possible by developments in the understanding of nonlinear dynamical systems in the 1970s and 1980s and the application of these developments to the subject matter of social psychology within the last two decades. These advances have enabled researchers to explore the inherent dynamism and complexity of interpersonal processes, while recognizing the tendencies toward stability and simplicity in these domains. The dynamical perspective, in fact, is defined in terms of these opposing facets of human experience, with theories providing for their reconciliation in a theoretically meaningful manner. Dynamical Social Psychology in Action Every aspect of human experience is characterized by the complementary tendencies of stability and change. The mind is in constant motion, generating an endless moment-tomoment flow of thoughts and feelings, yet it also demonstrates strong equilibrium tendencies that provide coherence and stability in social judgment. Social interactions unfold with a continuous flow of words and gestures that is never replicated exactly, yet they admit to regularities and patterns. Relationships are defined in terms of the evolution of roles and sentiments, yet they conform to scripts and agendas that constrain the actions of even the most intimate partners. The challenge of dynamical social psychology is how best to capture the interplay of sustained dynamics and stabilization tendencies in a way that both appreciates the unique character of each realm and yet identifies common principles that promote an integrative understanding of human experience. The basic principles of Complexity and Coherence in Human Experience 1021 a 2010 The Authors Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4/11 (2010): 1018–1030, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00319.x Social and Personality Psychology Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd dynamical systems theory are tailor made for this task. In the following sections, we illustrate how these principles map onto the unique subject matter of social psychology.