The Dynamical Perspective in Personality and Social Psychology

Abstract

Human experience reflects the interplay of multiple forces operating on various time scales to promote constantly evolving patterns of thought, emotion, and action. The complexity and dynamism of personal and social phenomena have long been recognized, but capturing these features of psychological process represents a serious challenge for traditional research methods. In this article, we introduce basic concepts and methods from the study of nonlinear dynamical systems, and we outline the relevance of these ideas and approaches for investigating phenomena at different levels of psychological reality. We suggest that the dynamical perspective is ideally suited to capture the emergence and maintenance of global properties in a psychological system, and for investigating the time-dependent relation between external influences and a system's internally generated forces. Although fairly new to personality and social psychology, the dynamical perspective has been implemented with respect to a wide variety of phenomena, utilizing both empirical methods and computer simulations. This diversity of topics and methods is reflected in the articles comprising the special issue.