Nonlinear societal change: The perspective of dynamical systems
Authored by Andrzej Nowak, Robin R Vallacher
Date Published: 2019
DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12271
Sponsors:
Polish National Science Center
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
Although rapid social change reflects each society's unique combination
of myriad social, historical, political, and economic factors, we argue
that the defining features of such change can be understood with
recourse to the dynamic processes inherent in complex systems.
Accordingly, we present a formal model that describes, in minimalist
terms, the dynamics associated with rapid societal transitions in a
society's norms and attitudes-and to the potential for rapid reversals
of these transitions. The model predicts that societies in the midst of
rapid change are characterized by dual realities corresponding to the
new and the old, so that models focusing only on changes in the central
tendency of a societal attitude provide a misleading account of rapid
social change. This model is implemented in computer simulations and
validated with empirical data concerning the transition in Eastern
Europe from communism to democracy and a free market economy in the late
1980s.
Tags
Agent-based modelling
Social influence
Communication
polarization
emergence
conformity
Dynamical systems
Personality
cognition
social change
Opinion
Attitude
Psychology
Minority
Computational
models
Rapid societal change