"Have you ever felt that human psychology is richer and more complex than the topics you learned in Psych 101, that great literature captured human motivational complexity better than scientists? Perhaps you, like the authors of this book, find that the linear math and statistical models that researchers have been using to capture psychology obscured many of the problems you would like to solve"--
The pandemic, and our response to it, has shown how unpredictable, irrational, illogical, suddenly changing, and muddled human interactions can be in a time of crisis. How can we make sense of such confusing and baffling behavior?
This book reveals how chaos and nonlinear dynamics can bring new understanding to everyday topics in social sciences. It brings together chapters from leaders at the intersection of psychology and chaos and complexity theories. Conceptual and user-friendly, it is built around six themes: 1) Seeing
nonlinearity, 2) Finding patterns, 3) using Simple models, 4) Intervening nonlinearly, and 6) teaching a new Worldview. It takes no specialized study-although there is more sophisticated material and optional math for those wishing it. The techie will, in addition, find concepts and diagrams to
ponder.
The volume is engaging, at times startling-whether about the weather, Internet, organizations, family dynamics, health, evolution, or falling in love. It reveals how many social, personal, clinical, research, and life phenomena become understandable and can be modelled in the light of Nonlinear
Dynamical Systems (NDS) theory. It even offers a broadening worldview, happening already in other sciences, toward a more dynamic, interconnected, and evolving picture, including process-oriented appreciation of one's own experience.
The book offers those in the field of psychology and the social sciences a stunning new perspective on human behaviour.
