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Control processes and selforganization as complementary principles underlying behavior (2002)
| Venue: | Personality and Social Psychology Review |
| Citations: | 30 - 0 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Carver02controlprocesses,
author = {Charles S. Carver and Michael F. Scheier},
title = {Control processes and selforganization as complementary principles underlying behavior},
journal = {Personality and Social Psychology Review},
year = {2002},
pages = {304--315}
}
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Abstract
This article addresses the convergence and complementarity between self-regulatory control-process models of behavior and dynamic systems models. The control-process view holds that people have a goal in mind and try to move toward it (or away from it), monitoring the extent to which a discrepancy remains between the goal and one’s present state and taking steps to reduce the discrepancy (or enlarge it). Dynamic systems models tend to emphasize a bottom-up self-organization process, in which a coherence arises from among many simultaneous influences, moving the system toward attractors and away from repellers. We suggest that these differences in emphasis reflect two facets of a more complex reality involving both types of processes. Discussion focuses on how self-organization may occur within constituent elements of a feedback system—the input function, the output function, and goal values being used by the system—and how feedback processes themselves can reflect self-organizing tendencies. A new (or, at least, newly visible) family of ideas has arisen for consideration as potentially useful to personality and social psychologists. People in our disciplines are increasingly exploring how ideas from bodies of thought such as dynamic systems, connectionism, and catastrophe theory may apply to phenomena of their interest. Sometimes these ideas are treated as being revolutionary; other discussions treat them instead as being complementary to ideas already in use (e.g., Carver, 1997; Carver & Scheier, 1998). Indeed, several authors have noted that aspects of these new ideas resonate well to themes that have long been embedded in psychology under different names (e.g., Read, Vanman, & Miller,
Keyphrases
complementary principle dynamic system model dynamic system output function present state social psychologist catastrophe theory feedback system input function new idea bottom-up self-organization process many simultaneous influence several author self-regulatory control-process model constituent element different name goal value self-organizing tendency control-process view complex reality carver scheier
