Robin R Vallacher
Biographic Data
| ID | 1322979 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robin R Vallacher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robin R |
| FAMILY NAME | Vallacher |
| SIGNATURE | VALLACHER R R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Florida Atlantic University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9859-5764 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 215 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
How the Complexity of Psychological Processes Reframes the Issue of Reproducibility in Psychological Science
In the past decade, various recommendations have been published to enhance the methodological rigor and publication standards in psychological science. However, adhering to these recommendations may have limited impact on the reproducibility of causal effects as long as psychological phenomena continue to be viewed as decomposable into separate and additive statistical structures of causal relationships. In this article, we show that (a) psycholo…
The Religious Behavioral Identification Form (RBIF)
Integration and expression
No construct is more central to personality than the person's self‐concept. Higher‐order domains of self‐assessment, including self‐perceived skills, traits, and values, are expressed in action and provide frames of reference for deciding whether to accept or reject personally relevant social feedback. To perform these functions in a consistent manner, the domains of self‐concept need to achieve coherence, with the components of each domain suffi…
Target in Control
Reciprocal feedback between self‐concept and goal pursuit in daily life
OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that self-knowledge and goal perseverance are mutually reinforcing because of the roles of self-knowledge in directing goal pursuit, and of goal pursuit in structuring the self-concept. METHOD: To test this hypothesis, we used a daily diary design with 97 college-aged participants for 40 days to assess whether daily self-concept clarity and grit predict one another's next-day levels. Data were analyzed using multilevel …
Nonlinear societal change
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 …
Computational Social Psychology
This chapter provides a broad and selective introduction to diverse literatures on computational approaches to cultural dynamics. It explains the social psychological models of cultural dynamics, and then move to two prominent approaches to cultural dynamics— Axelrod's model of cultural dissemination and evolutionary game theoretic approaches to evolution of cooperation. These approaches focus on complementary aspects of cultural dynamics, and th…
The Intrinsic Dynamics of Psychological Process
Psychological processes unfold on various timescales in accord with internally generated patterns. The intrinsic dynamism of psychological process is difficult to investigate using traditional methods emphasizing cause–effect relations, however, and therefore is rarely incorporated into social psychological theory. Methods associated with nonlinear dynamical systems can assess temporal patterns in thought and behavior, reveal the emergence of glo…
The Critical Few
To maintain stability yet retain the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, social systems must strike a balance between the maintenance of a shared reality and the survival of minority opinion. A computational model is presented that investigates the interplay of two basic, oppositional social processes—conformity and anticonformity—in promoting the emergence of this balance. Computer simulations employing a cellular automata platform t…
Dynamical Social Psychology
Volatile Psychological Dynamics in Social Interactions
Does agreement or disagreement alone strongly influence people’s thoughts and emotions, or does cognitive and affective reaction relate more to shifts in agreement and disagreement? The present study investigated how attitudes and emotions respond to the evolution of different patterns of agreement and disagreement in an interaction. Combining conventional methods with novel dynamic systems techniques, we found that people’s attitudes and emotion…
Dynamical foundations of intractable conflict
This special issue conceptualizes and investigates intractable social conflict from the perspective of dynamical social psychology. This approach represents a distillation of the concepts, methods, and tools associated with dynamical systems and complexity science that were initially developed in mathematics and the natural sciences. In this article, we provide an overview of the dynamical perspective on conflict, identify the key concepts that a…
Hypocrites or maligned cooperative participants? Experimenter induced normative conflict in zero-sum situations
Rethinking intractable conflict
Intractable conflicts are demoralizing. Beyond destabilizing the families, communities, or international regions in which they occur, they tend to perpetuate the very conditions of misery and hate that contributed to them in the first place. Although the common factors and processes associated with intractable conflicts have been identified through research, they represent an embarrassment of riches for theory construction. Thus, the current task…
Dynamics of cooperation-competition interaction models
A nonlinear mathematical model of the interactions in time between 2 actors (which could be individuals, groups, or nations) based on the theoretical and experimental insights of Deutsch (1973, 2006); Pruitt (1969, 2006); Gottman, Murray, Swanson, Tyson, and Swanson (2002); Gottman, Swanson, and Swanson (2002); and Coleman, Vallacher, Nowak, and Bui-Wrzosinska (2006) was developed. In this model, the state of each actor at a given moment in time …
Thinking inside the box—dynamical constraints on mind and action
Local acts, global consequences
The consequences of extreme forms of interrogation are considered from the perspective of dynamical systems. Because of the self-organizing tendency of systems, a change in a single element of mind or society (e.g., a new belief, course of action, or government policy) holds potential for transforming the larger mental or social system in which the element is embedded. The emergence of new mental and social states is especially likely when factor…
Intractable Conflict as an Attractor
Decades of research on social conflict has contributed to researchers' understanding of a wide variety of psychological, social, and community-based aspects of conflict escalation and intractability. However, the field has yet to put forth a theoretical model that links these components to the basic underlying structures and dynamics that account for intractability and transformation. This article presents a dynamical systems approach to conceptu…
The emergence of personality
Intractable Conflict as an Attractor
The Dynamics of Societal Transition
Social influence plays an important role in social transitions. The model of dynamic social influence is used to model social transitions. We assume that individuals communicate with a certain number of others to find out how much support each of the possible opinions has. Opinions of others located nearby and of those who are most influential are given the most consideration. Individuals adopt the opinions that they find most influential in the …
Dynamical Social Psychology
We are delighted to have obtained feedback on our target article from such a distinguished and scientifically diverse set of commentators. It is precisely such a confluence of divergent perspectives that is crucial at this point in establishing the viability of the dynamical perspective in social psychology. Our stated aims in the target article were to describe an existing field of science that could be fruitfully applied to social psychological…
Intrinsic dynamics of social judgment
Ss expressed their moment-to-moment feelings about a target on a computer screen. In the 1 st study, the target was a positive, negative, or mixed-valence acquaintance; in the 2nd study, the target was a liked versus disliked acquaintance who committed a positive versus negative act. Several dynamic measures were derived from the positioning of the cursor (sampled 10 times per second) over a 2min period. The dimension of the structure underlying …
Levels of personal agency
Intrinsic dynamics of social judgment
Levels of personal agency
This research examined individual differences in action identification level as measured by the Behavior Identification Form. Action identification theory holds that any action can be identified in many ways, ranging from low-level identities that specify how the action is performed to high-level identities that signify why or with what effect the action is performed. People who identify action at a uniformly lower or higher level across many act…
Intractable Conflict as an Attractor
Decades of research on social conflict has contributed to researchers' understanding of a wide variety of psychological, social, and community-based aspects of conflict escalation and intractability. However, the field has yet to put forth a theoretical model that links these components to the basic underlying structures and dynamics that account for intractability and transformation. This article presents a dynamical systems approach to conceptu…
Rethinking intractable conflict
Intractable conflicts are demoralizing. Beyond destabilizing the families, communities, or international regions in which they occur, they tend to perpetuate the very conditions of misery and hate that contributed to them in the first place. Although the common factors and processes associated with intractable conflicts have been identified through research, they represent an embarrassment of riches for theory construction. Thus, the current task…
Toward understanding sex differences in pay allocation
Computational Social Psychology
This chapter provides a broad and selective introduction to diverse literatures on computational approaches to cultural dynamics. It explains the social psychological models of cultural dynamics, and then move to two prominent approaches to cultural dynamics— Axelrod's model of cultural dissemination and evolutionary game theoretic approaches to evolution of cooperation. These approaches focus on complementary aspects of cultural dynamics, and th…
Intrinsic dynamics of social judgment
Ss expressed their moment-to-moment feelings about a target on a computer screen. In the 1 st study, the target was a positive, negative, or mixed-valence acquaintance; in the 2nd study, the target was a liked versus disliked acquaintance who committed a positive versus negative act. Several dynamic measures were derived from the positioning of the cursor (sampled 10 times per second) over a 2min period. The dimension of the structure underlying …
Objective self-awareness, standards of evaluation, and moral behavior
The emergence of action
People sometimes find themselves doing things that they did not set out to do. The theory of action identification suggests that people will make such discoveries under certain circumstances and then will continue to perform the action as newly understood; new action, then, will be the result. This action emergence phenomenon was investigated in two experiments. Each was designed to test the idea that people would embrace a new understanding of a…
The Intrinsic Dynamics of Psychological Process
Psychological processes unfold on various timescales in accord with internally generated patterns. The intrinsic dynamism of psychological process is difficult to investigate using traditional methods emphasizing cause–effect relations, however, and therefore is rarely incorporated into social psychological theory. Methods associated with nonlinear dynamical systems can assess temporal patterns in thought and behavior, reveal the emergence of glo…
The Critical Few
To maintain stability yet retain the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, social systems must strike a balance between the maintenance of a shared reality and the survival of minority opinion. A computational model is presented that investigates the interplay of two basic, oppositional social processes—conformity and anticonformity—in promoting the emergence of this balance. Computer simulations employing a cellular automata platform t…
Interpersonal engagement in social perception
This study examined the effects on person perception of varying levels of observer-actor engagement. Subjects observed a male actor (confederate) responding tointerview questions on a prerecorded videotape under three conditions of inter-personal engagement. Subjects in a detachment condition knew that they weresimply observing a tape; subjects in an anticipated interaction condition knewthat they were observing a tape but expected to interact su…
Equity and the formation of revolutionary and conservative coalitions in triads
This study tested opposing predictions made by Gamson's Minimum Resource Theory and equity theory concerning the type of coalitions that are formed when members of a triad expect that rewards will be correlated with amounts of individual resources. Results supported equity theory in that subjects, whose work on a pretask was used as the basis for assigning resources in a bargaining game, formed conservative (strong against weak) coalitions. When …
Nonlinear societal change
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 …
Volatile Psychological Dynamics in Social Interactions
Does agreement or disagreement alone strongly influence people’s thoughts and emotions, or does cognitive and affective reaction relate more to shifts in agreement and disagreement? The present study investigated how attitudes and emotions respond to the evolution of different patterns of agreement and disagreement in an interaction. Combining conventional methods with novel dynamic systems techniques, we found that people’s attitudes and emotion…
Dynamical foundations of intractable conflict
This special issue conceptualizes and investigates intractable social conflict from the perspective of dynamical social psychology. This approach represents a distillation of the concepts, methods, and tools associated with dynamical systems and complexity science that were initially developed in mathematics and the natural sciences. In this article, we provide an overview of the dynamical perspective on conflict, identify the key concepts that a…
Hypocrites or maligned cooperative participants? Experimenter induced normative conflict in zero-sum situations
Dynamics of cooperation-competition interaction models
A nonlinear mathematical model of the interactions in time between 2 actors (which could be individuals, groups, or nations) based on the theoretical and experimental insights of Deutsch (1973, 2006); Pruitt (1969, 2006); Gottman, Murray, Swanson, Tyson, and Swanson (2002); Gottman, Swanson, and Swanson (2002); and Coleman, Vallacher, Nowak, and Bui-Wrzosinska (2006) was developed. In this model, the state of each actor at a given moment in time …
That's easy for you to say
Clustering 34 Occupational Groups By Personality Dimensions
Equity and the formation of revolutionary and conservative coalitions in triads
This study tested opposing predictions made by Gamson's Minimum Resource Theory and equity theory concerning the type of coalitions that are formed when members of a triad expect that rewards will be correlated with amounts of individual resources. Results supported equity theory in that subjects, whose work on a pretask was used as the basis for assigning resources in a bargaining game, formed conservative (strong against weak) coalitions. When …
Objective self-awareness, standards of evaluation, and moral behavior
Interpersonal engagement in social perception
This study examined the effects on person perception of varying levels of observer-actor engagement. Subjects observed a male actor (confederate) responding tointerview questions on a prerecorded videotape under three conditions of inter-personal engagement. Subjects in a detachment condition knew that they weresimply observing a tape; subjects in an anticipated interaction condition knewthat they were observing a tape but expected to interact su…
Toward understanding sex differences in pay allocation
The emergence of action
People sometimes find themselves doing things that they did not set out to do. The theory of action identification suggests that people will make such discoveries under certain circumstances and then will continue to perform the action as newly understood; new action, then, will be the result. This action emergence phenomenon was investigated in two experiments. Each was designed to test the idea that people would embrace a new understanding of a…
What do people think they're doing? Action identification and human behavior
Issues in the cognitive representation and control of action are broached from the perspective of action identification theory. This theory holds that any action can be identified in many ways, ranging from low-level identities that specify how the action is performed to high-level identities that signify why or with what effect the action is performed. The level of identification most likely to be adopted by an actor is said to be dictated by pr…
Levels of personal agency
This research examined individual differences in action identification level as measured by the Behavior Identification Form. Action identification theory holds that any action can be identified in many ways, ranging from low-level identities that specify how the action is performed to high-level identities that signify why or with what effect the action is performed. People who identify action at a uniformly lower or higher level across many act…
That's easy for you to say
Intrinsic dynamics of social judgment
Ss expressed their moment-to-moment feelings about a target on a computer screen. In the 1 st study, the target was a positive, negative, or mixed-valence acquaintance; in the 2nd study, the target was a liked versus disliked acquaintance who committed a positive versus negative act. Several dynamic measures were derived from the positioning of the cursor (sampled 10 times per second) over a 2min period. The dimension of the structure underlying …
Dynamical Social Psychology
We are delighted to have obtained feedback on our target article from such a distinguished and scientifically diverse set of commentators. It is precisely such a confluence of divergent perspectives that is crucial at this point in establishing the viability of the dynamical perspective in social psychology. Our stated aims in the target article were to describe an existing field of science that could be fruitfully applied to social psychological…
The emergence of personality
Intractable Conflict as an Attractor
The Dynamics of Societal Transition
Social influence plays an important role in social transitions. The model of dynamic social influence is used to model social transitions. We assume that individuals communicate with a certain number of others to find out how much support each of the possible opinions has. Opinions of others located nearby and of those who are most influential are given the most consideration. Individuals adopt the opinions that they find most influential in the …
Local acts, global consequences
The consequences of extreme forms of interrogation are considered from the perspective of dynamical systems. Because of the self-organizing tendency of systems, a change in a single element of mind or society (e.g., a new belief, course of action, or government policy) holds potential for transforming the larger mental or social system in which the element is embedded. The emergence of new mental and social states is especially likely when factor…
Intractable Conflict as an Attractor
Decades of research on social conflict has contributed to researchers' understanding of a wide variety of psychological, social, and community-based aspects of conflict escalation and intractability. However, the field has yet to put forth a theoretical model that links these components to the basic underlying structures and dynamics that account for intractability and transformation. This article presents a dynamical systems approach to conceptu…
Thinking inside the box—dynamical constraints on mind and action
Dynamical foundations of intractable conflict
This special issue conceptualizes and investigates intractable social conflict from the perspective of dynamical social psychology. This approach represents a distillation of the concepts, methods, and tools associated with dynamical systems and complexity science that were initially developed in mathematics and the natural sciences. In this article, we provide an overview of the dynamical perspective on conflict, identify the key concepts that a…
Hypocrites or maligned cooperative participants? Experimenter induced normative conflict in zero-sum situations
Rethinking intractable conflict
Intractable conflicts are demoralizing. Beyond destabilizing the families, communities, or international regions in which they occur, they tend to perpetuate the very conditions of misery and hate that contributed to them in the first place. Although the common factors and processes associated with intractable conflicts have been identified through research, they represent an embarrassment of riches for theory construction. Thus, the current task…
Dynamics of cooperation-competition interaction models
A nonlinear mathematical model of the interactions in time between 2 actors (which could be individuals, groups, or nations) based on the theoretical and experimental insights of Deutsch (1973, 2006); Pruitt (1969, 2006); Gottman, Murray, Swanson, Tyson, and Swanson (2002); Gottman, Swanson, and Swanson (2002); and Coleman, Vallacher, Nowak, and Bui-Wrzosinska (2006) was developed. In this model, the state of each actor at a given moment in time …
Dynamical Social Psychology
Volatile Psychological Dynamics in Social Interactions
Does agreement or disagreement alone strongly influence people’s thoughts and emotions, or does cognitive and affective reaction relate more to shifts in agreement and disagreement? The present study investigated how attitudes and emotions respond to the evolution of different patterns of agreement and disagreement in an interaction. Combining conventional methods with novel dynamic systems techniques, we found that people’s attitudes and emotion…
The Intrinsic Dynamics of Psychological Process
Psychological processes unfold on various timescales in accord with internally generated patterns. The intrinsic dynamism of psychological process is difficult to investigate using traditional methods emphasizing cause–effect relations, however, and therefore is rarely incorporated into social psychological theory. Methods associated with nonlinear dynamical systems can assess temporal patterns in thought and behavior, reveal the emergence of glo…
The Critical Few
To maintain stability yet retain the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, social systems must strike a balance between the maintenance of a shared reality and the survival of minority opinion. A computational model is presented that investigates the interplay of two basic, oppositional social processes—conformity and anticonformity—in promoting the emergence of this balance. Computer simulations employing a cellular automata platform t…
Psychology (30 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence (17 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (9 works) · Sociology (8 works)