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Personality as a Dynamical System: Emergence of Stability and Distinctiveness from Intra and Interpersonal Interactions

Scott LeeTiernan

Department of Psychology,University of Washington

Walter Mischel

Department of Psychology, Columbia University

The implications of conceptualizing personality as a cognitive-affective processing system that functions as a parallel constraint satisfaction network are explored. Computer simulations show that from dynamic interactions among the units in such a network, a set of stable attractor states and functionally equivalent groups of situations emerge, such that IF exposed to situation group X, THEN the system settles in attractor Y. This conceptualization explicitly models the effect of situations on a given individual, and therefore can also be used to model the function of interpersonal systems. We demonstrate this possibility by modeling dyadic systems in which one partner's behavior becomes the situational input into the other partner's personality system, and vice versa. The results indicate that each member of the dyad will, in general, exhibit new attractor states. This suggests that the thoughts, affects, and behaviors that an individual typically experiences are a function not of that individual's personality system alone, but rather a function of the interpersonal system of which the individual is a part. Just as individuals have distinctive and stable IF-THEN signatures, so do interpersonal relationships. Understanding the structure of the cognitive-affective processing system of each relationship partner also should enable predictions of their distincitve relational signatures as emergent properties of the interpersonal system that develops.

Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 6, No. 4, 316-325 (2002)
DOI: 10.1207/S15327957PSPR0604_06


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