Dynamical Systems Theory: Applications to Peace and Conflict

Dynamical Systems Theory: Applications to Peace and Conflict ROBIN VALLACHER, PETER T. COLEMAN, AND ANDRZEJ NOWAK All conflicts operate as dynamical systems. In complexity science, a dynamical system is a set of interconnected elements that influence one another over time to promote the emergence of a global state (such as war or peace), which in turn provides common meaning for the elements. In social conflict, the elements are specific thoughts, actions, and feelings relevant to the conflict, and the emergent higher-order state is a generalized negative (or positive) view of the relationship and a readiness for like action (cf. Coleman, Vallacher, Nowak, & BuiWrzosinska, 2007). Within this perspective, the proximate causes of intractable conflict (e.g., competition over scarce resources, ideological differences, protection of personal or group identity) mask a more fundamental tendency for the parties to the conflict to become locked into a destructive pattern of thought and action that resists change. This basic dynamic – the press for higher-order coherence – provides a new perspective on conflict resolution: Rather than trying to solve the issues in dispute, peacemakers should focus on how to transform the system from the ensemble of dynamics perpetuating the conflict to a different coherent state that allows for benign (or positive) relations between the parties. (See , ; ,  .) The key concept in the dynamical account is attractor, which represents a subset of potential states to which a system’s behavior converges over time. Metaphorically, it “attracts” the system’s behavior, so that even very different starting states tend to evolve toward the subset of states defining the attractor. Lacking an attractor, a system can change and evolve in response to whatever influences and forces it experiences. When a system’s dynamics are governed by an attractor, however, the system is resistant to perturbing influences that would otherwise move it to a different subset of states. An external factor might promote a temporary change in the state of a system, but over time the system will return to its attractor. Three types of attractors have been identified in dynamical systems: fixed-point, periodic, and deterministic chaos. To date, fixed-point attractors have been shown to be the most relevant to issues of intractable conflict. Periodic and chaotic evolution are expressed in various social processes, though (Guastello, Koopmans, & Pincus, 2009; Vallacher & Nowak, 2007), and may prove useful in the investigation of social conflicts as well. An attractor is thus similar to the notion of equilibrium or homeostasis (cf. Cannon, 1932). In many systems, the equilibrium is an energy minimum – a state that minimizes the incompatibility among the elements. In social systems, an attractor represents a restricted range of mental states and actions that is commonly experienced by members of the group. This scenario underlies the emergence and maintenance of norms, attitudes, and fashions in a social system. Individuals, who may differ initially in their personal preferences, influence each other to adopt a shared reality (cf. Nowak, Szamrej, & Latané, 1990). Once a coherent state emerges in a social system, there is strong resistance to new information or forces that threaten to undermine it. The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, First Edition. Edited by Daniel J. Christie. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2   :      Discrepant information is discounted or reinterpreted to fit the prevailing view and individuals holding deviant ideas are subject to intense influence from the local majority or are ostracized. Attractor dynamics cannot be reduced to traditional motivational assumptions such as hedonism, self-esteem, or self-interest. Nor do attractors necessarily represent goals, values, or other desired states. People may display a persistent pattern of antagonistic behavior in their social relations, for example, despite efforts to avoid behaving in this manner. In an intergroup context, warring factions may display conciliatory gestures when prompted to do so, but revert to a pattern of antagonistic thought and behavior when the outside interventions are relaxed (Coleman et al., 2007). When a system’s dynamics are governed by an attractor, the system will consistently evolve to a particular state, even if this state is not hedonically pleasant, and will return to this state despite being perturbed by forces that might promote a more pleasant or ideal state. The attractor concept is illustrated in Figure 1. The ball represents the current state of the system and the valleys represent two attractors for the system, one for constructive relations (A) and one for destructive relations (B). The ball will roll down the hill and come to rest at the bottom of the valley, which represents a local energy minimum. Each attractor can be characterized in terms of two basic properties. A basin A B Figure 1 A dynamical system with two attractors. of attraction specifies the range of states that will evolve toward the attractor. This feature is represented by the width of each valley in the figure: A narrow range (Attractor B) “attracts” a relatively small range of states and is unable to absorb inconsistent ideas and events, whereas a wide basin (Attractor A) “attracts” a broad range of states, including information and events that seem inconsistent with the attractor. An attractor can also be characterized in terms of its strength or resistance to change, represented by the depth of each valley. It is difficult to dislodge a system from a strong attractor (Attractor B), even when it is perturbed by strong external influences, whereas a relatively weak influence can dislodge a system from a weak attractor (Attractor A). An intractable conflict reflects a strong attractor with a wide basin of attraction. The strength of the attractor reflects its capacity for maintaining a coherent cognitive, affective, and behavioral orientation among the parties to a conflict. When destructive conflict is associated with a deep attractor, an attempt to address the current state of the conflict (such as sending in peacekeeping troops) corresponds to pushing the ball uphill. It not only requires considerable effort, but also is likely to be futile, since once the pushing force is relaxed (the troops withdraw), the ball will roll back to the attractor. A wide basin of attraction means that a broad range of ideas and action possibilities will eventually evolve toward the dominant mental and behavioral pattern characterizing the parties to the conflict. Positive information that contradicts the negative view of members of an outgroup is transformed by a variety of cognitive and social mechanisms until it fits the predominant view. Knowing the attractor landscape of a system is essential when attempting to anticipate the fate of introducing a new element – a communication, an overture,   :      even an unanticipated but significant event – particularly when the element is open to different interpretations or has unclear implications. Assume that a group has an attractor for negative relations with another group. The width of the basin of attraction determines whether a positive act (e.g., a conciliatory gesture) by the other group will be assimilated to the attractor or instead represents an inconsistency that holds potential for dislodging the system from the attractor. If the attractor has a wide basin, the positive act might be reframed in negative terms (e.g., as weakness or deception). If the attractor has a narrow basin, the same element cannot be as readily assimilated and might move the system to a different attractor (corresponding to reconciliation). The strength of the attractor decides whether the inconsistent element (e.g., a positive act) will have any effect in moving the system away from the negative state. If the attractor is relatively weak, the inconsistent element may influence the state of the system, perhaps moving it gradually toward a different pattern of thought and action. Additional inconsistencies might even transform the system, moving it to a different (more benign or positive) attractor. If the attractor is strong, however, even very inconsistent information may not affect the state of the system. A series of highly conciliatory gestures by the other group, for example, is unlikely to change the way the group is perceived. Instead, the gestures will be discounted in importance or suppressed in communication and discussion. (See  ,   .) At some point, though, the inconsistent elements may become sufficiently numerous or significant that they succeed in transforming the system. The stronger the attractor, the more numerous or significant the inconsistencies must be to have this effect. When this threshold is reached, the system will show a sudden and qualitative 3 change to a new (or previously latent) attractor. These basic processes may underlie the radical shifts observed when communities move rapidly from peace to violence (as occurred in the 1994 Rwandan genocide), or from violence to peace (as seen in the emergence of peace in Mozambique in 1992; Bartoli, Bui-Wrozsinska, & Nowak, 2010). After this transformation, the system will display the same resistance to inconsistent (now negative) information, and the same nonlinear transformation when a threshold of inconsistency is reached. This scenario suggests that when a system has two strong attractors (e.g., one maintaining positive relations between two groups and one maintaining negative relations), the same element (an event, a communication, etc.) can be responded to in very different ways, depending on which attractor is currently manifest. This tendency, referred to as hysteresis, is a signature phenomenon of nonlinear dynamical systems. With respect to intractable conflict, knowing the respective strength and basins of attraction for the set of attractors defining the relationship between the parties is critical for anticipating the impact of information or events that might have a single unequivocal meaning (e.g., positive or negative) when viewed from outside the conflict. Attempts to challenge directly the validity or practicality of an attractor for intractable conflict are often doomed to fail, and in fact are likely to intensify people’s beliefs and energize their response tendencies. There are two basic scenarios, however, by which one might change the dynamics of an intractable conflict. In one, an understanding of how attractors are created can be utilized to “reverse engineer” a malignant attractor. Attractors develop as separate elements (e.g., issues, events, pieces of information) become linked by reinforcing feedback to promote a global perspective and action orientation. 4   :      Reverse engineering thus entails changing some of the feedback loops from reinforcing to inhibitory, thereby lowering the level of coherence in the system. Psychological research provides clues regarding this “disassembly process” (cf. Vallacher, Nowak, & Miller, 2003). One strategy is to reinstate the salience of individual elements, devoid of their integration with other elements. Inducing people to focus on the details of an event or a communication, for example, serves to isolate these elements and thus weaken the connections among them. When habitual actions and generalized judgments and beliefs are deconstructed, people become vulnerable to new interpretations that provide an avenue of emergence to a coherent perspective. In effect, the tack is to recapture the complexity of a conflict attractor and reconfigure the elements to promote a more benign form of coherence. In the second scenario, the key is moving the system out of its manifest attractor into a latent attractor that is defined in terms of benign or even positive thoughts, actions, and relationships. Even a strong attractor with a wide basin of attraction will exclude information that is highly discrepant from the attractor’s value. An explicitly peaceful overture by an outgroup, for example, is difficult to reconcile with the ingroup’s negative attitude and thus may be discounted as an anomaly. Should enough incidents like this occur, however, they may begin to coalesce into a new attractor reflecting benign or positive attitudes toward the outgroup. At this point, if an event or intervention temporarily defuses the conflict, the newly formed latent attractor could suddenly become manifest and redirect the ingroup’s thoughts, feelings, and actions vis-à-vis the outgroup. Ironically, then, the stronger the negative attractor in social relations, the greater the likelihood that a positive attractor will be created that can transform the relations between the parties in sudden and catastrophic manner. By the same reasoning, peaceful relations between groups may show a sudden change to a negative or even violent pattern of intergroup behavior if conditions have created the foundation for a latent attractor comprised of negative thoughts, feelings, and action tendencies. The dynamical perspective conceptualizes intractable conflict in terms of generic processes that underlie diverse phenomena across the social and physical sciences. This does not mean that intractable conflicts are “nothing but” examples of generic processes. Human experience is clearly unique in many respects, and one should never lose sight of the idiosyncratic factors relevant to any particular conflict scenario. The dynamical account provides scaffolding, though, on which such factors can be layered and put into perspective. SEE ALSO: Conflict, Ethos of; Conflict, Intractable; Conflict Resolution, Sociopsychological Barriers to. REFERENCES Bartoli, A., Bui-Wrozsinska, L., & Nowak, A. (2010). Peace is in movement: A dynamical-systems perspective on the emergence of peace in Mozambique. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 16, 211–230. Cannon, W. B. (1932). The wisdom of the body. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Coleman, P. T., Vallacher, R. R., Nowak, A., & Bui-Wrzosinska, L. (2007). Intractable conflict as an attractor: Presenting a model of conflict, escalation, and intractability. American Behavioral Scientist, 50, 1454–1475. Guastello, S. J., Koopmans, M., & Pincus, D. (Eds.). (2009). Chaos and complexity in psychology: Theory of nonlinear dynamics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Nowak, A., Szamrej, J., & Latané, B. (1990). From private attitude to public opinion: A   :      dynamic theory of social impact. Psychological Review, 97, 362–376. Vallacher, R. R., & Nowak, A. (2007). Dynamical social psychology: Finding order in the flow of human experience. In A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (2nd ed., pp. 734–758). New York, NY: Guilford Publications. Vallacher, R. R., Nowak, A., & Miller, M. E. (2003). Social influence and group dynamics. In I. Weiner (Series Ed.) & T. Millon & M. J. Lerner (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Vol. 5. Personality and social psychology (pp. 383–417). New York, NY: Wiley. 5 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Nowak, A., Bui-Wrzosinska, L., Coleman, P. T., Vallacher, R. R., Bartkowski, W., & Jochemczyk, L. (2010). Seeking sustainable solutions: Using an attractor simulation platform for teaching multi-stakeholder negotiation in complex cases. Negotiation Journal, 26, 49–68. Vallacher, R. R., Nowak, A., Coleman, P. T., Bui-Wrzosinska, L., Bartoli, A., & Liebovitch, L. (2008). Dynamical social psychology: Twenty frequently asked questions. Retrieved from http:// www.dynamicsofconflict.iccc.edu.pl/