[Group Behavior and the NKS way of thinking] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

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Group Behavior and the NKS way of thinking
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Posted by: j hay

We have been examining social interaction in the light of NKS. Social interaction systems are discrete and are often complex systems. The following is an abstract of a paper (available online – see NKS bibliography) in which a small group is moved into various states that are analogous to the classes of cellular automata. The interesting point is that the facilitator has done this repetitively with more than 20 groups. We would appreciate any comment.

The Group Development Process
Seen through the Lens of Complexity Theory

John Campbell, J. David Flynn, James Hay

Abstract

Complexity theory is used to develop a model of group development based on earlier research with social groups such as Tuckman and Jensen’s stages of forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning (1977). The model shows how these stages correspond to Wolfram’s four attractor classes of order (point and periodic), chaos (strange) and complexity, and transitions among them. Kauffman’s NK models suggests several ways of moving networks among the attractor regions (1995). The theory was tested on data derived from observations by a Facilitator, and feedback from participants, who participated in a series of training workshops for other facilitators, and for members of a labor union.
The results confirmed that these training groups made three clearly identifiable transitions among the regions of complexity theory. Initially, the Facilitator breaks down expectations of order, while establishing a multitude of interactions among group members to help the group make the transition from order into the realm of chaos. The result is great uncertainty and unpredictability for both the participants and the Facilitator.
Later, through the establishment of goals and simple rules, the group begins to focus, uncertainty decreases, and the group makes a second transition from chaos to complexity, just within the region of order, at the ‘edge of chaos’. Complex groups resemble sports teams in the Zone during peak experiences. They are very creative and require little input from the Facilitator. Finally, in the third transition, the Facilitator prepares participants to move from complexity back to more orderly organizations and institutions.
The paper concludes with a discussion of how complexity theory can organize earlier research and theory on group development, and offers suggestion for more quantitative research using these ideas. The paper should be of interest to those who wish to apply models of complexity theory to social change in all social systems.

Key Words: chaos, complexity, order, stages of group development, facilitating, social change

Posted by: Tony Smith

I too was inspired by some of the understandings coming from the complex systems movement on the 1980s to try to tackle things differenly in the '90s.

While Wolfram's identification of Class 4 was very important so to were other general principles, e.g:

the principle that "Emergence requires the dissipation of some flux." became the opening for an attempt to better understand the social dynamic in my 1997 paper Conversation Piece.
the principle that a too efficient sub system reduces the efficiency of the super system helps us understand cancer, telephone queuing systems and the like.

But now I have come back to further develop my cellular automata and other model complex systems, I have been reminded again that the edge of chaos/border or order is where everything interesting happens. Analogous to bifurcation in chaos theory, Class 4 systems teeter on the brink of generating Class 1/2 or Class 3 outcomes, although we do have a clear observational bias towards reporting Class 1/2.

Meanwhile others are looking to NKS to deliver new kinds of understanding of social dynamics, or maybe to justify what they already believed.

The physical, biological, social and ethereal domains all become easier to understand under the focused light of Class 4's unpredictable creativity. But that perspective often fails to give confidence in any particular future course of action.

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