International Psychology: Who's Ahead: Russia or the U.S.?…In Chaos Theory, That Is

Moscow, RUSSIA- “For us Russians, it has always been a favorite sport or pastime to make up all kinds of new methodolgies,” said Irina Trifomova, chair of the Russian branch of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences, and professor at the new Moscow State Social University and lecturer at Moscow State University.

“When I came back from America last week I was surprised at first to realize that the development of synergetics and chaos theory seems to have gone further here in Russia than in America,” said Trifomova. “But I soon saw why: We Russians have a long history of mathematical approaches and a very old, strong tradition of collective discussion, meeting together, confronting different types of knowledge, and developing new knowledge together.”

Working Together

This contrasts with what Trifomova sees as the “the style of work in America, [which] is a style of individual work- Americans do their work, introduce it at conferences, write their articles and publish them, and that’s it.”

Differing Russian and American work styles, rather than conflicting, might actually complement each other. Together, they can be the basis for exceptionally fruitful cooperation on research, Trifomova suggested when she met with APS Executive Director Alan Kraut at the APS annual meeting last summer in San Francisco. She attended the APS convention after taking part in the Society for Chaos Theory’s annual meeting at Berkeley in June, where she spoke on “Fractal Functionality and Differential Psychology.” At the APS convention, she particularly benefited from the symposium on chaos and nonlinear dynamics that included APS members Stephen Guastello of Marquette University, Robert J. Porter of the University of New Orleans, and Frederick Abraham of Blueberry Brain Institute, among the presenters.

When she met with Kraut, Trofimova recalled, “We looked at ways in which Russian and American scientists could conduct some common research. American scientists’ research competence together with Russian strong mathematical traditions demands that we collaborate in producing models and projects.

We talked about some possibilities in synergetic applications in psychology and some projects in modeling in the field of personality.” The Moscow branch of the Chaos Society that she chairs originated from a core group that has been offering courses in cybernetics and other nonlinear dynamics approaches at Moscow State University and other schools for about three years. It was formally linked with the Chaos Society last February and has about 15 core members, reaching a much wider circle of interested scientists, Trifomova said.

Need for Order

Russian psychologists with a firm grounding of their own specialty fields are highly interested and receptive “but it’s a huge problem to educate students about synergetics and chaos theory,” Trifomova says. Students may not yet have reached “a point where they think they need it,” she said. “But more and more psychologists are finding themselves in a situation where they need a systems approach,” she said. “They need to develop a dialectic, and need both philosophy and mathematics. Every investigator who is a real scientist needs something more formal, more general- general concepts, general ideas, general laws behind his or her results, something universal to help explain why those things happen,” Trifomova said. Some of the major assumptions and principles underlying chaos theory are similar to and compatible with Marxist-Leninist ideas with regard to dialectical materialism, suggests APS Charter Fellow Albert R. Gilgen, who has written extensively both on Russian psychology and on chaos theory. ‘ He says, “chaos theory appeals to people who are interested in broad, integrating concepts. That’s why I got interested in it.”

Bridging the Gap

Frederick Abraham, co-editor with Gilgen of a recent book on chaos theory, has been in touch with Trifomova since February. He said he is “impressed with the zeal” with which she is trying to develop some leadership in Russia for the field of dynamic systems theory, adding, “I think that dynamics and chaos theory and all their related variations hold a great deal of promise for the liberation of psychological theory and research.”

They provide a meta-modeling strategy for dealing with patterns for complex integrative phenomena evolving over time. And they explain major shifts (bifurcations and non-stationarities) in those patterns parsimoniously. They also offer a common language for better communication and a better balance of unity and diversity in our discipline.

“International cooperation is always beneficial to the health of a science,” Abraham said, “for the diversity and convergence of thought it brings to a field.”

The very advanced state of Russian work in dynamics theory became clear to Abraham during several meetings in the United States with Trifomova and her colleague from Moscow State University, Olga Mitina. “I was particularly intrigued with a political attitude survey that Mitina conducted on the members of the top 20 political parties in Russia during the upheavals of 1991 (that climaxed in the collapse of Communism) and 1993 (when Yeltsin’s military forces bombarded the Duma or National Assembly), and by her analysis of the dynamics of the Russian elections last June and July,” Abraham said.

Mitina was also gathering cross-cultural data on stereotypes of women in the United States to compare with those in Russia. She is also collecting cross-cultural data on a broad range of topics, including goals of teachers and study of mathematics and use of computers in schools. She assisted Abraham in setting up programs in art, mathematics, and science in the middle school of Abraham’s town, near Moscow, Vermont. They hit on the idea of having students in Moscow, Vermont, and Moscow, Russia, start communicating over the Internet, using this as part of a study to determine what changes in attitudes occur as a function of the communication.

Guastella, past president of the Chaos Society, said, “There is a lot of original stuff showing up in different parts of the world, not just in the United States, and it looks as though we have discovered an interesting pack of folks in Russia who are interested in many of the same things we are. ” Guastello said the dynamics theory approaches “are going to be a great equalizer for scientists’ groups in other countries, not just Russia. Though the United States probably ran away with the show in a number of scientific areas, the new ideas and applications are finding footholds in many places and it’s all starting fresh. So we’re going to see first-rate material coming from a lot of places where we haven’t been expecting it. And because the concepts have such wide applicability, there are many ways for people to get hold of it and start doing new things with it.”

Guastella pointed out that there are there are many different sides to chaos theory. “It’s not just one thing,” he said, “it’s actually an agglomeration of related mathematical concepts. Certain aspects have been widely pursued in the United States and others- synergetics, for example-got more attention in Western Europe and apparently also in Russia. The Russians have done good mathematical foundation work that shows up in that side of chaos theory as we know it in the United States. They made a parade of mathematical contributions over the years.”


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