A Complex Adaptive Systems Approach to the Psychology of Political Change

Psychological differences between individuals appear to play a role in political and social division, but process-based models of the relationship between personality and political orientation are lacking. Using a complex adaptive systems model, this paper argues that micro-level biological differences and macro-level sociocultural structures exert a bi-directional influence on personality as a meso-level construct. A process-based account of the relationship is provided, suggesting that initial biases at the biological level are accentuated through feedback effects that occur through social interactions. These individual differences drive collective adaptation to changing environments, resulting in the emergence of political values associated with successive phases of the adaptive cycle. Political and social division therefore occurs as an inevitable element in the process of societal adaptation and emerges out of interactions between individuals responding to stress. This flexible model is also able to account for both congruence and incongruence between personality and political orientation.