Chaos in interpersonal interactions. The present paper is the result of work completed almost forty years ago. It was not published at the time of its completion because of anomalous results which seemed to invalidate the model on which the empirical research was based. Recently, however, I have learned that what apparently was uncontrolled variability, or noise in the system, was possibly the most important finding of the research.
All psychological research is social interaction of a kind.
Even experiments with white rats cause the human experimenter to interact with the rat. The experimenter together with one or more subject organisms, constitutes a small group. The typical learning experiment is special in that the interaction only goes one way. That is, the subject organism must match an arbitrary standard set by the experimenter. The only exception to this in a so-called learning environment of which I am aware was the math teacher of one of my children who knew less than his students.