Colin G. DeYoung & Yanna J. Weisberg (2016)
Abstract
Cybernetics is the study of principles governing goal-directed, self-regulating, information
processing systems, both artificial and living. Originating in the 1940s and 50s, it helped shape
the cognitive revolution in psychology and has provided crucial insight into cognition and the
control of behavior. This chapter elucidates its basic conceptual features and discusses its
application to understanding personality and social behavior. The central premise is that
cybernetic approaches are promising for the development of solutions to two major problems at
the intersection of personality and social psychology. The first problem is how to describe stable
individual differences in terms of psychological processes that change from moment to moment
in response to situational factors. The second is how to develop explanatory, process-based
theories to accompany the descriptive models of personality, like the Big Five, that have been the
biggest accomplishment of personality psychology in the last half century. Following an
explication of the basic principles of cybernetics, we describe a cybernetic theory of the Big Five
and its applications to theories of social behavior including self-monitoring and interpersonal
theory.
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