Abstract for: Psychology and Human Behavior SIG: Annual Meeting and Roundtable Featuring SD and the Humanities

Our SIG studies ways to better integrate psychological and sociological constructs into system dynamics models. Doing so allows us to understand the causes of many problems and to explore social science theories in order to generate new research questions, identify impactful policies, and subsequently guide program implementation and evaluation. The SIG supports networking, education, collaborative modeling projects, and manuscript/modeling consultation and review. Soon after the 2016 Delft meeting, the SIG established a new learning collaborative (LC), grounded in the humanities, with an initial focus on application of system dynamics to the teaching of history and sociology. At our 2017 Cambridge meeting, members of the learning collaborative (Gambardella and Hayward) will report on two LC modeling projects based on two seminal works: Lowe (1985), on the classic Maya collapse, and Turchin (2003) on the collapse of civilizations. Another member, Dana Polojärvi will report on applying system dynamics to teach the history of the collapse of civilizations. We will discuss current aims and objectives of the learning collaborative, including how system dynamics fosters critical thinking; problem solving, and “team science.”