Nonlinearity in Economics and Social Science: The Outstanding Contributions of John Barkley Rosser Jr.

The pioneering work of John Barkley Rosser Jr. (1948-2023) in various subfields of economics emphasizes the fact that economic and social phenomena are inherently nonlinear and often discontinuous. From this standpoint, Barkley has contributed substantially to a paradigm shift in economic theory and modelling. Both his influential research work and his unceasing survey work on different approaches and schools of thought in economics and social science, carried out through the lens of complexity theory, have succeeded to develop a broader view on economic thinking and continue to inspire many researchers worldwide. The articles in this issue cover a number of research areas and themes that were central to Barkley's work, from technological progress to evolutionary competition between firms, from regional science to income inequality, from environmental economics to more general macroeconomic themes, such as bubbles and crashes, financial instabilities and policy issues.

Actual Threat, Perceived Threat, and Authoritarianism: An Experimental Study.

Archival, correlational, and experimental studies converge showing strong links between societal threat and authoritarianism. However, inconsistent with the social cognitive studies showing that our perception of the reality is systematically biased, the literature on the threat-authoritarianism relations has largely ignored the connection between the actual societal threat and its perception. In this study, we analyzed the relation between objective societal threat and authoritarians' perception of it, hypothesizing that authoritarians would tend to overestimate societal threat and that such overestimation would increase the endorsement of authoritarian attitudes and the preference for authoritarian political systems. Using an experimental approach, we studied the relations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), actual societal threat (manipulated as low vs. moderate), and perceived societal threat working with an Italian community sample (N = 209, Mage = 29.70, SD = 9.53, 64.1% women). Actual threat and RWA equally predicted participants' threat perception, while their interaction did not. In turn, threat perception further increased RWA and support to authoritarian political system. We discussed the results in terms of a vicious circle whereby authoritarians overestimate societal threat and such overestimation reinforces authoritarian attitudes.

Actual threat, perceived threat, and authoritarianism: an experimental study

Archival, correlational, and experimental studies converge showing strong links between societal threat and authoritarianism. However, inconsistent with the social cognitive studies showing that our perception of the reality is systematically biased, the literature on the threat-authoritarianism relations has largely ignored the connection between the actual societal threat and its perception. In this study, we analyzed the relation between objective societal threat and authoritarians' perception of it, hypothesizing that authoritarians would tend to overestimate societal threat and that such overestimation would increase the endorsement of authoritarian attitudes and the preference for authoritarian political systems. Using an experimental approach, we studied the relations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), actual societal threat (manipulated as low vs. moderate), and perceived societal threat working with an Italian community sample (N = 209, Mage = 29.70, SD = 9.53, 64.1% women). Actual threat and RWA equally predicted participants' threat perception, while their interaction did not. In turn, threat perception further increased RWA and support to authoritarian political system. We discussed the results in terms of a vicious circle whereby authoritarians overestimate societal threat and such overestimation reinforces authoritarian attitudes

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The Role of Incomplete Information and Others' Choice in Reducing Traffic: A Pilot Study.

In this study, we investigate the role of payoff information and conformity in improving network performance in a traffic dilemma known as the Braess paradox. Our goal is to understand when decisions are guided by selfish motivations or otherwise by social ones. For this purpose, we consider the manipulation of others' choice, public and private monitoring and information on distribution of choices. Data show that when social comparison was not salient, participants were more cooperative. By contrast, cooperativeness of others' choice made participants more competitive leading to traffic and collective performance decrease. The implications of these findings to the literature on social dilemmas are discussed.

Nonlinear dynamics in work groups with Bion's basic assumptions.

According to several authors Bion's contribution has been a landmark in the thought and conceptualization of the unconscious functioning of human beings in groups. We provide a mathematical model of group behavior in which heterogeneous members may behave as if shared to different degrees what in Bion's theory is a common basic assumption. Our formalization combines both individual characteristics and group dynamics. By this formalization we analyze the group dynamics as the result of the individual dynamics of the members and prove that, under some conditions, each individual reproduces the group dynamics in a different scale. In particular, we provide an example in which the chaotic behavior of the group is reflected in each member.

Personnel turnover in organizations: an agent-based simulation model.

We study how personnel turnover policies may affect the global behavior of a simple model of organization. In the model we propose, heterogeneous agents interact dynamically, adapting their effort level. Effort equilibria in populations consisting of both perfectly rational and bounded-rational agents are considered. The problem is approached theoretically in simple cases, while simulation is used when more complex situations are examined. We are interested in finding a hiring/firing policy that is effective in selecting high effort in more complex cases and when agent effort may not be directly observed. We prove that, while generally the existence of such a policy is not guaranteed, in most situations an opportune choice may increase overall population effort. This research suggests that, even if explicit incentives are not considered, an opportune policy in personnel turnover can improve the general effort level of the organization. In particular, policies adapting to contingent situations are those that are likely to obtain best results.