Quantitative sociodynamics. Stochastic methods and models of social interaction processes. Transl. from the German by Richard Calek and Dirk Helbing (Q1921376)

This book provides some new and powerful methods for a quantitative and dynamic description of social phenomena based on models for behavioral changes due to individual interaction processes. The methods mainly originate from statistical physics (stochastic processes), synergetics (self-organization phenomena of nonlinearly interacting elements) and chaos theory, but they have proved to be very useful in various other fields like chemistry, biology, and economics. The applicability of these methods to social phenomena is carefully discussed. By incorporating decision theoretical approaches a fundamental model is established and verified. It includes as special cases many recently proposed models, e.g. the logistic equation for limited growth processes, the gravity model for exchange processes, some diffusion models for the spread of information, evolutionary game theory for cooperation and competition processes and a social field theory describing behavioral changes by dynamic force fields. It is found that this model implies many new results in behavioral sciences. A variety of examples including opinion formation, migration, social field theory, self-organization of behavioral conventions, behavior of customers and voters is presented and illustrated by using the results of computer simulation. The book is directed first to natural scientists who are interested in a comprehensive overview of stochastic methods and their application to interdisciplinary topics. It is also relevant for social scientists who are engaged in mathematical sociology, decision theory, rational choice approaches, or general system theory. It is assumed that the reader possesses basic mathematical knowledge in calculus and linear algebra.