SOCIONOMICS FOUNDATION - Advancing the Science of Social Prediction

The Socionomics Foundation is actively engaged in its own in-house research program. In addition, we fund the work of external university-based researchers engaging in independent and collaborative socionomics projects. Here is a sampling of the Foundation’s activities.

News and Events

The American National Election Studies will include questions based on a proposal from the Socionomics Foundation in a study of American voting behavior. The Foundation recommended that the researchers pay particular attention to the role of mood. According to the principal investigators, the goal of the study is “to inform explanations of election outcomes by providing data that support rich hypothesis testing, maximize methodological excellence, measure many variables, and promote comparisons across people, contexts, and time.” The project is funded in part through the National Science Foundation.

Julie Hall, a University of Michigan neuroscientist, visited the Socionomics Foundation to report on her Foundation-funded series of fMRI experiments. In the studies, participants are asked to make investment decisions while undergoing a brain scan. The studies aim to understand how mood impacts financial decision making.

Papers

Prechter, Robert R. and Wayne D. Parker. 2007. “The Financial/Economic Dichotomy in Social Behavioral Dynamics: The Socionomic Perspective.” Journal of Behavioral Finance. Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 84-108.

Olson, Kenneth. 2006. “A Literature Review of Social Mood.” Journal of Behavioral Finance. Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 193-203.

Parker, Wayne D. and Robert R. Prechter. 2006. “The Socionomic Theory of Finance and the Institution of Social Mood: Pareto and the Sociology of Instinct and Rationalization.” Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics. London, England. July 14-16, 2006.

Parker, Wayne D. 2006. “Methodological Individualism vs. Methodological Holism: Neoclassicism, Institutionalism and Socionomic Theory.” Congress of the International Association for Research in Economic Psychology and the Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics. Paris, France. July 5-8, 2006.

Nofsinger, John. 2005. “Social Mood and Financial Economics.” Journal of Behavioral Finance. Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 144-160.

Parker, Wayne D. and Robert R. Prechter. 2005. “Herding: An Interdisciplinary Integrative Review from a Socionomic Perspective.” International Conference on Cognitive Economics.
Sofia, Bulgaria. August 5-8, 2005.

Green, Michael K. 2002. “R.N. Elliott’s Fundamental Challenge to Mechanistic Social Models.” In Market Analysis for the New Millennium, Robert R. Prechter, Jr., Ed., pp. 9-19.

Prechter, Robert R. 2001. “Unconscious Herding Behavior as the Psychological Basis of Financial Market Trends and Patterns.” Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets. Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 120-125.

Conferences and Presentations

Michael K. Green, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York, Oneonta

John L. Casti, Ph.D.
Director, Kenos Circle
Senior Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis