Living Control Systems

Michael Domjan

You wrote ---"Control systems theory developed as a discipline in
engineering, and although it has been used in the analysis of some biological
systems (e.g., McFarland 1971), it has not been extended to social behavior. "

My name in Mark Lazare, the Title to my Masters thesis in 1992 "A Perceptual
Control Theory Analysis of Cooperation and Social Interaction" I used the
PCT model will predict a persons behavior and interactions with others. The
correlations between what the PCT model did and what the participants would
do in my study on cooperation were .995 with a standard deviation of .005,
the results signify that the PCT model can in fact depict, define, and
predict human social interaction and cooperation and is a valid model of
human behavior.

You site Hershberger, W. A. (1990). Control theory and learning theory.
American Behavioral Scientist, 34, 55-66. Did you miss the other articles
in the ABS?

Purposive Collective Action by Clark McPhail and Charles W. Tucker (both are
Social Psychologist)

Interaction of Control Systems by W. Thomas Bourbon (He models the social
interactions using two Perceptual Control Models)

Your model is not a working model, I would welcome you to do much more
research on PCT and look at the models that DO work and DO explain and
Predict in REAL time how people control their perceptions.

Please reread, American Behavioral Scientist Volume 34, Number 1 September /
October 1990 and find the books of William T. Powers -

1973a Behavior: The Control of Perception, Aldine Publishing Co., Chicago
1989 Living Control Systems, Selected Papers of William T Powers, The Control
Systems Group, Inc.
1992 Living Control Systems II Selected Papers of William T Powers, The
Control Systems Group, Inc.

Here are some helpful links for different applications of the PCT model.

http://www.frontier.net/~powers_w/

http://www.grinnell.edu/sociology/ccp.html

http://www.mindreadings.com/

http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/csg/

I hope in the future, if you use Control Theory in any of your papers, you do
it accurately.

Mark Lazare.

[From Bill Powers (2000.09.16.1634 MDT)]

Mark Lazare (2000.09.16) --

Michael Domjan

You wrote ---"Control systems theory developed as a discipline in
engineering, and although it has been used in the analysis of some biological
systems (e.g., McFarland 1971), it has not been extended to social

behavior. "

My name in Mark Lazare, the Title to my Masters thesis in 1992 "A Perceptual
Control Theory Analysis of Cooperation and Social Interaction" ...

Well done, Mark. The reply should be fascinating.

Best,

Bill P.

ยทยทยท

At 04:52 PM 9/16/2000 EDT, you wrote: