When Individual Dispositions and Social Pressure Conflict: A Catastrophe

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Abstract
When a personal dispositional variable is in conflict with social pressure, the resulting behavior is hypothesized to follow a cusp catastrophe. The catastrophe model allows'for discontinuities and bimodality in behavior. Specifically, when social pressure is low, behavior is expected to be a smooth, monotonic function of disposition. When social pressure is high and disposition is low, behavior will be low; when social pressure is high and disposition is high, relevant behavior will be bimodal-some people engaging in low levels of behavior and some engaging in high levels of behavior. In dynamic terms, shifts in dispositions at high levels of social pressure will result in discontinuous, i.e., "catastrophic" changes in behavior. Increments in social pressure at high levels of disposition will result in divergence, i.e., bimodality.

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