The Pip Pattison Oration is a new annual event hosted by the Complex Human Data Hub to showcase work based in mathematical psychology.

Abstract

From climate change to obesity and extremism, our society faces diverse challenges whose resolution requires a deeper understanding of human behaviour and effective approaches to behaviour change. Computational Behavioural Science provides a unified approach to understanding, explaining, predicting, and influencing complex human behaviour dynamics to help address these challenges. It brings together the methods and tools of big data and technological advances of the 21^st Century with the theories and insights from psychology and social sciences. Unlike Behavioural Science of the old, however, it has a broad meta-theoretical perspective and a profound appreciation of human agency and sociality. Computational Behavioural Science understands micro-level human psychology and behaviour as, at least in part, constitutive of and constituted by meso-level social network processes, and these complex dynamics further combine and aggregate to generate macro-level cultural dynamics. However, macro-level phenomena in turn profoundly constrain, but also enable meso- and micro-level social network and behavioural dynamics. With innovative methodology and deep theories of human mind and behaviour, Computational Behavioural Science promises to provide greater behavioural insights to inform public discourse, policy making, and policy implementation and evaluation for a better future.

Bio

Yoshihisa Kashima is Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on cultural dynamics – the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time – with particular emphasis on culture of sustainability. He is a leading researcher in cultural psychology and served as President of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. His scholarly work includes 200+ journal articles and book chapters in leading journals such as Science, Nature Climate Change, Psychological Review, Psychological Bulletin, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His current research centres around cultural dynamics in complex social-ecological systems with a view to transitioning to low carbon living.

Presenter

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  Professor Yoshi Kashima, University of Melbourne

  Professor Yoshi Kashima

  University of Melbourne

  

  Yoshihisa Kashima is Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on cultural dynamics – the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time – with particular emphasis on culture of sustainability. He is a leading researcher in cultural psychology and served as President of the International Association for CrossCultural Psychology. His scholarly work includes 200+ journal articles and book chapters in leading journals such as Science, Nature Climate Change, Psychological Review, Psychological Bulletin, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. His current research centres around cultural dynamics in complex socialecological systems with a view to transitioning to low carbon living.