A Theory of Action Identification

by Robin R. Vallacher, Daniel M. Wegner

First published in 1985. A person may be caught in the midst of a patently ridiculous act, interrupted in a moment of apparent confusion, or even aroused from sleep, and yet respond to a query of What are you doing? with remarkable ease. The answer that is given is an identification of action. It is the central idea of this book that such action identifications perform pivotal functions in a broad range of psychological and social processes.

268 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 4, 2014

About the author

Robin R. Vallacher is Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University, a Research Associate in the Center for Complex Systems, University of Warsaw, Poland, and a Research Affiliate in the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity at Columbia University. He has been a visiting scholar at University of Texas at Austin, University of Bern (Switzerland), Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research (Germany), and University of Montpellier (France). Dr. Vallacher has authored or edited seven professional texts, and has published over 100 book chapters and journal articles on a wide range of topics in social psychology, including self-concept, self-regulation, social judgment, close relationships, prejudice and discrimination, sport psychology, social justice, and intergroup conflict. In recent years, he and his colleagues have adapted concepts and methods from the study of nonlinear dynamical systems in the natural sciences to the investigation of personal, interpersonal, and societal processes.