130 Chapter 6 1.3 Change-mechanisms In the third and last step we zoom in again by exploring transition-points: moments that ‘kickstart’ abrupt change towards a new attractor (cf. day 127 in Wichers et al. (2016)). Complex systems theory posits two general mechanisms for the change from one attractor to another that are relevant in the context of this study. First, instability-induced change (also called bifurcation-induced change (Cui et al., 2022)) is the mechanism in which an existing attractor destabilizes, thereby forcing the system to reach a new attractor. In Figure 1, someone’s current state (e.g., frequently self-injuring) is visualized as a ball, located in a basin which reflects the attractor. The two basins reflect two example attractors: a pattern of few self-injuring behaviors and a pattern of frequent self-injuring behaviors. The basin’s depth metaphorically represents the strength of the attractor state. Stronger attractors are harder to change and therefore everyday events typically do not trigger enduring change. Figure 1A shows instability-induced change, in which an existing attractor destabilizes to the extent that there is no valley left to contain the ball, making the ball roll towards a new valley (Hayes & Andrews, 2020; Olthof et al., 2023, Kelso et al., 1986). Note that during instability, the ball can move more ‘freely’ through the valley (as it is less steep), leading to increasingly variable behavior. Measures of temporal complexity and variability can therefore pick up on instability (Olthof et al., 2020b; Schreuder et al., 2020). Second, event-induced (also called noise-induced (Cui et al., 2022)) change is when an extraordinary event (e.g., unexpectedly being fired from work) ‘pushes’ the ball towards a different attractor, without the existing attractor losing its stability first (Figure 1B). One would not expect instability as an early warning signal for the transition in this event-induced change, while one would expect the presence of an extraordinary event (Olthof et al., 2023; Cui et al., 2022). This makes it possible to empirically differentiate instability-induced and event-induced changes. The third aim of this study was therefore to evaluate which, if any, of these two change-mechanism(s) potentially underlie transitions between attractors.
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