Thresholds of Behavioral Flexibility in Turbulent Environments for Individual and Group Success
answers to all of these questions . Rather , the model allows us to examine several parameters that surround this kind of indecision regardless of whether you are working in social , biological , or ecological systems . It offers a simulated thought experiment that will ideally provide a baseline for further work that applies the model to more specific questions of matters as far ranging — and important — as global and national policy and how we live our lives .
The model also offers several innovations over previous models of adaptability . It is able to demonstrate costs to flexibility without requiring flexibility itself to be costly . It also focuses on a deeper kind of adaptability than just the ability of switching to another action . Rather , it allows agents to change types , or preference , in light of changing circumstances . Finally , it evaluates the benefits of individual flexibility not just in terms of utility to the agent , but also to utility of the group as a whole . A shortcoming of much policy research is that it assumes policies are injected into systems in isolation . Insofar as an analysis might consider flexibility when it comes to policy design , it likely is forced to assume away any context for the policy that might complicate the analysis . Here , we consider the effects of flexible policies both on their own merit ; as well , as how entire populations of flexible policies might perform and affect the groups they are designed to serve .
In the next two sections , I first unpack the concept of adaptability , and then I discuss my approach to it in this paper — within the broad landscape of adaptability — of behavioral flexibility . Any discussion of adaptability could fill books upon books ( and indeed have ). This is meant to be an orientation to the vast ways we might think about this elusive , yet centrally important , concept in social , natural , and even artificial life ( Clark , 1996 ; Simon , 1996 ).
Adaptability
Adaptability means many things to many people . Fundamentally , it is about the question of changing something — be it genotype , behavior , or beliefs — in response to some kind of change in the social or natural environment in which one finds oneself . Adaptability can be both conscious and unconscious or , relatedly , purposive or reflexive . Individual actors , simple groups , and complex organizations can all be adaptive . Finally , while we often think of adaptive changes as inherently successful — that is , it is not adaptive unless the change makes one better off in a new environment — they need not be . The term maladaptive is sometimes used in these cases where the change is inappropriate or insufficient to the circumstances they are intended to match .
This final distinction is important . The connotation of adaptive as a positive term is problematic , as we cannot know whether the change made by an actor is one that will work — improve the actor ’ s utility over not making that change — until after the fact . We are thus reduced only to evaluating the adaptiveness of a
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