This book presents readers with an exercise in modeling human ways of being—thinking, feeling, acting. It does not merely introduce models, but also attempts to teach modeling, and to produce, within the reader, the predispositions and attitudes of the modeler: a distance from the individual whose behavior is modeled, an engineering approach to the model-building process, a (self)-critical approach to the model testing and elaboration process, and a pedagogical and a therapeutic approach to enacting and communicating models. The author makes the process and the phenomenon of modeling transpare ... More

This book presents readers with an exercise in modeling human ways of being—thinking, feeling, acting. It does not merely introduce models, but also attempts to teach modeling, and to produce, within the reader, the predispositions and attitudes of the modeler: a distance from the individual whose behavior is modeled, an engineering approach to the model-building process, a (self)-critical approach to the model testing and elaboration process, and a pedagogical and a therapeutic approach to enacting and communicating models. The author makes the process and the phenomenon of modeling transparent and explicit, and clarifies the reasons for which modeling human behavior has to be an interactive process between the modeler and the modeled. This perspective situates the book at the intersection of analytical and computational thinking about rationality, reasoning, choice and thinking, and the tradition of action science and action research.