American Journal of Psychology Vol. 124, 365 – 366 (2011)
Psychologists and sociologists have long been concerned with how human relationships and social institutions can suddenly collapse or otherwise “flip” from an apparently stable state to a completely different one. Ecologists have a similar problem when it comes to understanding the processes that lead to abrupt collapse in natural ecosystems and the occurrence of “boom and bust” population cycles. In his ground-breaking book, Marten Scheffer reveals a powerful link between the two, and shows how revolutionary new ideas that have emerged from ecology may be of considerable value to psychologists in understanding the mechanisms that lead to abrupt, violent and sometimes tragic changes in human relationships and societies…