A Complexity Perspective on Culture, Identity, and Motivation: The Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity

While most contemporary motivation research has approached sociocultural and individual processes separately, any person’s experience, motivation, and action are simultaneously sociocultural and individual. In this article, we propose the Complex Dynamic Systems (CDS) paradigm as a framework for integrating sociocultural and individual processes into a coherent account of motivated action, and we elaborate one CDS model—the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017). Our central argument is that the DSMRI explains motivated action as an emergent phenomenon grounded in the person’s role identity—a complex dynamic system that itself emerges within a culturally mediated activity system. This yields an integrated, two-level explanation of the foundational motivational question, why does this person act this way in this situation? At the first, sociocultural level, a person acts according to the sociocultural role they occupy in a particular cultural activity system; at the second, individual level, different people occupying the same role construct idiosyncratic role identities that are framed by the role, yet emerge uniquely because they manifest as non-deterministic dynamic systems. In the article, we develop the conception of culture in the DSMRI as a complex, dynamic, symbolically mediated cultural activity system, and the role identity system that emerges within it. We conclude by considering the implications of this conception for motivation theory, research, and the design of educational environments.