Exploring Intraindividual, Interindividual, and Intervariable Dynamics in Dyadic Interactions

A fundamental goal in the study of dyadic interactions is to understand the dynamics underlying the interrelations between two units in a dyad. In psychological research, most of the work on dyadic interactions concerns interactions between two individuals (i.e., parent-child, husband-wife, teacher-student). Psychological theories pertaining to dyadic interactions postulate such interactions in dynamic terms (e.g., attachment theory; Bowlby, 1982; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). In spite of this theoretical description, there is not much empirical work showing evidence for such dyadic interactions in dynamic terms, with attention to processes over time. One possibility for this mismatch between theory and empirical work is the lack of adequate methodology for uncovering the dynamics between two individuals from multiple time series. In this chapter, we propose a set of exploratory techniques designed to extract patterns of dynamics from dyadic interactions.