@article{article_115738, title={The engine of history}, journal={İstanbul Üniversitesi İşletme Fakültesi Dergisi}, volume={40}, pages={35–59}, year={2010}, author={Casti, John}, keywords={Social Mood,Socionomics,Sociometer,Group Psychology,Turning Points of Trends}, abstract={<p>How a population/group feels about its future, its so-called ―social mood‖, and how that mood biases collective events of all types is the focus of this article. Through a variety of examples running from trends in clothing styles to the collapse of world powers, the paper argues that the social mood dramatically influences the types of events we can expect to see on all time scales. The argument is advanced that the financial market price movements serve as a good ―sociometer‖ for measuring the social mood on all time scales. Additionally, we present arguments showing that there is virtually no feedback from events to mood; that is, the mood is endogeneous to the population and is not determined by any sort of ―outside forces‖. Finally, the paper concludes with a research program for turning the hypotheses advanced here into a full-fledged scientific theory of collective human behavior. <br /> </p>}, number={1}, publisher={Istanbul University}