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Socionomics

Socionomics

What is Socionomics?

Socionomics is a field of study conducted under the hypothesis that waves of social mood motivate the character of social actions.

What is social mood?
Social mood is a shared mental state among humans that arises from social interaction. Social mood predisposes individuals in the group toward emotions, beliefs and actions. It fluctuates constantly in a fractal pattern. It is unconscious, unremembered and endogenously regulated.

How long has socionomics been around?
Robert Prechter began developing the idea in the 1970s, and it first reached a mass audience in a 1985 cover article in Barron’s. Since then, researchers have applied the hypothesis to explain events including election results, trends in popular culture, the timing of epidemics and pandemics, the emergence of prohibition movements, and financial manias and crashes.

Can I take a university course on socionomics?
Yes, at one university that we know of, the College of William & Mary.

Is socionomics an accepted academic field or is it still emerging?
Prechter and others have authored books, articles and peer-reviewed papers about the theory and its application. Socionomists have presented at multiple academic conferences including the Academy of Behavioral Finance and Economics and at a number of universities including the London School of Economics, MIT, Georgia Tech, SUNY, the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford and Trinity College Dublin. But, like behavioral finance and other new fields, it is a long way from being “mainstream.”

Stephen Ibaraki

Stephen Ibaraki

Stephen K. Ibaraki has been a teacher, an industry analyst, writer and consultant in the IT industry, and the former president of the Canadian Information Processing Society.

Currently, Ibaraki is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, futurist and speaker. He is also the founder of the UN ITU AI for Good Global Summit, and a vicechair of the ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health, founding chair of the Financial Services Roundtable Tech Advisory Council, and founding chair of the International Federation for Information Processing Global Industry Council. Ibaraki serves as an Advisor for the Business Development Committee of the IEEE Computer Society. He is the co-founder for the Technology Advisory Board at Yintech Investment Holdings Limited.

In 2018, he was invited to be a founding member of IPSoft's AI Pioneers Steering Committee and he was also invited to join the Science and Technology Council for the ARCH Mission Foundation. Aside from taking on these new roles, he was invited to be a keynote speaker at the Yonder25 Conference as well as the Reshaping National Security forum which was hosted by Shanghai Institute for International Studies; and the UNICRI Centre for AI and Robotics.

Ibaraki has been the recipient of a Microsoft MVP award for 13 years in a row since 2006

In December 2018, Ibaraki was invited by YPO to share his insights about business and investments with respect to the Fourth Industrial Revolution at YPO Edge 2019.

Chris Skinner

Chris Skinner

Chris Skinner is an award-winning speaker and one of the most influential people in technology, as well as a best-selling author. He is an independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech through his blog, the Finanser.com.

He helped to found one of the first mobile banks in the world, and has advised CEOs and leaders from every continent of the world including the United Nations, the White House, the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. In 2024 Chris was voted Thought Leader in Finance, Climate Change, Ecosystems in 2025 and in 2023 he was recognised with a Lifetime Achievement Award by The Payments Association, the largest community in payments.

His latest book, Intelligent Money, discusses the implications of Generative Finance as Artificial Intelligence takes over the world.

His previous books include:

Digital for Good, focusing upon how technology and finance can work together to address the environmental and social issues we face today and make a better world; Doing Digital, which shared the lessons of how to do digital transformation through interviews with leading global banks such as BBVA, China Merchants Bank, DBS, ING and JPMorgan Chase; Digital Human, which showed how digitalisation is a revolution that allows everyone from the plains of Africa to the mountains of Tibet to be included and served by the network; and Digital Bank that provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the battle for digital banking and strategies for companies to compete.