Research Papers & Academic Writing
Scholarly research examining the emotional, existential, and social forces that shape human experience.
This series contains formal academic papers and research-driven writing grounded in psychological theory and evidence-based inquiry. The work here is disciplinary in nature, written to contribute to scholarly conversations while remaining accessible beyond the academy. These pieces prioritize conceptual rigor, methodological clarity, and theoretical development. They are not essays, reflections, or advice, but sustained arguments intended to advance psychological understanding. A chronological overview of how these papers and theoretical models develop across time is available on the Research Trajectory page.
Extinction Bursts: A Multilevel Psychological Model of Reinforcement Collapse
This paper advances a multilevel psychological model of extinction bursts as transitional destabilization events within reinforcement-governed predictive systems. Moving beyond behaviorally descriptive accounts, the framework integrates reinforcement learning theory, dopaminergic prediction error dynamics, affective mobilization mechanisms, cognitive appraisal processes, and identity coherence architecture to explain why escalation reliably precedes recalibration. By tracing the cascade from violated expectancy to neural discrepancy, arousal amplification, narrative construction, and self-system threat, the model clarifies the structural conditions under which destabilization resolves into adaptive reorganization or consolidates into persistence, relapse, or chronic conflict across individual, relational, and collective domains.