James Kennedy (born November 5, 1950) is an American

social psychologist Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field of ...

, best known as an originator and researcher of

particle swarm optimization In computational science, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a computational method that Mathematical optimization, optimizes a problem by iterative method, iteratively trying to improve a candidate solution with regard to a given measure of qu ...

. The first papers on the topic, by Kennedy and Russell C. Eberhart, were presented in 1995; since the
tens of thousands
of papers have been published on particle swarms. The Academic Press / Morgan Kaufmann book, ''

Swarm Intelligence Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 198 ...

'', by Kennedy and Eberhart with Yuhui Shi, was published in 2001. The particle swarm paradigm draws on social-psychological

simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...

research in which Kennedy had participated at the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the Public university, public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referre ...

, integrated with

evolutionary computation Evolutionary computation from computer science is a family of algorithms for global optimization inspired by biological evolution, and the subfield of artificial intelligence and soft computing studying these algorithms. In technical terms ...

methods that Eberhart had been working with in the 1990s. The result was a problem-solving or

optimization algorithm Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

based on the principles of human social interaction. Individuals begin the program with random guesses at the problem solution. As the program runs, the "particles" share their successes with their topological neighbors; each particle is both teacher and learner. Over time, the population converges reliably on optimal vectors. While there has been a trend in the research literature toward a "Gbest" or centralized particle network
Blackwell and Kennedy (2018)
demonstrated the importance of a distributed population topology in solving more complex problems.
A recent paper
discusses the possible contribution of human female orgasm to the species' prosociality. Kennedy has been an active combatant in the controversy over

sex education Sex education, also known as sexual education, sexuality education or sex ed, is the instruction of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, Human sexual activity, sexual activity, sexual reproduction, safe sex, birth ...

Montgomery County, Maryland Montgomery County is the most populous County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 United States census, the county's population was 1,062,061, increasing by 9.3% from 2010. The county seat is Rockville, Maryland ...

, supporting the public schools' efforts to develop a comprehensive and inclusive program. He also worked to support a

gender identity Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent and consistent with the in ...

nondiscrimination law in Montgomery County that came under attack from conservatives, and has maintained an online progressive presence. He also worked as a professional musician for fifty years and plays "the roots of rock and roll" in a band called The Colliders, which released albums in 2011 and 2015. In 2018 Kennedy released a DIY album
The Life of Mischief
and currently also performs with the Swangers, playing honky-tonk and country music around the DC area. Kennedy worked in survey methods for the US government until his retirement in 2017, and has conducted basic and applied

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

into social effects on

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

and

attitude Attitude or Attitude may refer to: Philosophy and psychology * Attitude (psychology), a disposition or state of mind ** Attitude change * Propositional attitude, a mental state held towards a proposition Science and technology * Orientation ...

. He has worked with particle swarms since 1994, with research publications in fields related and unrelated to swarms and surveys.

* Kennedy, J., Eberhart, R. C., with Shi, Y. (2001
Intelligence''
Morgan Kaufmann / Academic Press. * Jim Kennedy

''Washington Post'', August 24, 2005.
''The Colliders''
* Kennedy, J. (2004). "Particle swarms: optimization based on sociocognition". In L. N. de Castro and F. J. Von Zuben (Eds.
''Recent Developments in Biologically Inspired Computing''
Hershey, PA: The Idea Group, Inc. * Kennedy, J. (2004) "Swarm intelligence". In A. Zomaya (Ed.)
''Handbook of Innovative Computational Paradigms: Biological and Adaptive Computing''
187-220. New York: Springer-Verlag. * Kennedy, J. (2002)
don’t think the way we think we think. Review of Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will"
''Science'', 296, 1973. * Kennedy, J., and Eberhart, R. C. (1999). "The particle swarm: Social adaptation in information-processing systems", in D. Corne, M. Dorigo, and F. Glover (eds.)
''New Ideas in Optimization''
London: McGraw-Hill. * Kennedy, J., and Mendes, R. (2006).
"Neighborhood topologies in fully informed and best-of-neighborhood particle swarms"
''IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews'', 36 (4), 515-519. * Clerc, M., and Kennedy, J. (2002)
"The particle swarm: Explosion, stability, and convergence in a multi-dimensional complex space"
''IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation'', 6, 58-73. * Kennedy, J. (1999)
"Minds and cultures: Particle swarm implications for beings in sociocognitive space"
''Adaptive Behavior Journal'', 7, 269-288. * Kennedy, J., and Pavličev, M. (2018)
"Female orgasm and the emergence of prosocial empathy: An evo-devo perspective."
''Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution.'' doi:10.1002/jez.b.22795 * Blackwell, T., and Kennedy, J. (2018)
"Impact of communication topology in particle swarm optimization."
''IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation.'' DOI: 10.1109/TEVC.2018.2880894 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, James American social psychologists American psychology writers American male non-fiction writers 1950 births Living people

See also

Further reading