Adaptability

When adaptability, and adaptivity, adaptability or flexibility, the ability of an organism or a society to change or self-organization is known, thanks to the on -converted external circumstances in terms of a modified interaction between (collective) actors with each other ( assimilation ) or their environment reacts against can.

It is the ability to adapt to changing requirements and conditions of an environment. It has a conversion capable and little gridlocked binding and behavior towards structure ( opportunism ). The potential of flexibility is due to the expansion of the action space, which includes the possible alternative courses of action in a decision situation, as well as in reducing the time required to transpose and implement individual strategies and actions. The term complex is closely related to the concept of " learning". In simple behavioral reinforcements is called sensitization, the opposite is the habituation or familiarization.

In economic and social flexibility refers to the ability of a dynamic system, through conscious acts his relationship with his marked by uncertainty system environment, in particular with regard to the objectives pursued system, reactive, active, and manage it proactively independently. As such, it describes the potential, which is characterized by the available room for maneuver and achievable action speed.

In biology, evolutionary adaptation as it was be abutted case, which refers only to the "nature" as a system ( populations), but not to individuals. In the context of epigenetics is thinking about advanced concepts of selective reading of genetic information.

Examples are:

• Supercompensation: Adaptation of the performance of the organism in response to a training stimulus
• Adaptation of the endogenous rhythm ( for example, the photoperiod for plants) or the sleep-wake cycles ( in humans and animals) of external timer
• Acclimatization: the individual physiological adaptation of an organism to changing environmental factors
• Adaptation to global warming of social and ecological systems or individuals as a result of climate change.
• Adaptation in medicine as a general physiological or psychological compensation
• Adaptation to emotional states, habit effect
• Adaptation to stress factors
• Assimilation in the sociological sense
• Assimilation in the psychology of learning
• Dynamics of adaptation in social psychological sense by Alexander Mitscherlich.

Examines the adaptability in behavioral biology or experimental psychology and sociology. Find application models on adaptability in business administration, bionics and Adaptive Systems ( adaptivity of information systems, artificial intelligence), and others. A link here is the cognitive science.