Robert Freed Bales, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, is the author and inventor of the SYMLOG system. It is the culmination of his life's work and is continually being refined as new research and data become available.

Dr. Bales began his research to answer the question, "What is meant by the situation?" He found that dynamic and complex situations serve as the context for all social interactions. In developing SYMLOG, now the method of choice for measuring and examining those interactions, Bales broke from traditional inadequate static and linear methods of measurement to pioneer a new approach to understanding dynamic relationships.

Widely published and one of the most often quoted social psychologists, Bales, the author and inventor of the SYMLOG system, worked closely with SYMLOG Consulting Group until his death in 2004.   A review of his latest book (Transaction Press, 1999) included the following:

Social Interaction Systems: Theory and Measurement is the culmination of a half century of work in the field of social psychology by Robert Freed Bales, a pioneer at the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University. Led by Talcott Parsons, Gordon W. Allport, Henry A. Murray, and Clyde M. Kluckhohn, the Harvard Project was intended to establish an integrative framework for social psychology, one based on the interaction process, augmented by value content analysis. Bales sees this approach as a personal involvement that goes far beyond the classical experimental approach to the study of groups.

Bales developed SYMLOG, which stands for a SYstem for the Multiple Level Observation of Groups. The SYMLOG Consulting Group approach was worldwide as well as interactive. It created a data bank that made possible a search for general laws of human interaction far beyond anything thus far known. In his daring search for universal features, Bales redefines the fundamental boundaries of the field, and in so doing establishes criteria for the behavior and values of leaders and followers. Bales offers a new "field theory," an appreciation of the multiple contexts in which people live.

Bales does not aim to eradicate differences, but to understand them. In this sense, the values inherent in any interaction situation permit the psychologist to appreciate the sources of polarization as they actually exist: between conservative and liberal, individualistic and authoritarian, libertarian and communitarian. Bales repeatedly emphasizes that the mental processes of individuals and their social interactions take place in systematic contexts which can be measured. Hence they permit explanation and prediction of behavior in a more exact way than in past traditions. Bales has offered a pioneering work that has the potential to move us into a new theoretical epoch no less than a new century. His work holds out the promise of synthesis and support for psychologists, sociologists, and all who work with groups and organizations of all kinds.

Robert Freed Bales is professor emeritus of social relations at Harvard University. In 1983, he founded the SYMLOG Consulting Group with colleagues in San Diego. He is the author of Interaction Process Analysis; Personality and Interpersonal Behavior; and co-author, with Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils, of Working Papers in the Theory of Action. He has well over 100 professional papers in the major journals of sociology and psychology.