Related papers: Group interactions modulate critical mass dynamics…

"Wisdom of crowds" refers to the phenomenon that the average opinion of a group of individuals on a given question can be very close to the true answer. It requires a large group diversity of opinions, but the collective error, the…

Using a recently developed model, inspired by mean field theory in statistical physics, and data from the UK's Research Assessment Exercise, we analyse the relationship between the quality of statistics and operational research groups and…

Criticality has been proposed as a key principle underlying complex behavior in biological and artificial systems; however, how criticality translates from individual dynamics to collective behavior remains unclear. We study this question…

The rich set of interactions between individuals in the society results in complex community structure, capturing highly connected circles of friends, families, or professional cliques in a social network. Thanks to frequent changes in the…

Collectives adapt their network structure to the challenges they face. It has been hypothesized that collectives experiencing a real or imagined threat from an outgroup tend to consolidate behind a few influential group members, and that…

Cooperation is central to the success of human societies as it is crucial for overcoming some of the most pressing social challenges of our time. Yet how human cooperation is achieved and may persist is still a main puzzle in the social and…

People are influenced by the choices of others, a phenomenon observed across contexts in the social and behavioral sciences. Social influence can lock in an initial popularity advantage of an option over a higher quality alternative. Yet…

Social behaviors are often contagious, spreading through a population as individuals imitate the decisions and choices of others. A variety of global phenomena, from innovation adoption to the emergence of social norms and political…

Living groups move in complex environments and are constantly subject to external stimuli, predatory attacks and disturbances. An efficient response to such perturbations is vital to maintain the group's coherence and cohesion.…

We consider groups of interacting nodes engaged in an activity as many-body, complex systems and analyse their cooperative behaviour from a mean-field point of view. We show that inter-nodal interactions rather than accumulated individual…

Individuals are always limited by some inelastic resources, such as time and energy, which restrict them to dedicate to social interaction and limit their contact capacity. Contact capacity plays an important role in dynamics of social…

Strongly opinionated minorities can have a dramatic impact on the opinion dynamics of a large population. Two factions of inflexible minorities, polarised into two competing opinions, could lead the entire population to persistent…

We recently proposed a model coupling the evolution of the opinions of the individual with the local network topology. The opinion dynamics is based on the Bounded Confidence model. The social networks is based on a group concept where each…

This paper provides an overview and critical analysis on the modeling and applications of the dynamics of human crowds, where social interactions can have an important influence on the behavioral dynamics of the crowd viewed as a living,…

We investigate the collective behavior of a system of social agents subject to the competition between two mass media influences considered as external fields. We study under what conditions either of two mass media with different…

We present a novel explanation for the group polarization effect whereby discussion among like-minded individuals induces shifts toward the extreme. Our theory distinguishes between a quantitative policy under debate and the discussion's…

A new mean field statistical mechanics model of two interacting groups of spins is introduced and the phase transition studied in terms of their relative size. A jump of the average magnetization is found for large values of the mutual…

In our digital and connected societies, the development of social networks, online shopping, and reputation systems raises the question of how individuals use social information, and how it affects their decisions. We report experiments…

People's perceptions about the size of minority groups in social networks can be biased, often showing systematic over- or underestimation. These social perception biases are often attributed to biased cognitive or motivational processes.…

Over the last decade new technologies for making large numbers of fine-grained measurements have led to the surprising discovery that many biological systems sit near a critical point. These systems are potentially more adaptive in that…