Social Physics: The Metaphorical Application of Principles of Physics to Social Behavior James W.

Pennebaker Department of Psychology The University of Texas at Austin May, 2003 Social physics provides a framework to help us describe and understand how groups of people and other organisms use space. The basic ideas are built on the metaphoric application of principles in physics to social behavior. Although several laws are relevant, the most obvious is a model of gravity. Some of the findings refer to static arrays of organisms in terms of their dispersion; others are more dynamic. I. Dispersion of Organisms Static Models Rule: Individuals move towards attractors (which can be either positive or negative). The closer they are to an attractor, the greater its attractive force. Types of attractors: Exits (or entrances) Food, alcohol, bathrooms, or other source of biological needs Other humans (leaders, people who are attractive, wealthy, or have resources that others want) A. Linear arrays. Organisms along a line will be aligned with greatest density adjacent to an attractor and dispersed in a log function away from the attractor. 1. Birds on a high wire line. The attractor is the first bird to land on the line. Birds then land around that bird. 2. People aligning themselves on a beach where there is a single entrance/exit (e.g., Padre Island). The alignment is the same as the birds but the greatest density is at the entrance. 3. People standing in lines. They pack themselves the tightest as they get closer to the ticket seller or ticket taker. B. Two dimensional arrays. The same principles apply with log decreasing density moving away from center. 1. Non-human models. Birds on 2 or more parallel wires. Dispersion of cows and other social animals in a field, even with unlimited grazing. A variety of dispersion models also exist with relatively non-mobile organisms. In botany, plants spread away from the original tree, bush, etc in the same general function. Same with bacteria growing on a petrie dish. 2. Human models. Most of the human models Ive worked with revolve around attractors. Examples of humans and attractors include: a. Beer, band, and bathrooms. At a Rite of Spring party where about 8,000 students attended in a football field, the greatest density of people was around the band, beer stand, and bathrooms. Density decreased in a log function away from these attractors. Similarly,

in cocktail parties, alcohol, food, and exits are powerful attractors (which helps explain why people almost always congregate in the kitchen). b. Attraction to other people with competing attractors. In the Rite of Spring party, people closest to the attractors were almost always alone or with one other person. As one moved away from the attractors, the larger the groups of people (generally 2-6 people). c. People as attractors. The higher the mass of a person (which can variously be status, beauty, wealth, charm, leadership, strength), the more people will be attracted to him or her. This can be seen in both formal and informal settings, including: 1). Classroom seating. The higher the teacher is rated, the higher the density around the front row. A teacher can also have a negative attractive force (repulsion) wherein the density is lowest at the front and highest at the exits. 2). Professional conferences. At professional gatherings, there is often a clear status hierarchy wherein the top people can bestow benefits to those lower in status. The greater the disparity between the high status person and the lower one(s), the more lower status people will be around. This is analogous to a higher status person attracting more moons. Two high status people are strongly attracted to each other and others are often loathe to approach them. Similarly, a group of lower status people often congregate (usually a bigger group). 3). Party behavior. Status at parties (where most people are roughly equivalent in status) is less clearcut. However, other markers beauty, wit, expertise can affect congregating. d. Attraction to natural resources. The colonization of countries, regions, or towns follows similar rules. Access to water and a sense of security are the first places people settle often on a hill next to a river. The next people to move into the area will settle midway between the various attractors but using the first people as weak attractors. City growth and development, then, will follow the same pattern as the dispersion of plants or animals. C. Three dimensional arrays. The same general rules work for any organisms that can occupy three dimensional space. Schools of fish, flying insects, and birds in a tree or a jungle jim all adhere to the model of the greatest density in the middle with a dispersion away from that point. II. Organisms in Motion Organisms and their relationships to their situations change in time and space. Unlike classic physics, attractors diminish over time. After people have eaten, they no longer are attracted to the food table. After talking with a charming person for awhile, people often move onto others to gain more information or satisfy other needs. A. Stability of groups. The stability of a group varies as a function of the size of the group as well as its membership. In an analysis of groups of people at a fraternity party, the smaller the group, the longer it survived. A group of 2 people spoke for about 20 minutes, 3 people about 10 minutes, 4 people about 5 minutes, and groups of 8 about 2 minutes. 1. Differential status. The stability rule is not followed to the degree there is a disparity in status between the high status and lower status people. A high status person can command a stable group of 5 or more for long periods of time. 2. Social bombs. People vary in their attractive forces. Some individuals possess a significant repulsive force. They can enter a conversation of 3 or more others and can cause the group to explode at an accelerated rate.

B. Movement of groups. We can measure the movement of groups as they move from place to place as well as individual movements within groups. 1. Moving groups. The more people in a group, the slower the group moves. Measuring walking speeds of groups at a mall, single individuals walked across a measured area in, say, 10 seconds. Pairs or couples took about 15 seconds, groups of 3 took 20 seconds, 4 about 25 seconds, groups of 6 or more took 30 seconds (these are estimates from a study I did several years ago). 2. Individual movement within a group. Using time lapse photography, groups of 5 people at a party all move around a bit, adjusting their posture, changing weight on their feet, gesturing with their hands. If one person becomes bored or otherwise needs to leave the group, he often increases the rate of his movement. This agitation is reflected in the rest of the group. As the time approaches for the person to leave, his movements become increasingly active. As soon as he leaves, however, the rest of the group returns back to its lower rates of motion. 3. Moving individuals. Within a party, the highest status people move the least. Others come to them. The lower the status or mass, the more that the person floats from person to person or room to room trying to connect to someone else of similar or greater mass. III. Other Rules, Theories, and Observations 1. Diffusion of responsibility (Darley & Latan, 1966). The more people who watch a disaster, crime, or scene that requires someone to help, the less likely anyone will intercede. This diffusion of responsibility is a function of the number of people observing the event. A corollary to this is social loafing the more people working on a task, the less work everyone contributes. This has been tested with rope pulling. If one person pulls, they pull with X force. However, as the number of people increase, the individual effort decreases in a log function. 2. Social Impact theory (Latan). This idea grew out of diffusion of responsibility. The idea is that a persons impact on individual others will decrease with the size of the audience. So, a persuasive message by person X will be maximally effective if X is talking to one person but will decrease in its mean effectiveness as the audience increases. By the same token, the larger the group of speakers, the more impact. In other words, the impact of presenters on an audience is a function of both the mass of the presenters and the mass of the audience. 3. The role of time and time perception. If you ask people about the past and the future, they have the greatest density of memories and thoughts in the present. As they report on the future and past, the density of thoughts varies in a log fashion. That is, they will likely be far more concerned with what happened an hour ago than 10 hours ago, and twice as concerned with today than yesterday or two days ago. As we move away from an event, its impact decreases at an accelerated rate kind of like a psychological Doppler effect. Approaching an event works in the same way. IV. General thoughts What does all of this mean? That is, why are there these mathematical laws that parallel laws in physics? One possibility is that this is the nature of the universe. An alternative way of thinking is that reflects the ways we perceive the universe. Why, for example, do birds land on a telephone line the ways they do? Does the last bird to arrive ask himself, Do I want to squish into the middle of that group? If not, how about exposing myself at the very end of the line? Why not give myself a little extra room than everyone else has? If Im a human and am going

to the beach, I enter at the entrance and see that there are campsites 20 feet apart. As I drive down the beach, they soon are 30 then 50 then 100 feet apart. And then I think, it would be nice to have even more space to myself. Once I get to the end of the line which may be 5 miles later, I pass the last person and decide to set up camp a bit further than the space between the last and the next-to-last person. Why? These arent conscious decisions. They just happen. Helpful References Bak, Per (1996). How nature works: The science of self-organised criticality. New York: Copernicus Press. Comte, A. (1856). Social physics: From the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte. New York: Calvin Blanchard. Darley, J. M., & Latan, B. (1968). "Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 8: 377383. Knowles, E. S. (1978). The gravity of crowding: Application of social physics to the effects of others. In A. Baum & Y. Epstein (Eds.), Human Response to Crowding. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Latan, B. (1981). The psychology of social impact. American Psychologist, 36(4), 343-356. Milgram, S., & Toch, H. (1969). Collective behavior: Crowds and social movements. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 4, pp. 507-610). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Vallacher, R. R., Nowak, A., & Zochowski, M. (2007). Dynamics of social coordination: The synchronization of internal states in close relationships. In P. Hauf & F. Forsterling (Eds.), Making minds: The shaping of human minds through social context (pp. 31-46). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. UW. Zipf, G.K. (1949). Human behavior and the principle of least effort. New York: AddisonWesley.