Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 17: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics II

SOE 17.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 18:45–19:00, MA 001

Dynamics of human interactions in conferences — •Mathieu Génois — GESIS - Leibniz Institut für Sozialwissenschaften

We present results from two different conferences, where interactions between individuals have been tracked using the SocioPatterns setup (www.sociopatterns.org). This setup allows for the recording of face-to-face physical proximity (1.5 m) with a high temporal resolution (20 s). Such contacts have proven to be a very good proxy for social interactions [1,2].

We show that both events present similar patterns for the dynamics of how connections are established between participants. In particular, we uncover mixing behaviours along with avoidance strategies, heterogeneities in the levels of interaction depending on sociodemographic characteristics, and signal of both social exploration and social filtering.

Such data-driven analysis of a social situation allows to directly observe objective quantities about human behaviour. Beyond the exploration of particular cases, comparison of such results from different social contexts enables the discovery of general mecanisms. We believe that this kind of approach is necessary to found any physical theory about social systems.

References:

[1] Contact patterns among high school students, Fournet et al., PLoS ONE 9(9):e107878 (2014).

[2] Gender homophily from spatial behavior in a primary school: a sociometric study, Stehlé et al., Social Networks 35(4):604-613 (2013).