Simulating Individual and Collective Action in Temporary Gatherings

Abstract

Perception control systems and hierarchies of such systems are described. Perception control system theory asserts that human beings adjust their actions to control their perceptions. Purposive individuals adjust their actions to counter variable circumstances that prevent their perceptions from matching their objectives. Collective action can occur when two or more purposive individuals generate similar objectives independently, or when they do so interdependently, or when they adopt them from a third party. This explanation addresses the most characteristic feature of human behavior in temporary gatherings (crowds): alternating and vaned sequences of individual and collective action. A simulation program is described that varies up to three separate sets of control systems (seeking a destination, avoiding collisions, and seeking the path of other individuals) for each of 1 to 255 individuals constituting a gathering. The program features are illustrated with successive panels of screen prints of the development of nine different sequences of individual and collective action observed repeatedly in field research on temporary gathenngs. Theoretical, research, and practical implications are noted. An appendix descnbes program parameters.Computer simulation provides another tool with which social scientists can represent and examine complex human actions. In this essay we report on a new theory and methodology for simulating purposive individual and collective action in crowds. Although we are not the first to simulate crowd behavior, our simulations offer some theoretical and methodological innovations to that specific area of inquiry and to the understanding of purposive human behavior in genera!.t First, we briefly indicate some of the advantages and limitations of computer simulation as a methodology for studying human actions. Second, we review the theoretical model of purposive action on which our simulations are based. Third, we briefly describe the computer program derived from that theoretical model

Simulating arcs and rings in gatherings

“…After reviewing the theoretical model for our computer simulation (Powers, 1973(Powers, , 1989 and brie#y describing the program derived from this theoretical model (McPhail et al, 1992), we present a number of arcs and rings generated from the simulation program and suggest several avenues for future research.…”

“…Elsewhere we have examined arcs, rings and clusters, collective locomotion and other simple forms using "eld observation (McPhail, 1991(McPhail, , 1994bMcPhail & Wohlstein, 1986), experiments (McPhail & Wohlstein, 1986) and computer simulations (McPhail, Powers & Tucker, 1992;Schweingruber, 1993). We have argued that Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) (Powers, 1973(Powers, , 1989) is the best existing theory for accounting for purposive individual behavior and have proposed an explanation for collective behavior based on this theory (McPhail & Tucker, 1990;McPhail, 1991McPhail, , 1994b.…”

Virtual humans: thirty years of research, what next?

“…Tecchia et al [43] proposed an image-based method for real-time rendering of animated crowds in virtual cities. McPhail et al [44] studied individual and collective actions in temporary gatherings. Still [45] used mobile cellular automata for simulation and analysis of crowd evacuations.…”

Crowd Modeling in Military Simulations: Requirements Analysis, Survey, and Design Study

“…He revolutionized the animation of flocks of animals, in particular birds, or "boids", by utilizing theories from particle systems relating each individual bird to a particle. Individual and collective actions were studied in what McPhail et al [McPhail, 1992] prefer to call temporary gatherings. A technique utilizing a combination of particle systems and transition networks to model human crowds in the visualization of human spaces employed by Bouvier and Guilloteau [Bouvier, 1996] was the basis of later work in agent dynamics.…”