A NEW AI algorithm has concluded that humans are more likely to follow a crowd than think independently.
Aston University computer scientist Dr. Ulysses Bernardet used artificial intelligence (AI) to assess human social behavior.
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Dr. Benardet, along with experts from Belgium and Germany, found evidence that people tend to follow a two-step process when we’re in a crowd.
The team recently published their article, dubbed Evidence for a two-step model of social group influence, in the journal iScience.
Their results showed that humans are more likely to imitate a crowd first and think independently second.
To test their hypothesis the team developed a virtual reality (VR) experiment for 160 participants.
The participants were thrown into a simulated city street, where they were observed watching a movie by 10 AI-generated ‘spectators’.
An algorithm programmed the ‘spectators’ to influence the direction of the gaze of the individual participants.
Researchers found that participants were more likely to follow the group’s gaze when other people looked.
This was the case even when they knew the group provided no relevant information.
Although sometimes participants changed their minds after starting
to follow the gaze of the group, indicating that automatic imitation can be overruled by strategic processes, the study noted.
This supported the theory that the influence of a crowd follows a two-step model.
“Humans demonstrate an initial tendency to follow others – a reflexive, imitative process,” Dr. Bernardet said.
“But this is followed by more deliberate, strategic processes when a person will decide whether to copy others around them, or not.”
Dr. Bernardet added that one way in which the collective affects individuals is by pulling on their attention and steering their gaze.
“This influence is not only felt in the form of social norms but also impacts immediate actions and lies at the heart of group behaviors such as rioting and mass panic,” he said.
“Our model is not only consistent with evidence gained using brain imaging, but also with recent evidence that gaze following is the manifestation of a complex interplay between basic attentional and advanced social processes.”
The researchers believe their experiments will offer insights into behavioral sciences by way of VR and AI.
