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Walking together: behavioural signatures of psychological crowds

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Version 2 2023-06-12, 07:23
Version 1 2023-06-09, 14:01
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-12, 07:23 authored by Anne Templeton, John DruryJohn Drury, Andy PhilippidesAndy Philippides
Research in crowd psychology has demonstrated key differences between the behaviour of physical crowds where members are in the same place at the same time, and the collective behaviour of psychological crowds where the entire crowd perceive themselves to be part of the same group through a shared social identity. As yet, no research has investigated the behavioural effects that a shared social identity has on crowd movement at a pedestrian level. To investigate the direction and extent to which social identity influences the movement of crowds, 280 trajectories were tracked as participants walked in one of two conditions: 1) a psychological crowd primed to share a social identity; 2) a naturally occurring physical crowd. Behaviour was compared both within and between the conditions. In comparison to the physical crowd, members of the psychological crowd i) walked slower, ii) walked further, and iii) maintained closer proximity. In addition, pedestrians who had to manoeuvre around the psychological crowd behaved differently to pedestrians who had to manoeuvre past the naturally occurring crowd. We conclude that the behavioural differences between physical and psychological crowds must be taken into account when considering crowd behaviour in event safety management and computer models of crowds.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Royal Society Open Science

ISSN

2054-5703

Publisher

The Royal Society

Issue

7

Volume

5

Page range

180172 1-14

Department affiliated with

  • Informatics Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics Publications

Notes

Electronic supplementary material is available online at the Related URL

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2018-07-02

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2018-07-25

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-06-29

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