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Computer simulation of leadership, consensus decision making and collective behaviour in humans

Wu, S; Sun, Q

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Authors

S Wu

Q Sun



Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the reliability of a
crowd simulation model developed by the authors by reproducing Dyer et al.’s experiments(published in Philosophical Transactions in 2009) on human leadership and
consensus decision-­making in a computer-­based environment.
The theoretical crowd model of the simulation environment is presented, and its results are compared and analysed against Dyer et al.’s original experiments.
It is concluded that the results are 11 largely consistent
with the experiments, which demonstrates the reliability of
the crowd model. Furthermore, the simulation data also reveals several additional new findings, namely:
1) the phenomena of sacrificing accuracy to reach a quicker
consensus decision found in ants colonies was also discovered in the simulation;
2) the ability of reaching consensus in groups has a direct
impact on the time and accuracy of arriving at the target
position;
3) the positions of the informed individuals or leaders
in the crowd could have significant impact on the overall
crowd movement;
4) the simulation also confirmed Dyer et al.’s anecdotal
evidence of the proportion of the leadership in large crowds
and its effect on crowd movement.
The potential applications of these findings are highlighted in the final discussion of this paper.

Citation

Wu, S., & Sun, Q. Computer simulation of leadership, consensus decision making and collective behaviour in humans. PLoS ONE, 9(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080680

Journal Article Type Article
Deposit Date Nov 25, 2013
Publicly Available Date Apr 5, 2016
Journal PLoS ONE
Publisher Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 9
Issue 1
Pages 1-12
DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080680
Publisher URL http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080680

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