IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0133185.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Physical Forces between Humans and How Humans Attract and Repel Each Other Based on Their Social Interactions in an Online World

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Thurner
  • Benedikt Fuchs

Abstract

Physical interactions between particles are the result of the exchange of gauge bosons. Human interactions are mediated by the exchange of messages, goods, money, promises, hostilities, etc. While in the physical world interactions and their associated forces have immediate dynamical consequences (Newton’s laws) the situation is not clear for human interactions. Here we quantify the relative acceleration between humans who interact through the exchange of messages, goods and hostilities in a massive multiplayer online game. For this game we have complete information about all interactions (exchange events) between about 430,000 players, and about their trajectories (movements) in the metric space of the game universe at any point in time. We use this information to derive “interaction potentials" for communication, trade and attacks and show that they are harmonic in nature. Individuals who exchange messages and trade goods generally attract each other and start to separate immediately after exchange events end. The form of the interaction potential for attacks mirrors the usual “hit-and-run" tactics of aggressive players. By measuring interaction intensities as a function of distance, velocity and acceleration, we show that “forces" between players are directly related to the number of exchange events. We find an approximate power-law decay of the likelihood for interactions as a function of distance, which is in accordance with previous real world empirical work. We show that the obtained potentials can be understood with a simple model assuming an exchange-driven force in combination with a distance-dependent exchange rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Thurner & Benedikt Fuchs, 2015. "Physical Forces between Humans and How Humans Attract and Repel Each Other Based on Their Social Interactions in an Online World," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-13, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0133185
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0133185
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133185
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0133185&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0133185?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lambiotte, Renaud & Blondel, Vincent D. & de Kerchove, Cristobald & Huens, Etienne & Prieur, Christophe & Smoreda, Zbigniew & Van Dooren, Paul, 2008. "Geographical dispersal of mobile communication networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(21), pages 5317-5325.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michele Coscia & Ricardo Hausmann, 2015. "Evidence That Calls-Based and Mobility Networks Are Isomorphic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-15, December.
    2. Kondor, Dániel & Mátray, Péter & Csabai, István & Vattay, Gábor, 2013. "Measuring the dimension of partially embedded networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(18), pages 4160-4171.
    3. Christophe Sohn & Julien Licheron & Evert Meijers, 2022. "Border cities: Out of the shadow," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 101(2), pages 417-438, April.
    4. Lü, Linyuan & Zhou, Tao, 2011. "Link prediction in complex networks: A survey," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(6), pages 1150-1170.
    5. Gergő Tóth & Sándor Juhász & Zoltán Elekes & Balázs Lengyel, 2021. "Repeated collaboration of inventors across European regions," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(12), pages 2252-2272, December.
    6. Sascha Holzhauer & Friedrich Krebs & Andreas Ernst, 2013. "Considering baseline homophily when generating spatial social networks for agent-based modelling," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 128-150, June.
    7. Meysam Alizadeh & Claudio Cioffi-Revilla & Andrew Crooks, 2017. "Generating and analyzing spatial social networks," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 362-390, September.
    8. Przemyslaw A Grabowicz & José J Ramasco & Bruno Gonçalves & Víctor M Eguíluz, 2014. "Entangling Mobility and Interactions in Social Media," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, March.
    9. Andrés Leiva-Araos & Héctor Allende-Cid, 2021. "A Hierarchical Fuzzy-Based Correction Algorithm for the Neighboring Network Hit Problem," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-36, February.
    10. Jun Gui & Zeyu Zheng & Dianzheng Fu & Zihao Yang & Yuan Gao & Zhi Liu, 2020. "Dynamics of calling activity to toll-free numbers in China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-16, March.
    11. Elisa Frutos Bernal & Angel Martín del Rey, 2019. "Study of the Structural and Robustness Characteristics of Madrid Metro Network," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-24, June.
    12. Yang, Xu-Hua & Chen, Guang & Chen, Sheng-Yong & Wang, Wan-Liang & Wang, Lei, 2014. "Study on some bus transport networks in China with considering spatial characteristics," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1-10.
    13. Pablo Mateos & Paul A Longley & David O'Sullivan, 2011. "Ethnicity and Population Structure in Personal Naming Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(9), pages 1-12, September.
    14. Levy, Moshe & Goldenberg, Jacob, 2014. "The gravitational law of social interaction," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 393(C), pages 418-426.
    15. Tobias Scholl & Antonios Garas & Frank Schweitzer, 2015. "The spatial component of R&D networks," Papers 1509.08291, arXiv.org.
    16. Zoltán Kovács & György Vida & Ábel Elekes & Tamás Kovalcsik, 2021. "Combining Social Media and Mobile Positioning Data in the Analysis of Tourist Flows: A Case Study from Szeged, Hungary," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-15, March.
    17. Didem Gündoğdu & Pietro Panzarasa & Nuria Oliver & Bruno Lepri, 2019. "The bridging and bonding structures of place-centric networks: Evidence from a developing country," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-24, September.
    18. Michael Bailey & Rachel Cao & Theresa Kuchler & Johannes Stroebel & Arlene Wong, 2018. "Social Connectedness: Measurement, Determinants, and Effects," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 259-280, Summer.
    19. Adam, Arnaud & Finance, Olivier & Thomas, Isabelle, 2021. "Monitoring trucks to reveal Belgian geographical structures and dynamics: From GPS traces to spatial interactions," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    20. Braha, Dan & Stacey, Blake & Bar-Yam, Yaneer, 2011. "Corporate competition: A self-organized network," MPRA Paper 32142, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0133185. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.