Journal
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
Volume 21, Issue 6, Pages 1236-1242Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arq141
Keywords
group behavior; human; pedestrian; sex; simulation; social information
Categories
Funding
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [GR/T11241/01(P)]
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/D011035/1]
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/D011035/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- NERC [NE/D011035/1] Funding Source: UKRI
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Social information use is common in a wide range of group-living animals, notably in humans. We investigated social information use by pedestrians in a potentially dangerous scenario: at a road crossing. To judge a safe gap in traffic, pedestrians can use social information, such as the crossing behavior of others, and follow others across the road. We tested if pedestrians followed others in this scenario by analyzing pedestrian starting position and crossing order. First, we found that neighbors of a crossing pedestrian tended to cross before other waiting pedestrians and that this tendency was significantly higher in observed pedestrians than in a null model: a simulation in which pedestrians did not follow each other. Also, by fitting the null model, we found that on average a person was 1.5-2.5 times more likely to cross if their neighbor had started to cross. Second, we found that males tended to follow others more than females. Third, we observed that some individuals started to cross and then returned to the roadside. These individuals were more frequently found in groups and tended to start to cross relatively later than other pedestrians. These observations suggest that some of these individuals made incorrect decisions about the timing of their crossing and that this was due to social information use. Finally, we propose that the relatively small benefit of a reduced waiting time came at the cost of an increased risk of injury, making the beneficial value of social information use questionable in this context.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available