Individual Thresholds for Applause and Clapping Cascades
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-06/math-how-applause-spreads-audience
At work a few months ago, a few coworkers of mine started loudly applauding for something in the middle of our office floor. The excitement and vigor of their applause lit up the room and sparked a cascade of applause throughout the floor; within 30 seconds, at least 40 people were clapping, even though majority of us didn’t know what we were clapping for. This made me wonder: how many people around me would need to applaud in order for me to start clapping as well, even if I didn’t know what we were applauding?
The article above discusses a similar concept: why and how long audience members clap during a performance. According to studies by a research team composed of mathematicians and biologist from Sweden and Germany, “When people clap at a performance, they’re not really driven by how much they enjoyed what they saw…Instead, they decide how long to applaud based on the applause they hear around them.” Rather than clapping for a certain length of time or only clapping if those immediately around someone is clapping, they actually found that “people responded most strongly to what proportion of the room was already clapping, which they used to decide both when to start and to stop.” Because of these findings, I think it is likely that each of us has a threshold for which, if at least that fraction of those around you are applauding, you will also applaud.
In a network of individuals who are all connected by being in the same physical location and are either clapping or not clapping, the individuals’ thresholds determine when they will adopt either action. The entire network begins with the second option: not clapping. One person or a few people begin to clap, causing individuals with a low threshold for clapping to adopt this action, allowing people with higher and higher thresholds to join in. This ultimately causes a cascade in which theoretically all individuals would be clapping (unless there are individuals with a threshold of 1, in which case a full cascade will never occur). The same process happens in reverse as the audience stops applauding; as more and more individuals stop clapping, others will also gradually switch back to the other action of not clapping as the fraction of the network/individuals around them who are clapping decreases.
The article notes that this study is a part of a larger study about virality, and in many sections compares clapping to the spread of memes online. In this sense, it is likely that thresholds like these have a significant influence on how many of us make decisions in various parts of our daily lives.