Louis Evans
Faculty Sponsor: Shyam Gouri Suresh
Patterns of human behavior can be analyzed both at the individual and group level, each corresponding to psychological dispositions that promote habitual and group conforming behavior, respectively. The concepts developed and modelled in this paper aim to address the latter, applying psychological underpinnings for a ‘group-thinking’ mentality, which ultimately predicts patterns for population behavior. Agents are influenced to follow a random and arbitrarily implemented ‘trend’, as determined by their relative connectivity to other agents in a ‘small-world’ network configuration. The system is modelled under a weighted and non-weighted network schematic, both of which are simulated several times as subject to varying degrees of trend-related parameters in domains of trend creation and growth.