A Demonstration of the PMF-Extraction Approach: Modeling The Effects of Sound on Crowd Behavior

Jason B. Cornwell, University of Pennsylvania
Barry G. Silverman, University of Pennsylvania
Kevin O'Brien, University of Pennsylvania
Mike Johns, University of Pennsylvania

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Postprint version. Published in Proceedings of the 11th Conference On Computer Generated Forces and Behavioral Representation, SISO 2002, 2002, 7 pages.

Abstract

The vast majority of psychology, sociology, and other social-science literature describing human behavior and performance does not reach the eyes of those of us working in the modeling and simulation community. Our recent work has been concerned with the extraction and implementation of Human Behavior Models (HBMs)/Performance Moderator Functions (PMFs) from this literature. This paper demonstrates how our methodology was applied to extract models of the effects of music and sound on both individuals and groups and to implement them in a simulated environment. PMFs describing how several classes of sound affect decision-making and performance were constructed based on well-established psychological models. These PMFs were implemented in a simulation of protesters and security guards outside a prison that demonstrates how the presence of chanting and music changes the response of protesters to police aggression. The extraction of PMFs from the literature, the synthesis of a coherent, cohesive model, and the implementation and results of the simulation are discussed.