"Emergence of good conduct, scaling and Zipf laws in human behavioral sequences in an online world" http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.0392
> "...In their virtual life players use eight basic actions which allow them to > interact with each other. These actions are communication, trade, > establishing or breaking friendships and enmities, attack, and punishment. We > measure the probabilities for these actions conditional on previous taken and > received actions and find a dramatic increase of negative behavior > immediately after receiving negative actions. Similarly, positive behavior is > intensified by receiving positive actions. We observe a tendency towards > anti-persistence in communication sequences. Classifying actions as positive > (good) and negative (bad) allows us to define binary 'world lines' of lives > of individuals. Positive and negative actions are persistent and occur in > clusters, indicated by large scaling exponents alpha~0.87 of the mean square > displacement of the world lines. For all eight action types we find strong > signs for high levels of repetitiveness, *especially for negative > actions*..." [emphasis added] popularization: "Virtual World Study Reveals the Origin of Good and Bad Behavior Patterns" http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26967/ > "...Thurner and co found that positive behaviour intensifies after an > individual receives a positive action. > > However, they also found a far more dramatic increase in negative behaviour > immediately after an individual receives a negative action. "The probability > of acting out negative actions is about 10 times higher if a person received > a negative action at the previous timestep than if she received a positive > action," they say. > > Negative action is also more likely to be repeated than merely reciprocated, > which is why it spreads more effectively. > > So negative actions seem to be more infectious than positive ones. > > However, players with a high fraction of negative actions tend to have > shorter lives. Thurner and co speculate that there may be two reasons for > this: "First because they are hunted down by others and give up playing, > second because they are unable to maintain a social life and quit the game > because of loneliness or frustration." > > So the bottom line is that the society tends towards positive behaviour." Well, maybe in the game they studied, _Pardus_. I couldn't say about Wikipedia... -- gwern http://www.gwern.net _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
