Popular Science: Sorry, Toastmasters. When people clap at a performance, they're not really driven by how much they enjoyed what they saw, according to a new study. Instead, they decide how long to applaud based on the applause they hear around them.
The research is part of a larger field in which scientists try to figure out how memes spread among people. Clapping is like a small, brief meme that moves its way through the limited audience watching a performance. And it really is just as infectious as a great gif or a communicable disease. When the researchers graphed the times at which people started and stopped clapping, the graph had a sigmoidal curve, like graphs of people getting infected and then recovering from a disease, the researchers wrote in a paper published this week in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
2 comments:
There is a real science to the spreading of an applause. The spread applause of an audience was deemed "contagious", because once one person starts everyone catches on and gets the "disease". I really appreciate the researchers who actually calculated the graphs and curves of the audience's clapping. It was fascinating how they could correlate between the people already clapping and the ones who had not started yet. Although, agreeing with the comments on the actual article, they neglected to put in whether or not the audience was clapping out of enjoyment on the presentations, or were following the crowd and being polite.
This article is so true! I never know how long or when to stop clapping in a large audience. Sometimes though I'll feel brave or full of attitude in a movie and be the first to stand up and loose my mind applauding. However in a professional performance I feel like I depend on the general applause of the rest of the audience. Another factor about applauding that's based on the rest of the audience is the type of cheering. I know it'd be inappropriate to cheer and fist pump at an opera if the rest of the viewers are remaining polite and in their seats. Some shows are meant to evoke a more rowdy response and get the audience off of their feet. The overall reaction depends on the majority of the viewers' responses.
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