An article titles "Herding in Humans", by Ramsey M. Raafat, Nick Chater and Chris Frith which talks about the mechanisms and theories behind why humans tend to act as a herd from the Bandwagon to angry mobs. There are two focuses that are specifically mentioned in the article which are (i.) the mechanism of the transmission that propagates a particular thought of behavior from one agent to another and (ii.) the pattern of interactions between agents. The paper continues to talk about models of herding and shows a timeline with all of the progress that has been made on the topic in the field of psychology. Then portions of the article are dedicated to explaining these two main points in great detail. The paper discusses that there is a distinct difference between one on one interactions and any other type of way to receive information as having different influences on a person or group. Then it talks about how social networking can be used to spread this information faster and reach member more people than a one on one interaction. There is a type of herding called rational herding in which earlier models assumed that agents chooses in sequence and are influenced by rational consideration of the observed choices of earlier agents. This takes on the meaning that people’s thinking is influenced by the events they experienced prior to the given situation which makes sense. The rest of the articles continue to talk about the models and the ways in which herds are formed among humans through these mechanisms. I found it to be of little use overall although the ideas that were presented were very interesting.
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