A study carried out by mathematicians from the University of Uppsala (Sweden) reveals that applause is a highly contagious human behavior and that, when we attend a concert, a conference or a play, at the end of the show individuals feel more pressed to join in the applause the greater the number of clapping spectators. The experiment reveals that subjects do not usually make an independent choice about how good a show is to decide how many times they clap , but respond in a totally predictable way that depends on the volume of clapping in the room.
According to the authors, in the same way that it is calculated when the flu will spread each year, one could measure how new fashions are spread, how political protests evolve or to what extent certain behavioral habits will be adopted among the population, applying mathematics . " The behavior is spread in a group as a disease that jumps from individual to individual until all the occupants of a room are infected," the authors clarified in an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface .
In the experiments, the first person began clapping 2.1 seconds after a short presentation by a student had finished, and the rest of the room was clapping in unison and without exception only 0.8 seconds later.
