Avoiding the Net
Research conducted with violinists shows there is a need for a new network model to predict human behavior
The synchronization phenomenon, in which a complex system functions as a single body, exists in different orders of magnitude: from subatomic particles to cells in a body, members of animal or human groups, to galaxies. Group synchronization is essential for humans and vital to our mental and physical health; however, synchronization between humans in a complex network has not been researched until now, despite it being necessary to understand decision-making mechanisms in the political and economic sciences, medicine (for example the spreading of diseases), media (for example distributing fake news) and more.
Prof. Moti Fridman of the Kofkin Faculty of Engineering at Bar-Ilan University, Prof. Nir Dodson of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Elad Schneiderman of Stony Brook University in New York conducted an experiment designed to define the synchronicity between humans in a precise and quantifiable fashion. The results of the research shed light on a unique attribute of human networks that do not exist in other networks.
In the experiment, sixteen violinists were asked to play in a synchronized manner, thus creating a musical array acting as a network. Each “junction” in the network was an electric violinist. The violinists played the same musical passage, and each heard their own performance and two or more of their friends in their earphones. The players were separated from each other with partitions, to neutralize visual information. The only directive the violinists were given was: “Synchronize yourselves, whether slowing down or speeding up.”
The experimental array the researchers created allowed control over the amount of connectivity in the network (they controlled and changed the number of violinists the lone violinist could hear as they saw fit, as well as the volume at which they heard their friends), and to create manipulations they even added a delay: each violinist was listening to the violinist next to them at a delay determined by the researchers. With minor delays, the violinists were found to slow down their pace (a familiar phenomenon to anyone who tried to sing or play instruments via Zoom). The researchers then gradually extended the delay. With an even number of violinists, they found a different stable condition in which when one violinist was at the start of the musical passage, his neighbors were at its middle. Thus the violinists maintained a steady rhythm by changing the pace of their playing, even if they had to slow or accelerate their playing by a factor of five. With an odd number of violinists, the delays prevented them from synchronizing and the system reached a condition known as “a state of frustration”. In this condition, violinists began ignoring some of their neighbors, effectively severing some of their connections in the network.
In the theory of networks, models describing “states of frustration” note a compromise in performance between junctions in the network and transition to a state of “middle”. However, people behave differently. The experiment demonstrates that people do not seek compromise, but ignore one of the input points. This phenomenon changes the dynamic of the network, but to this day it has never been addressed, because there was no sampling and measurement.
The research of Prof. Fridman and his associates, which actually began as a scientific-artistic project for the Nano Museum at Bar-Ilan University, offers two innovations. The first is methodological: a platform that measures the dynamics of a human network precisely and “cleanly”. The second innovation is a testament to the fact that the human network has two unique characteristics: flexibility (change of rhythm) and the inability to screen input and even ignore inputs that create frustration. These abilities quintessentially change the dynamics of human networks compared to other networks, and obligate the use of a new model to predict human behavior.