For thousands of years, humanity has used a simple trick to walk without hitting the elements: look ahead. This old adage has come to a better life in recent years. popularization smart phones filled the streets with people immersed in their screens and wandering around the cities, not paying much attention to their surroundings. None of us are free from sin. You became one of those people; I was found; we’ve all been

Let’s suppose. This made us the worst. Even science knows.

Information. Considering that there is no field of knowledge that science does not explore until its final conclusions, the number of studies devoted to the way we walk on the street, or rather, how thousands of individuals subconsciously synchronize their movements, is considerably higher than the other. There are two main hypotheses: on the one hand, “mutual expectation”; on the other hand, “harmony” with the fastest leaders of the group.

how it works. The first theory points to a series of subconscious decisions and non-verbal communication. As we walk down the street, we anticipate the movements of the rest of the passers-by (short glances, body marks) and adapt our path to avoid collisions (those little dead-end seconds when we choose to move left or right). Right). We do it constantly and together in a kind of collective intelligence that facilitates fluid movement.

The second, developed in a little more detail in this work, speaks of “attraction”. When we walk in a group, we tend to find the fastest individuals and adapt to their speed and direction. We are looking for leaders to stand out from the crowd. It is an idea, a harmony of rhythm, which has spread to the animal world. Other studies have explained both mechanisms under the idea of ​​an electrostatically “repulsive force” that pushes someone to change direction when we get too close (avoiding contact).

Problem. But what happens to this fancy mechanism when we introduce the “smartphone” variant? A group of experts from the University of Tokyo wanted to know about it. The results compiled in this study are explanatory. The study was tested at street level with 27 volunteers. Half took a yellow hat; the other half is red. The authors simulated several situations faced by both groups and recorded their behavior in a shot from above to see how they solved each problem.

leaderless. When none of the participants looked at their cell phone while walking, the two groups acted as planned: the people in front of each, the leaders, chose different paths to avoid human obstacles, and the rest of the groupmates followed. steps. Expectation, attractiveness, harmony, etc. Here lies the key leaders. When we enter a large crowd (concert), someone leads and clears the way; others follow him.

One of the authors at Wired explains, “I’m trying to predict where you’ll be in the future, and you’re trying to predict where I’ll be in the future, and this mechanism is what allows you to have this kind of collective creation.” Leader He walks by looking at his screen. By paying attention to other questions, our reading of the situation is lost. Instead of looking for an efficient way to the end of the crowd, we wander through the crowd.

Lines followed by some leaders and others with and without cell phones. Science is fascinating.

break everything. This makes us more prone to shock, we wake up deceiving comrades walking in our direction. That’s when the collective choreography breaks down and an irregular dance begins: People who pay attention to their surroundings try to predict our movements, but when we look at the mobile phone, we cannot calculate their movements. Confusion, contact, anger. Thousands of years of non-verbal reading and subtle subliminal analysis have flushed the toilet.

rhythms. The study is interesting because it sheds light on the dynamics underlying the daily hustle and bustle of the masses, both in big cities and at major events such as pilgrimages. A hustle and bustle that is not monotonous and varies according to the culture of each country or big city: We know that people do not walk at the same pace everywhere and there are collective movement patterns (the label we read each other). others on the street) is different in Singapore or Paris. They all have one thing in common: those looking at their cell phone spoil everything.

Image: University of Tokyo