The Microscopic Model and the Panicking Ball-Bearing

Abstract

Prominent microscopic models simulate panic (which has been de- scribed as a myth) allowing unwarranted simplifying assumptions that people are irrational, non-deliberative and interchangeable. While these assumptions can be remedied by increasing the behavioral repertoire of modelled individuals, large cog- nitive architectures would stifle a model’s power to explain emergent crowd effects. We propose the microscopic human factor (MHF) approach that increases behav- ioral repertoire without compromise to the elegant simplicity from which the models derive their explanatory power.