Statistical physics of human beings in games：Controlled experiments

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/23/7/078902

Abstract It is important to know whether the laws or phenomena in statistical physics for natural systems with non-adaptive agents still hold for social human systems with adaptive agents, because this implies whether it is possible to study or understand social human systems by using statistical physics originating from natural systems. For this purpose, we review the role of human adaptability in four kinds of specific human behaviors, namely, normal behavior, herd behavior, contrarian behavior, and hedge behavior. The approach is based on controlled experiments in the framework of market-directed resource-allocation games. The role of the controlled experiments could be at least two-fold: adopting the real human decision-making process so that the system under consideration could reflect the performance of genuine human beings; making it possible to obtain macroscopic physical properties of a human system by tuning a particular factor of the system, thus directly revealing cause and effect. As a result, both computer simulations and theoretical analyses help to show a few counterparts of some laws or phenomena in statistical physics for social human systems: two-phase phenomena or phase transitions, entropy-related phenomena, and a non-equilibrium steady state. This review highlights the role of human adaptability in these counterparts, and makes it possible to study or understand some particular social human systems by means of statistical physics coming from natural systems.

Keywords: experimental econophysics computer-aided controlled experiment phase transition entropy-like quantity

Received: 26 January 2014
Revised: 20 February 2014
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:	89.65.Gh	(Economics; econophysics, financial markets, business and management)
	05.90.+m	(Other topics in statistical physics, thermodynamics, and nonlinear dynamical systems)
	89.75.-k	(Complex systems)
	05.65.+b	(Self-organized systems)

Fund: Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11075035 and 11222544), the Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation, China (Grant No. 131008), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University, China (Grant No. NCET-12-0121), the Shanghai Rising-Star Program, China (Grant No. 12QA1400200), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China.

Corresponding Authors: Huang Ji-Ping
E-mail: jphuang@fudan.edu.cn

About author: 89.65.Gh; 05.90.+m; 89.75.-k; 05.65.+b

Cite this article:

Liang Yuan (梁源), Huang Ji-Ping (黄吉平) Statistical physics of human beings in games：Controlled experiments 2014 Chin. Phys. B 23 078902

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