Micromotives and Macrobehavior

behavior or the choices of other people, are the ones that usually don’t permit any simple summation or extrapolation to the aggregates.

it deals with the evolution of social

choices when the better choice among two possibilities, or the best choice among several possibilities, depends on the choices that others will make or are making.

Still another hypothesis is that most members of the audience developed their seating habits in other times and places, where they found disadvantages in sitting down front.

norms of behavior: decisions to abide by norms tend to strengthen those norms.

To make that connection we usually have to look at the system of interaction between individuals and their environment, that is, between individuals and other individuals or between individuals and the collectivity.

organization, interfering as little as possible with the preferences of the audience, we need to know whether we can subtly change their incentives or their perceptions of the auditorium so that they will “voluntarily” choose a better seating pattern.

nobody cares where he sits, as long as it’s not in the very front—not in the first occupied row.

A third possibility is that everybody wants to sit where he is close to people, either to be sociable or to avoid being conspicuously alone.