Micromotives and Macrobehavior

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.

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

A fourth possibility is that everybody likes to watch the audience come in, as people do at weddings.

An even weaker hypothesis is that people don’t even mind being in the very first occupied row as long as the rows immediately behind them are filled, so they are not conspicuously down front by themselves.

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.

A second possibility, not the same thing, is that everybody wants to sit to the rear of everybody else—

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

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