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A social interaction field model accurately identifies static and dynamic social groupings

Nature Human Behaviour volume 3, pages 847–855 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Identifying whether people are part of a group is essential for humans to understand social interactions in social activities. Previous studies have focused mainly on the perceptual grouping of low-level visual features. However, very little attention has been paid to grouping in social scenes. Here we implemented virtual reality technology to manipulate characteristics of avatars in virtual scenes. We found that closer interpersonal distances, more direct interpersonal angles and more open avatar postures led to a higher probability of a group being judged as interactive. We developed a social interaction field model that describes a front−back asymmetric social interaction field. This model accurately predicts participants’ perceptual judgements of social grouping in real static and dynamic social scenes. Our findings indicate that the social interaction field model is an efficient computational framework for analysing social interactions and provides insight into how human observers perceive the interactions of others, enabling the identification of social groups.

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Fig. 1: Social interaction field deduced from behavioural data.

Body of the avatar in a, Unity Technologies

Fig. 2: The impact of postural openness on interaction judgement.

Body of the avatar in a, Unity Technologies

Fig. 3: The extension of the SIFM to multiple people.

Panel c, University of Reading

Fig. 4: SIFM predictions for social grouping in static and dynamic scenes.

Images in a adapted from University of Reading (left); ref. 54 and ref. 59, Springer (middle); and ref. 55, IEEE, The Technologies of Vision (TeV) team of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (right)

Fig. 5: SIFM predictions for actual human interaction behaviours.

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Data availability

All data that support our findings are publicly available at https://figshare.com/s/e860b1ee96956dbd0a5c.

Code availability

The code for data analysis and modelling is available at https://github.com/ECNU-VRLAB/Social-Interaction-Field-Model.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31771209). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. We are grateful for the helpful comments on our manuscript from Y. Zhou and L. Li and for technical support from X.-M. Wang, M.-C. Miao and H.-N. Wu.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Chen Zhou, Ming Han, Qi Liang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education and Shanghai), Institute of Brain and Education Innovation, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Chen Zhou, Ming Han, Qi Liang, Yi-Fei Hu & Shu-Guang Kuai

  2. NYU−ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science, New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China

    Shu-Guang Kuai

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  1. Chen Zhou
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Contributions

S.-G.K., C.Z., M.H. and Q.L. designed the research. Q.L., M.H., C.Z. and Y.-F.H. collected experimental data. M.H., Q.L., C.Z. and Y.-F.H. derived the models and analysed data under the supervision of S.-G.K. S.-G.K., C.Z., Q.L. and M.H. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Shu-Guang Kuai.

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Supplementary Methods 1 and 2, Supplementary Figs. 1−4, Supplementary Table 1, and Supplementary References.

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Zhou, C., Han, M., Liang, Q. et al. A social interaction field model accurately identifies static and dynamic social groupings. Nat Hum Behav 3, 847–855 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0618-2

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