title: Collective motion of humans in mosh and circle pits at heavy metal concerts.
abstract: Human collective behavior can vary from calm to panicked depending on social context. Using videos publicly available online, we study the highly energized collective motion of attendees at heavy metal concerts. We find these extreme social gatherings generate similarly extreme behaviors: a disordered gaslike state called a mosh pit and an ordered vortexlike state called a circle pit. Both phenomena are reproduced in flocking simulations demonstrating that human collective behavior is consistent with the predictions of simplified models.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA. JLS533@cornell.edu
authors.forename: Jesse L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Silverberg
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bierbaum
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Sethna
authors.forename: Itai
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Cohen
mesh_terms: D003617:Dangerous Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009068:Movement; D009146:Music; D012919:Social Behavior