How long do we stand our colleagues? A universal behavior in face-to-face relations

TL;DR

This study reveals a universal human and primate behavior in face-to-face interactions, where contact durations follow heavy-tailed distributions and are governed by a common trait rather than social rules, supported by a new Levy Geometric Graph model.

Contribution

The paper introduces the duration contrast variable and a novel Levy Geometric Graph model to describe face-to-face contact patterns across humans and baboons.

Findings

Contact durations follow heavy-tailed distributions.

A common human trait influences interaction durations.

The Levy Geometric Graph model accurately reproduces observed data.

Abstract

We compare face-to-face interaction data recorded by wearable sensors in various sociological environments. The interactions among individuals display a clear environment-dependent diversity in agreement with previous analyses. The contact durations follow heavy-tailed distributions although not exactly of power-law type as previously suggested. Guided by the common patterns observed for each relation, we introduce a variable named the duration contrast, which reveals a common behavior among all datasets. This suggests that our tendency to spend more or less time than usual with a given individual in a face-to-face relation is not governed by social rules but by a common human trait. Additional data shows that it is the same for baboons. Furthermore, we propose a new kind of model to describe the contacts in a given relation based on the recently introduced concept of Levy Geometric Graphs. It reproduces the data at an impressive level. The associated Levy index is found to be alpha = 1.1 on all the datasets, suggesting a universal law for primates and opening many exciting perspectives.