A particle model of crowd behavior: exploring the relationship between alcohol, crowd dynamics and violence

Aggressive behavior is more frequent in drunk crowds compared to sober crowds. However, there exists no predicative theory on why intoxicated crowds should display greater levels of violence as crowd density increases. This paper presents such a model. It is argued that intoxication disrupts social interactions between individuals. As emergent affiliative behaviors, such as line formation, that serve to increase flow and minimize invasions to personal space and therefore goal attainment, are a product of individual level interactions it is argued that intoxication increases individuals levels of stress and therefore aggression. This model is illustrated by a particle model of crowd behavior. Models of crowd behavior, derived from particle physics, have been successfully developed to account for collective emergent features in both human and non-human organisms through modeling individual level interactions. Simulations are consistent with the hypothesis that intoxication disrupts the emergence of affiliative behavior.