"In the new work, the authors turned to the streets of Oxford (where some of the team was based) and updated the techniques, using high-resolution video imaging and a computer analysis that figured out the vectors that described pedestrians' gazes and direction of motion."

"The video camera was perched high above a specific area of a shopping street. The authors worked with a set of assistants who, on cue, would all stop within a small area of the street and stare up at the camera. In different experiments, the assistants were sent out in groups of various sizes, anywhere from a lone staring individual to an entire group of 15 that would all stop and stare at once. Afterward, the video was analyzed to figure out how many of the surrounding pedestrians stopped and stared along. All told, over 2,800 pedestrians were present during various iterations of the experiment."

"Maybe we've become more indifferent, or maybe the British hate to stare, but the new researchers saw nothing like the contagion of attention seen back in the 1960s. Instead of drawing in nearly 90 percent of the crowd, attention maxed out at somewhere around half the surrounding pedestrians. And there was no tipping point. Instead of a sudden leap in attentiveness, the fraction of pedestrians staring along went up gradually in direct proportion to the number of assistants sent out to stare. The more people that stared initially, the more likely others were to join in."

#attentioneconomy

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What are you looking at?

Whatcha lookin' at? The attention of crowds shows no tipping points

Researchers sent people into crowded environments, asking them to stare at a single location. Although a few pedestrians stared along, the crowd's attention never reached a tipping point, and in one s…