Generic Model of Activity-Level in Workplace Communication

A single question concerning human communication represents serious issues in many social fields: "What makes communication active?" Even though this question has been partially researched, no law has yet been revealed. In this paper, a unified Hamiltonian model of activity level in face-to-face communications between people is introduced. This model consists of two basic findings drawn from real-world mass communication data of 412 people measured over three months by means of wearable social badges. The first basic finding was that the activity level of a participant in the communication increases when the situation of the communication is informal, rather than formal (p<;0.001). The second basic finding was that the activity level is affected by the activity levels of the other participants (p<;0.001). A Hamiltonian model unifying these basic findings was made, and the model was simulated by a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. The simulation results verified the Hamiltonian model, by reproducing a "symmetry phenomenon" (namely, the tendency of the activity level becomes symmetric in formal and informal situations), which was also demonstrated in by the results of an actual communication experiment. The results from this model simulation and experiment indicate that the quantitative and mass observation of human communications by wearable sensors can reveal potential fundamental laws of human communications, which would make it possible to understand human communication more deeply and control it more explicitly and effectively.Risk,