How individual people behave during an outbreak of the flu or other illnesses can affect the progress of the disease, but perhaps not in the way you'd suspect.
“When we studied individual behavior, empathy trumped risk aversion in disease eradication, which was counterintuitive for us,” said Ceyhun Eksin, a postdoctoral fellow in the Georgia Tech School of Biological Sciences.
Eksin and his colleagues used a networked variation of game theory, which observes the decisions of participants under different circumstances, to pit the self-interests of healthy but susceptible people against those of infected people. They found that healthy people who attempted to protect themselves couldn’t, by themselves, stop the disease from spreading. But if sick people took precautions to avoid infecting others, the illness could be eradicated.
Among the key factors was the empathy of infected people, leading to consideration for others’ well-being.
“We wanted to understand disease dynamics from an individual’s perspective,” said Eksin. “In particular, we wanted to know what role individual behavior plays in disease spread and how behavior might affect forecasting and consequences in the long run when there is an outbreak.”
