Human Behavior Simulation

Ask about this topic

Overview

Human behavior simulation builds computational accounts of how people make decisions, interact, and change over time, from individual choices to crowd and population dynamics. Methods range from cognitive and game-theoretic models, agent-based modeling, and reinforcement learning to language-model agents grounded in surveys, interviews, behavioral traces, psychological traits, or memory. Applications include opinion and market dynamics, mobility and traffic, evacuation, education, healthcare, and testing interactive AI systems. A central challenge is validating more than plausible outputs or aggregate averages: simulations must reproduce human response distributions, individual differences, interaction-driven change, and remain robust across prompts, populations, and settings.

Latest papers

CardsList

239 papers22 papers in the last four weeks, down 12% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. CogArena: Benchmarking Multimodal Agents on Interactive Behavioral Experiments

    Oct 27, 2026Kianté Fernandez, Caitlin Chen, Jialu Zhou +3Multimodal Agent EvaluationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles

  2. Behavioural Quality Is Not Learning Utility: Objective Mismatch in Human Behaviour Models for Robot Learning

    Oct 26, 2026Haoyang Jiang, Dana Kulic, Michael Burke +1Human Behavior ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Australia

  3. FraudSociety: A Generative Agent-Based Society for the Financial-Fraud Economy

    Oct 24, 2026Keyang Chen, Mingxuan Jiang, Zeping Li +10Financial Fraud DetectionAgent-Based Modeling

    Fudan University, Shanghai, China · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

  4. Empirically Calibrated Differential Games for Simulating Driver Interactions

    Oct 23, 2026Amirmohammad Khakpour, Nachuan Li, Pedram Beigi +2Human Behavior SimulationHuman Behavior Modeling

    Marco · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208 USA

  5. Towards User Simulators That Stay On Task And Still Sound Natural

    Oct 22, 2026Mustafa Omer Gul, Philippe Laban, Tanya Goyal +1User SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Cornell University · Microsoft Research

  6. Cognitively Constrained Partners for Zero-Shot Coordination in Real-Time Partitioned Control

    Oct 22, 2026Ash Simmons, George De Ath, Richard M. EversonZero-Shot CoordinationCooperative MARL

    University of Exeter, UK

  7. TwinStore: A Synthetic Consumer Platform Using Vision--Language Models

    Oct 22, 2026Minhyeok LeeSynthetic Data GenerationDigital Twins

  8. OmniSimulator: Aligning Small Language Models for Authentic Heterogeneous Behavior Modeling

    Oct 21, 2026Jiawei Chen, Ruoxi Xu, Boxi Cao +12User SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Chinese Information Processing Laboratory, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · Kuaishou Technology

  9. S2^2-MAS: A Society-Scale Multi-Agent Simulation Framework with 500 Million Household Persona Agents

    Oct 20, 2026Yang Li, Yike Wang, Di Wan +18Agent-Based ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    The University of Hong Kong · Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong · HKU Business School Shenzhen Research Institutes, The University of Hong Kong +6

  10. Beyond Behavioral Accuracy: Evaluating Individual-Level Fidelity in LLM Investor Simulation

    Oct 19, 2026Jiajie He, Yuanhong Jiang, Xintong Chen +2Human Behavior SimulationUser Simulation

    Hithink Research · McMaster University · Nanyang Technological University

  11. Towards Adaptive and Real-Survey-Aligned Simulated Urban Mobility Behaviour of Generative Agents

    Oct 14, 2026Yves Bru, Kamaldeep Singh Oberoi, Benoit GaudouHuman Behavior SimulationAgent-Based Modeling

    UMR IRIT, Université Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France · CESI, CESI LINEACT, Toulouse, France

  12. When Extremists Enter LLM Societies: Investigating Extreme Behavior in Multi-Agent Systems

    Oct 14, 2026Guo Chen, Huaijin Xie, Ziwen Li +5Large Language Model-Based Social SimulationMulti-Agent Systems

    College of Computer and Information Science, Southwest University, Chongqing, China · Yuanbao Team, Tencent, Beijing, China · School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, Communication University of China, Beijing, China +1

  13. Encounter-Driven City-Scale Human Mobility Generation with Large Language Models

    Oct 13, 2026Chao Li, Renhe Jiang, Chuan Xiao +1Human Behavior SimulationLLM Agent Trajectory Synthesis

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · The University of Tokyo · The University of Osaka

  14. sGLP: Simulating People with Stochastic Agents

    Oct 10, 2026Ehud ShapiroLogic ProgrammingHuman Behavior Simulation

    London School of Economics and Weizmann Institute of Science, UK and Israel

  15. PsyMemBehav: Psychology-Informed and Memory-Grounded Two-Level Identity-to-Action Reasoning for Social-Media Behavior Simulation

    Oct 10, 2026Wenji Zhang, Xilong Cheng, Yunxiao Qin +8Human Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    Communication University of China, China · State Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication, China

  16. A small cognitive core explains human behavior at scale

    Oct 9, 2026Marcel Binz, Eric SchulzCognitive ModelingHuman Behavior Modeling

    Institute for Human-Centered AI, Helmholtz Munich, Neuherberg, Germany · Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany

  17. MIMESIS: Learning User Simulators as Training Environments for Interactive Agents

    Oct 7, 2026Hoang Phan, Dat Huynh, Andrey Zhmoginov +7User SimulationLLM Agent Training

    Meta Superintelligence Labs · New York University · University of Wisconsin - Madison

  18. Controllable Crowd Generation through World-Model Planning

    Oct 7, 2026JunGyu Lee, Jisu Shin, Seunghyun Shin +1Human Behavior SimulationPedestrian Behavior Modeling

    Yonsei University · GIST

  19. Socio-Foundation: A Model for Generalizable Individual Behavior Simulation via Hierarchical Capability Distillation

    Oct 6, 2026Liang Wang, Wenxuan Xie, Xinyi Mou +2Human Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    School of Data Science, Fudan University · Shanghai Innovation Institute · Tencent

  20. Infant simulator with an embodied caregiver: Generating infant-perspective touch and vision during social interaction

    Oct 5, 2026Noemi Vaculinova, Matej HoffmannRobotics SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

  21. Learning to Simulate Individuals from Macro Social Signals

    Oct 5, 2026Yining Zhao, Bushi Liu, Haofei Yu +5Human Behavior SimulationRL for Language Model Reasoning

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Independent Researcher

  22. Benchmarking Psychological Dynamics in Generative Agents

    Oct 3, 2026Sumer S. Vaid, Ashley V. WhillansHuman Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    AI Institute Harvard Business School · Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit Harvard Business School

  23. IMPACT: Modeling Socially Interdependent Movement in a Generative Multi-Agent Simulation of a Pompeian Household

    Sep 29, 2026Tianqi Liu, Nayoung Kim, Julia Sebastien +1Multi-Agent CoordinationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Information Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA · Department of Communication, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

  24. Evolution of fairness in multi-objective reinforcement learning framework

    Sep 28, 2026Jingyi Zhang, Xin Ou, Guozhong Zheng +3Multi-Objective Reinforcement LearningGame Theory

    School of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710061, P. R. China · School of Physical Science and Technology, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010021, China · School of Physics, Ningxia University, Yinchuan 750021, P. R. China

  25. Editable Map-Conditioned Trajectory Generation for Human Mobility Simulation

    Sep 26, 2026Takayuki Mizuno, Shouji Fujimoto, Mikito Hiruki +1Trajectory GenerationHuman Behavior Simulation

    National Institute of Informatics Tokyo, Japan · Kanazawa Gakuin University Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan · The University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan

  26. Amadeus: When Models of People Meet

    Sep 24, 2026Karl HannaHuman Behavior SimulationMulti-Agent Systems

    Queen’s University Belfast United Kingdom

  27. Generative Embodied Multiple Behavior Control Systems for Human-like Agents

    Sep 19, 2026Chongyu Bao, Haokai Yang, Yuhan Wang +3Cognitive Architectures for AI AgentsHuman Behavior Simulation

    Bristol Digital Futures Institute, University of Bristol · University of Copenhagen · Clemson University

  28. From Memory to Behavior: A Behavior-Aware Role-Playing Framework for Social Media Influencers

    Sep 18, 2026Ji-Lun Peng, Yi-Zhen Zhang, Chun-Nan Chou +1Large Language Model-Based Role-Play SimulationPersona-Conditioned Generation

    National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan · CMoney Technology Corporation, Taiwan

  29. Digital Twins for Opinion Dynamics: A Generative LLM Framework for Social Networks

    Sep 17, 2026Omran Berjawi, Giuseppe Fenza, Rida Khatoun +1Opinion DynamicsHuman Behavior Simulation

    Information Processing and Communication Laboratory (LTCI) Institut Polytechnique de Paris, T´el´ecom Paris Palaiseau, France · Management & Information Systems (DISA-MIS) University of Salerno Fisciano, Italy · College of Communication and Information, University of Kentucky +1

  30. REARL: A Closed-loop Autonomous Driving Simulation Enhancement Framework with Real Traffic Data and Large Language Models

    Sep 17, 2026Xiaojun Bi, Jun Jiang, Yiwen Sun +6Language Model-Based ControlHuman Behavior Simulation

    Minzu University of China, Beijing, China · Key Laboratory of Ethnic Language Intelligent Analysis and Security Governance of MOE, Minzu University of China, Beijing, 100081, China · Peking University, Beijing, China +4