Human Behavior Simulation

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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. Robo-Saber: Generating and Simulating Virtual Reality Players

    Feb 20, 2026Nam Hee Kim, Jingjing May Liu, Jaakko Lehtinen +3Human Behavior SimulationHuman Motion Generation

    Aalto University, Finland · University of California, Berkeley, United States · NVIDIA +1

  2. Decoding the Human Factor: High Fidelity Behavioral Prediction for Strategic Foresight

    Feb 19, 2026Ben Yellin, Ehud Ezra, Mark Foreman +1Behavioral Foundation ModelsHuman Behavior Simulation

    OMGene AI Lab

  3. AI Agents Alone Are Not (Yet) Sufficient for Social Simulation

    Feb 19, 2026Yiming Li, Dacheng TaoLarge Language Model-Based Social SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  4. This human study did not involve human subjects: Validating LLM simulations as behavioral evidence

    Feb 17, 2026Jessica Hullman, David Broska, Huaman Sun +1Large Language Model-Based Social SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Northwestern University · Stanford University

  5. Mobility-Aware Cache Framework for Scalable LLM-Based Human Mobility Simulation

    Feb 17, 2026Hua Yan, Heng Tan, Yingxue Zhang +1Human Behavior SimulationLLM Inference Acceleration

    Lehigh University Bethlehem, USA · State University of New York at Binghamton Binghamton, USA

  6. Bridging Individual and Collective Realism in LLM-Based Human Mobility Simulation via Mobility Scaling-Law Guidance

    Feb 17, 2026Hua Yan, Heng Tan, Yu YangHuman Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    Lehigh University · Bethlehem, USA

  7. Stability Regimes for Framing-Sensitive Fine-Tuning in Language Models

    Feb 17, 2026Victor De Lima, Jiqun Liu, Grace Hui YangFraming Effects in Language ModelsHuman Behavior Simulation

    Georgetown InfoSense Washington, D.C., USA · University of Oklahoma Norman, Oklahoma, USA

  8. MyoInteract: A Framework for Fast Prototyping of Biomechanical HCI Tasks using Reinforcement Learning

    Feb 16, 2026Ankit Bhattarai, Hannah Selder, Florian Fischer +2Human-Computer InteractionReinforcement Learning

    Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (ScaDS.AI) Dresden/Leipzig, Leipzig University Leipzig, Germany

  9. Cognitive networks reconstruct mindsets about STEM subjects and educational contexts in almost 1000 high-schoolers, University students and LLM-based digital twins

    Feb 16, 2026Francesco Gariboldi, Emma Franchino, Edith Haim +3Cognitive ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 31, Rovereto, 38068, TN, Italy · Department of Physics, University of Trento, Via Sommarive, 14, Povo, 38123, TN, Italy · Department of Psychology and Communication, University of Bari, Via Scipione Crisanzio, 42, Bari, 70122, BA, Italy

  10. Stochastic Parrots or Singing in Harmony? Testing Five Leading LLMs for their Ability to Replicate a Human Survey with Synthetic Data

    Feb 10, 2026Jason Miklian, Kristian Hoelscher, John E. KatsosHuman Behavior SimulationSynthetic Data Generation

    University of Oslo · Peace Research Institute Oslo · American University of Sharjah

  11. UBCL: A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Controllable and Diverse Player Behaviors

    Dec 11, 2025Atahan Cilan, Atay ÖzgövdeReinforcement LearningHuman Behavior Simulation

    Turkish Aerospace, Istanbul, Turkey · Department of Computer Engineering, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

  12. Large language models replicate and predict human cooperation across experiments in game theory

    Nov 6, 2025Andrea Cera Palatsi, Samuel Martin-Gutierrez, Ana S. Cardenal +1LLM EvaluationGame Theory

    Department for Computational Social Sciences and Humanities, Barcelona Supercomputing Center · Grupo de Sistemas Complejos, Universidad Polit´ecnica de Madrid · School of Law and Political Science, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya +1

  13. Gravity-Awareness: Deep Learning Models and LLM Simulation of Human Awareness in Altered Gravity

    Oct 29, 2025Bakytzhan Alibekov, Alina Gutoreva, Elisa Raffaella-FerreComputational Cognitive ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    School of IT & Engineering, Kazakh-British Technical University, 050000, Tole bi 59, Almaty, Kazakhstan. · School of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck University of London, Malet St, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom.

  14. HugAgent: A Human Simulation Benchmark for Individual-Level Reasoning

    Oct 16, 2025Chance Jiajie Li, Zhenze Mo, Yuhan Tang +11Cognitive ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    1MIT Media Lab · 8Northeastern University · 5MIT CEE +7

  15. People use fast and flat simulation to reason about new games

    Oct 13, 2025Katherine M. Collins, Cedegao E. Zhang, Lionel Wong +6Computational Cognitive ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States · Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States · University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom +3

  16. Predicting Effects, Missing Distributions: Evaluating LLMs as Human Behavior Simulators in Operations Management

    Sep 30, 2025Runze Zhang, Xiaowei Zhang, Mingyang ZhaoLLM EvaluationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong

  17. Generalized Multi-agent Social Simulation Framework

    Sep 26, 2025Gang Li, Jie Lin, Yining Tang +6Multi-Agent LLM SystemsLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    Zhejiang University, China

  18. The PIMMUR Principles: Ensuring Validity in Collective Behavior of LLM Societies

    Sep 22, 2025Jiaxu Zhou, Jen-tse Huang, Xuhui Zhou +5LLM EvaluationLLM Auditing

    CUHK · JHU · CMU +3

  19. Are LLM Agents Behaviorally Coherent? A Latent Profiling Approach for Social Simulation

    Sep 3, 2025James Mooney, Josef Woldense, Zheng Robert Jia +4Behavioral Consistency of LLM AgentsLLM Agent Evaluation

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota · Department of African American & African Studies, University of Minnesota · Department of Sociology, University of Chicago +1

  20. Computational Multi-Agents Society Experiments: Social Modeling Framework Based on Generative Agents

    Aug 24, 2025Hanzhong Zhang, Muhua Huang, Jindong WangComputational Social ScienceAgent-Based Modeling

    William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA · Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

  21. From the Fluency Fallacy to the Micro-to-Macro Validity Gap: Opportunities and Pitfalls of LLMs in Social Simulation

    Jul 25, 2025Patrick Taillandier, Jean Daniel Zucker, Arnaud Grignard +4Human Behavior SimulationComputational Social Science

    UR MIAT, University of Toulouse, INRAE, Castanet-Tolosan, France · UMI UMMISCO, IRD, Sorbonne University, Bondy, France · UMR IRIT, University Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France +2

  22. LLM Bidders Preserve the Mechanism-Level Orderings of Human Bidders

    Jul 12, 2025Anand Shah, Kehang Zhu, Yanchen Jiang +4LLM EvaluationHuman Behavior Simulation

    MIT & NBER

  23. LLM-Based Social Simulations Require a Boundary

    Jun 24, 2025Zengqing Wu, Run Peng, Takayuki Ito +2LLM EvaluationHuman Behavior Simulation

    University of Osaka · University of Michigan · Kyoto University +1

  24. Modeling Earth-Scale Human-Like Societies with One Billion Agents

    Jun 7, 2025Haoxiang Guan, Jiyan He, Liyang Fan +10Human Behavior SimulationComputational Social Science

    University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China. · Zhongguancun Academy, Beijing, China. · Zhongguancun Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing, China. +4

  25. AgentDynEx: Nudging the Mechanics and Dynamics of Multi-Agent Simulations

    Apr 13, 2025Jenny Ma, Riya Sahni, Karthik Sreedhar +1Multi-Agent LLM SystemsHuman Behavior Simulation

    Columbia University New York City, USA

  26. LLM-based Human Simulations Have Not Yet Been Reliable

    Jan 15, 2025Qian Wang, Jiaying Wu, Zichen Jiang +6Human Behavior Simulation

    National University of Singapore · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

  27. LLM Agents Grounded in Self-Reports Enable General-Purpose Simulation of Individuals

    Nov 15, 2024Joon Sung Park, Carolyn Q. Zou, Jonne Kamphorst +8Personality Modeling in Language ModelsHuman Behavior Simulation

    1Computer Science Department, Stanford University; Stanford, CA, 94305, USA. · Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University; Evanston, IL 60208, USA. · 7CDSP and CEE, Sciences Po; Paris, 75007, France. +4

  28. When AI Meets Finance (StockAgent): Large Language Model-based Stock Trading in Simulated Real-world Environments

    Jul 15, 2024Chong Zhang, Xinyi Liu, Zhongmou Zhang +10Multi-Agent LLM SystemsHuman Behavior Simulation

    University of Liverpool, UK · Peking University, China · Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China +6

  29. Artificial Leviathan: Exploring Social Evolution of LLM Agents Through the Lens of Hobbesian Social Contract Theory

    Jun 20, 2024Gordon Dai, Weijia Zhang, Jinhan Li +5Large Language Model-Based Social SimulationMulti-Agent LLM Systems

    New York Univeristy, New York, New York, USA · University of illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urnana, llinois, USA · New York University, New York, New York, USA +1

  30. Simulation of Crowd Egress with Environmental Stressors

    Jun 3, 2022Peng Wang, Xiaoda Wang, Peter Luh +4Pedestrian Behavior ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs