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

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

  1. Artificial Intelligence for Modeling and Simulation of Mixed Automated and Human Traffic

    Apr 14, 2026Saeed Rahmani, Shiva Rasouli, Daphne Cornelisse +3Autonomous Driving SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Transport & Planning, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands. · Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Michigan, Dearborn, Michigan, USA · 3Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, New York, United States.

  2. PEMAND: Persona-Enriched Multi-Agent Negotiation for Household Decision-Making

    Apr 12, 2026Yuran Sun, Mustafa Sameen, Yaotian Zhang +5Human Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    University of Florida

  3. Simulating Organized Group Behavior: New Framework, Benchmark, and Analysis

    Apr 10, 2026Xinkai Zou, Yiming Huang, Zhuohang Wu +5Human Behavior Simulation

    University of California, San Diego · University of California, Irvine · Meta

  4. Towards Real-world Human Behavior Simulation: Benchmarking Large Language Models on Long-horizon, Cross-scenario, Heterogeneous Behavior Traces

    Apr 9, 2026Jiawei Chen, Ruoxi Xu, Boxi Cao +12Human Behavior SimulationUser Simulation

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

  5. Same Outcomes, Different Journeys: A Trace-Level Framework for Comparing Human and GUI-Agent Behavior in Production Search Systems

    Apr 9, 2026Maria Movin, Claudia Hauff, Aron Henriksson +1GUI AgentsAI Agent Evaluation

    Spotify, Sweden · Stockholm University, Sweden · Spotify, Netherlands

  6. SYN-DIGITS: A Synthetic Control Framework for Calibrated Digital Twin Simulation

    Apr 8, 2026Grace Jiarui Fan, Chengpiao Huang, Tianyi Peng +2Synthetic ControlLanguage Model Calibration

    Finance Division, Columbia Business School. · Department of IEOR, Columbia University · Decision, Risk, and Operations Division, Columbia Business School. +1

  7. RealUserSim: Bridging the Reality Gap in Agent Benchmarking via Grounded User Simulation

    Apr 7, 2026Ming Zhu, Juntao Tan, Rithesh Murthy +6User SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Salesforce AI Research

  8. What Makes a Sale? Simulating End-to-End Seller--Buyer Retail Dynamics with LLM Agents

    Apr 6, 2026Jeonghwan Choi, Jibin Hwang, Gyeonghun Sun +4User SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) · GS Retail · Cluvion

  9. LLM-Agent-based Social Simulation for Attitude Diffusion

    Apr 4, 2026Deepak John RejiLarge Language Model-Based Social SimulationComputational Social Science

    Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

  10. Stabilising Generative Models of Attitude Change

    Apr 2, 2026Jayd Matyas, William A. Cunningham, Alexander Sasha Vezhnevets +3Computational Cognitive ModelingHuman Behavior Simulation

    Google DeepMind · University of Toronto · Caltech +1

  11. LLM Agents as Social Scientists: A Human-AI Collaborative Platform for Social Science Automation

    Apr 2, 2026Lei Wang, Yuanzi Li, Jinchao Wu +4Large Language Model-Based Social SimulationComputational Social Science

    Gaoling School of Artificial Intelligence, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China · Beijing Key Laboratory of Big Data Management and Analysis Methods, Beijing, China

  12. LLM Agents Predict Social Media Reactions but Do Not Outperform Text Classifiers: Benchmarking Simulation Accuracy Using 120K+ Personas of 1511 Humans

    Mar 31, 2026Ljubisa Bojic, Alexander Felfernig, Bojana Dinic +4LLM Agent EvaluationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research and Development of Serbia · University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Digital Society Lab · Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria +4

  13. BotVerse: Real-Time Event-Driven Simulation of Social Agents

    Mar 31, 2026Edoardo Allegrini, Edoardo Di Paolo, Angelo Spognardi +1Large Language Model-Based Social SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Computer Science Dept., Sapienza University of Rome · IIT-CNR & Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca

  14. Synonymix: Unified Group Personas for Generative Simulations

    Mar 30, 2026Huanxing Chen, Aditesh KumarHuman Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

  15. Persona-Based Simulation of Human Opinion at Population Scale

    Mar 28, 2026Mao Li, Frederick G. ConradHuman Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson St., Ann Arbor, 48104, MI, US.

  16. Personality-Driven Student Agent-Based Modeling in Mathematics Education: How Well Do Student Agents Align with Human Learners?

    Mar 22, 2026Bushi Xiao, Qian ShenMathematics EducationHuman Behavior Simulation

    University of Florida

  17. Do LLM-Driven Agents Exhibit Engagement Mechanisms? Controlled Tests of Information Load, Descriptive Norms, and Popularity Cues

    Mar 21, 2026Tai-Quan Peng, Yuan Tian, Songsong Liang +2Large Language Model-Based Social SimulationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Department of Communication, Michigan State University, USA · College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, China · School of Software Technology, Zhejiang University, China

  18. MALLES: A Multi-agent LLMs-based Economic Sandbox with Consumer Preference Alignment

    Mar 18, 2026Yusen Wu, Yiran Liu, Xiaotie DengMulti-Agent LLM SystemsHuman Behavior Simulation

  19. Evaluating LLM-Simulated Conversations in Modeling Inconsistent and Uncollaborative Behaviors in Human Social Interaction

    Mar 17, 2026Ryo Kamoi, Ameya Godbole, Binglin Zhou +5LLM EvaluationHuman Behavior Simulation

    Penn State University · University of Southern California · Microsoft Corporation

  20. Persona-Conditioned Risk Behavior in Large Language Models: A Simulated Gambling Study with GPT-4.1

    Mar 16, 2026Sankalp DubedyProspect TheoryLLM Decision-Making

    Independent Researcher

  21. Beyond Self-Interest: Modeling Social-Oriented Motivation for Human-like Multi-Agent Interactions

    Mar 14, 2026Jingzhe Lin, Ceyao Zhang, Yaodong Yang +3Large Language Model-Based Social SimulationMulti-Agent LLM Systems

    School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University & Beijing Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence for Education & Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Technology and Educational Application, MOE, Beijing, China · School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China · Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Beijing, China +2

  22. General-purpose LLMs as Models of Human Driver Behavior: The Case of Simplified Merging

    Mar 11, 2026Samir H. A. Mohammad, Wouter Mooi, Arkady ZgonnikovHuman Behavior SimulationAutonomous Driving Safety Evaluation

    Department of Transport and Planning, Delft University of Technology · Department of Cognitive Robotics, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

  23. Noncooperative Human-AI Agent Dynamics

    Mar 10, 2026Dylan Waldner, Vyacheslav Kungurtsev, Mitchelle AshimosiProspect TheoryHuman-AI Decision Making

  24. Evaluating LLMs as Human Surrogates in Controlled Experiments

    Mar 8, 2026Adnan Hoq, Tim WeningerHuman Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

  25. An Interactive LLM-Based Simulator for Dementia-Related Activities of Daily Living

    Mar 6, 2026Kruthika Gangaraju, Shu-Fen Wung, Kevin Berner +2Dementia CareLarge Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation

    Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, Massachusetts, USA · University of California Davis Sacramento, CA, USA · MGH Institute of Health Professionals Boston, MA, USA +1

  26. Ailed: A Psyche-Driven Chess Engine with Dynamic Emotional Modulation

    Mar 5, 2026Diego Armando Resendez PradoGame-Playing AgentsHuman Behavior Simulation

    Independent Researcher

  27. Belief-Sim: Towards Belief-Driven Simulation of Demographic Misinformation Susceptibility

    Mar 3, 2026Angana Borah, Zohaib Khan, Rada Mihalcea +1Human Behavior SimulationLarge Language Model-Based Social Simulation

    University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, USA · Texas State University

  28. Turing Test on Screen: A Benchmark for Mobile GUI Agent Humanization

    Feb 24, 2026Jiachen Zhu, Lingyu Yang, Rong Shan +6Mobile GUI AgentsAI Agent Benchmarks

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai, China · Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

  29. InterviewSim: A Scalable Framework for Interview-Grounded Personality Simulation

    Feb 23, 2026Yu Li, Pranav Narayanan Venkit, Yada Pruksachatkun +1Personality Modeling in Language ModelsHuman Behavior Simulation

    Salesforce Research

  30. EDU-MATRIX: A Society-Centric Generative Cognitive Digital Twin Architecture for Secondary Education

    Feb 21, 2026Wenjing Zhai, Jianbin Zhang, Tao LiuDigital TwinsHuman Behavior Simulation

    The High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China · Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Hebei, China