Coupling diversity across human behavior spaces

¹ CompleX Lab, School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China - Chengdu 611731, PRC
² College of Arts and Sciences, Shanxi Agricultural University - Taigu 030801, PRC
³ Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University - Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
⁴ Center for Complex Network Research, Department of Physics, Northeastern University - Boston, MA 02115, USA
⁵ Big Data Research Center, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China - Chengdu 611731, PRC

Received: 20 October 2018
Accepted: 14 November 2018

Abstract

The heterogeneous nature of human behaviors contributes to the complexity of human-activated systems. Empirical observations and theoretical models reveal the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of many aspects of human behaviors, including social connections and geographic movements, while little is known whether and how human individual's behavioral diversities are correlated across different aspects. With statistical analysis on large-scale data of aligned online and offline human behaviors, we show that behavior spaces are coupled, independent from the specific choice of measurements. The coupling further expands to individual's direct and indirect social contacts. This finding provides insight into understanding homophily in different social systems and further improving the predictability of human online and offline behaviors.