Impact of Rational Thinking on Symmetry Breaking in Exit Choice in Evacuation Simulation

Abstract

When people evacuate from the room with two identical exits, these two are unequally used, with evacuees gathering at one of them. This inappropriate behavior sometimes causes serious loss of life. We have studied this symmetry breaking in exit choice using the evacuation decision model which is based on the response threshold model in biology, and figured out that herd behavior, one of the typical cognitive bias in evacuation situations, is the major cause of this phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of human rational thinking on this problem. The simulation results have shown that rational thinking can be used to suppress the occurrence of symmetry breaking in exit choice.