The amount of applause a performance receives may not be linked to the quality of the show.
A new study suggested clapping could be contagious, and the length and intensity of the applause only has to do with the behavior of the audience, according to the BBC.
The researchers believe it would only take one or two people to begin a raging round of applause, and the same to abruptly end it.
"You can get quite different lengths of applause - even if you have the same quality of performance," said Dr. Richard Mann, from the University of Uppsala, who led the study "This is purely coming form the dynamics of the people in the crowd."
The researchers studied video footage of undergraduate students watching presentations. They observed only one or two people needed to clap in order to cause a chain-reaction of applause.
"The pressure comes from the volume of clapping in the room rather than what your neighbor sitting next to you is doing," Dr. Mann said.
The researchers observed that the duration of applause was greatly varied, and had little to do with the actual quality of the performance.
"In one case an audience might clap on average 10 times per person. Another time they might clap three times as long," Dr. Mann said. "And all that comes from is that you have this social pressure to start (clapping), but once you've started there's an equally strong social pressure not to stop, until someone initiates that stopping."
The researchers labeled applause as a "social contagion," claiming it shows how "ideas and actions gain and lose momentum."
The team hopes to use this new research to closer study how trends come in and out of fashion, such as things that go viral on the Internet.
"Here we tested whether you are more driven by the total number of people in the room or the people sitting next to you," Dr. Mann said. "And the equivalent on Facebook or Twitter would be whether you are more likely to join in a trend if you see lots of people in the wider world mentioning it or if just your closer friends mention it."
