  The aim of this paper was to empirically investigate the behavior of fans,
globally coupled to a common environmental source of information. The
environmental stimuli were given in a form of referee's decisions list. The
sample of fans had to respond on each stimulus by associating points signifying
his/her own opinion, emotion and action that referee's decisions provoke. Data
were fitted by the Brillouin function which was a solution of an adapted model
of quantum statistical physics to social phenomena. Correlation and a principal
component analysis were performed in order to detect any collective behavior of
the social ensemble of fans. Results showed that fans behaved as a system
subject to a phase transition where the neutral state in the opinion, emotional
and action space has been destabilized and a new stable state of coherent
attitudes was formed. The enhancement of fluctuations and the increase of
social susceptibility (responsiveness) to referee's decisions were connected to
the first few decisions. The subsequent reduction of values in these parameters
signified the onset of coherent layering within the attitude space of the
social ensemble of fans. In the space of opinions fan coherence was maximal as
only one layer of coherence emerged. In the emotional and action spaces the
number of coherent levels was 2 and 4 respectively. The principal component
analysis revealed a strong collective behavior and a high degree of integration
within and between the opinion, emotional and action spaces of the sample of
fans. These results point to one possible way of how different proto-groups,
violent and moderate, may be formed as a consequence of global coupling to a
common source of information.
