Brief biography 

I studied mathematics and informatics at the Amsterdam Free University. Since 1980 I am scientific programmer and mathematical-statistical analyst at the Ethology and Socio-ecology group (now: Department of Behavioural Biology). I have developed MatMan, a program for the analysis of sociometric matrices. In 2003 I defended my PhD thesis Finding Structure in Social Interaction Data. Analysis and Models of Social Behaviour. It comprises most of the papers listed below.
Click for a General Introduction or Summary of my thesis. Klik hier voor de stellingen bij m'n proefschrift.

Main research interests

Developing mathematical-statistical methods for the analysis of social interaction data.
Developing individual-oriented simulation models to obtain insight in the dynamics of social relationships and social organization and the collective behaviour of group living animals. In this context I am also interested in Artificial Life models, being at the same time worried about the possible applications in robotics as sketched in the paper by Bill Joy Why the future doesn't need us.
Recently my research interest has shifted towards the role of emotion and social cognition in primate social behaviour.

I also lend assistance to empirical studies on
- the social behaviour of long-tailed macaques, barbary macaques, rhesus monkeys, Thomas langurs, orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, baboons, bisons, Icelandic horses, wolves, dogs, cats, mice, bees, birds
- the social behaviour of children with conduct disorder, ADHD, PDD or autism.

Key publications

• Han de Vries (1993) The rowwise correlation between two proximity matrices and the partial rowwise correlation. Psychometrika 58 (1): pp. 53-69. [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries, Willem J. Netto, Peter L.H. Hanegraaf (1993) MatMan: a program for the analysis of sociometric matrices and behavioural transition matrices. Behaviour 125 (3-4): pp. 157-175. [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries (1995) An improved test of linearity in dominance hierarchies containing unknown or tied relationships. Animal Behaviour 50 pp. 1375-1389. [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries (1998) Finding a dominance order most consistent with a linear hierarchy: a new procedure and review. Animal Behaviour 55 pp. 827-843. [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries and Jacobus C. Biesmeijer (1998) Modelling collective foraging by means of individual behaviour rules in honey bees. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 44 pp. 109-124. [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries and Michael C. Appleby (2000) Finding an appropriate order for a hierarchy: a comparison of the I&SI and the BBS methods. Animal Behaviour 59 pp. 239-245. [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries and Jacobus C. Biesmeijer (2002) Self-organization in collective honeybee foraging: emergence of symmetry breaking, cross inhibition and equal harvest rate distribution. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 51 pp. 557-569.  [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries, Jeroen M.G. Stevens & Hilde Vervaecke (2006) Measuring and testing the steepness of dominance hierarchies. Animal Behaviour 71: 585-592 [Article in PDF format]
• Han de Vries (2009) On using the DomWorld model to evaluate dominance ranking methods. Behaviour 146: 843-869. [Article in PDF format]