Clapping is contagious, according to a new scientific report.

Researchers have likened audiences bursting into applause to being "infected" by sound.

Scientists studied clapping contagion in groups of university students listening to a presentation.

The likelihood that a person would start to clap was found to increase in proportion to the number of other audience members already putting their hands together.

In a study of social identity and crowd psychology published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, scientists looked at how and why individual people change their behaviour in response to others.

Mathematical models have previously been designed to look at the phenomenon, but they haven't yet been successfully tested.

The people behind the study also found that those who were influenced by 'clappers' in the crowd were unaffected by how far away the clapper was sitting or standing.

The end of a round of applause comes about in much the same way as the beginning - it's socially mediated, but in a less controlled way, often it's more to do with peoples' reluctance to clap too many times.

This analysis predicts that the time an audience spends clapping can vary considerably, even if there's no difference between the quality of the material they've been listening to.