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Agent-Based Modeling of Emotion Contagion in Groups

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Abstract

To avoid the development of negative emotion in their teams, team leaders may benefit from being aware of the emotional dynamics of the team members. To this end, the use of intelligent computer systems that analyze emotional processes within teams is a promising direction. As a first step toward the development of such systems, this paper uses an agent-based approach to formalize and simulate emotion contagion processes within groups, which may involve absorption or amplification of emotions of others. The obtained computational model is analyzed both by explorative simulation and by mathematical analysis. In addition, to illustrate the applicability of the model, it is shown how the model can be integrated within a computational ‘ambient agent model’ that monitors and predicts group emotion levels over time and proposes group support actions based on that. Based on this description, a discussion is provided of the main contribution of the model, as well as the next steps needed to incorporate it into real-world applications.

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Notes

  1. In addition to categorical models, in principle it is also possible to integrate the model with so-called dimensional emotion categorization models (which represent emotions as coordinates in a multi-dimensional space, using e.g., dimensions like valence and arousal), or even more sophisticated hybrid models, such as the ‘hourglass of emotions’ [9]. One way to do this would be to unify the level of emotion used in this paper with one single dimension within a dimensional model. A more detailed investigation of the consequences of such an approach is left for future work.

  2. As the models for absorption and amplification only differ in using a different formula, there is no difference between them w.r.t. scalability. For this reason, only the results for absorption are shown.

  3. A strict variant of such properties can be created by replacing ≤ by <.

  4. The question to what extent our model is able to simulate such completely different processes is beyond the scope of this paper. Although these processes share some characteristics with the process of emotion contagion, for other factors (e.g. openness, or the tendency to adapt emotions upward or downward) it is not trivial to find a counterpart.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Alexei Sharpanskykh for generating the simulation results presented in section “Larger Populations.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Artificial Intelligence, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Tibor Bosse, Rob Duell, Zulfiqar A. Memon, Jan Treur & C. Natalie van der Wal

  2. Sukkur Institute of Business Administration (Sukkur IBA), Airport Road, Sukkur, Sindh, Pakistan

    Zulfiqar A. Memon

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  1. Tibor Bosse
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  2. Rob Duell
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  3. Zulfiqar A. Memon
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  4. Jan Treur
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  5. C. Natalie van der Wal
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Correspondence to Jan Treur.

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Bosse, T., Duell, R., Memon, Z.A. et al. Agent-Based Modeling of Emotion Contagion in Groups. Cogn Comput 7, 111–136 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-014-9277-9

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