Experiments with Emotion Contagion in Emergency Evacuation Simulation

Abstract

Multi-agent systems simulation is used to predict human behaviour in emergency evacuation cases. However, as human behaviour can change under the effect of emotions, it is essential to create models of artificial agents and simulations that mimic such behaviour in order to make prediction of the overall system performance. In emotional agents, the role of emotional contagion is important. Emotional contagion is a result of interaction between agents which could affect each others emotions. It is the case that in emergency situations, emotions (especially calmness, fear and panic) may propagate in various ways, depending on the agents personality type as well as other factors. In this paper, we review various methods of emotional contagion. In order to develop emotional agent simulation, we start from a formal state-based modelling method and devise a number of variations of known emotional contagion methods. NetLogo visual simulation is used, in which a number of experiments is conducted. The results are useful to demonstrate different behaviour of different emotional contagion models in the evacuation of an open square area.

Computational models and optimal control strategies for emotion contagion in the human population in emergencies

“…The functions f 1 (S (t), ν 1 (t)), f 2 (L(t), ν 2 (t)) and f 3 (I(t), ν 3 (t)) represent the actions of the control effort, where f 1 (S (t), ν 1 (t)) models the vaccination actions over susceptible individuals, f 2 (L(t), ν 2 (t)) describes the quarantine actions over latent individuals, and f 3 (I(t), ν 3 (t)) represents the treatment actions over infected individuals. Different mathematical descriptions for 6 …”

“…The largescale crowd evacuation is an important way for emergency responses of sudden disasters [3,4,5]. Many cases have shown that when panic emotions about accidents emerges in some individuals in the human population, their neighboring individuals tend to be infected through emotion contagion, resulting in devastating consequences in the human population in emergencies [6,7,8,9]. Currently, there are many definitions of emotion of individuals.…”

“…Especially, positive emotions, like calmness and optimist, may cause an ordered and efficient evacuation, whereas negative emotions, such as panic, anxiety and fear, may lead to confusion and congestion in the large-scale crowd evacuation in emergencies. Although there has been significant research on emotions from a computational perspective, one area scarcely explored is emotional contagion [1,2,3,4,5,6,12]. The so called emotion contagion is that a certain emotion in some individuals propagates to other individuals through interactions among individuals, such as face-to-face communications [6].…”

“…Although there has been significant research on emotions from a computational perspective, one area scarcely explored is emotional contagion [1,2,3,4,5,6,12]. The so called emotion contagion is that a certain emotion in some individuals propagates to other individuals through interactions among individuals, such as face-to-face communications [6]. Emotion contagion is important in group situations where a certain emotional state of an individual influences the behavior of other individuals.…”

The Role of Emotions, Mood, Personality and Contagion in Multi-agent System Decision Making

“…We have previously reviewed and experimented with three emotional contagion models [15]. In this work, we use the ASCRIBE model [10], where the emotional effect of one agent to another generally depends on the expressiveness of the former, the openness of the latter, and the distance between the two.…”