Abstract
In social psychology, emotional contagion describes the widely observed phenomenon of one person’s emotions being influenced by surrounding people’s emotions. While the overall effect is agreed upon, the underlying mechanism of the spread of emotions has seen little quantification and application to computational agents despite extensive evidence of its impacts in everyday life. In this paper, we examine computational models of emotional contagion by implementing two models (Bosse et al., European council on modeling and simulation, pp. 212–218, 2009) and Durupinar, From audiences to mobs: Crowd simulation with psychological factors, PhD dissertation, Bilkent University, 2010) that draw from two separate lines of contagion research: thermodynamics-based and epidemiological-based. We first perform sensitivity tests on each model in an evacuation simulation, ESCAPES, showing both models to be reasonably robust to parameter variations with certain exceptions. We then compare their ability to reproduce a real crowd panic scene in simulation, showing that the thermodynamics-style model (Bosse et al., European council on modeling and simulation, pp. 212–218, 2009) produces superior results due to the ill-suited contagion mechanism at the core of epidemiological models. We also identify that a graduated effect of fear and proximity-based contagion effects are key to producing the superior results. We then reproduce the methodology on a second video, showing that the same results hold, implying generality of the conclusions reached in the first scene.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Notes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsoDwM_KKfo, posted May 5, 2010.
References
Barsade, S. G., & Gibson, D. E. (1998). Group emotion: A view from top and bottom. In D. Gruenfeld, E. Mannix, & M. Neale (Eds.), Research on managing on groups and teams (pp. 81–102). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Borodin, A., Filmus, Y., & Oren, J. (2010). Threshold models for competitive influence in socil networks. In WINE (pp 539–550) Springer: Heidelberg.
Bosse, T., Duell, R., Memon, Z. A., Treur, J., & Wal, C. N. V. D. (2009a). A multi-agent model for emotion contagion spirals integrated within a supporting ambient agent model. In PRIMA-09. Springer-Verlag: Berlin/Heidelberg.
Bosse, T., Duell, R., Memon, Z. A., Treur, J., & Wal, C. N. V. D. (2009b). A multi-agent model for mutual absorption of emotions. In European council on modeling and, simulation, ECMS-09 (pp. 212–218).
Bosse, T., Hoogendoorn, M., Klein, M., Treur, J., & van der Wal, N. (2011). Agent-based analysis of patterns in crowd behaviour involving contagion of mental states. In IEA/AIE-11. Springer Verlag: Heidelberg.
Chen, W., Wang, C., & Wang, Y. (2010). Scalable influence maximization for prevalent viral marketing in large-scale social networks. In KDD (pp. 1029–1038).
Chertkoff, J. M., & Kushigian, R. H. (1999). Don’t panic: The psychology of emergency egress and ingress. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Diamond, J., McVay, M., & Zavala, M. W. (2010). Quick, safe, secure: Addressing human behavior during evacuations at LAX. Master’s thesis, UCLA Dept of Public Policy.
Dodds, P., & Watts, D. J. (2005). A generalized model of social and biological contagion. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 232(4), 587–604.
Doherty, W. (1997). The emotional contagion scale: A measure of individual differences. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 21(2), 131–154.
Durupinar, F. (2010). From audiences to mobs: Crowd simulation with psychological factors. PhD dissertation, Bilkent University, Department of Computer Engineering.
Grandey, A. A. (2000). Emotional regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labor. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5(1), 95–110.
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Helbing, D., Farkas, I. J., & Vicsek, T. (2000). Simulating dynamical features of escape panic. Nature, 407, 487–490.
Bryan, J. L. (2002). Behavioral response to fire and smoke. In SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp 3315–3341). Boston: National Fire Protection Association.
Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006). Development and validation of the basic empathy scale. Journal of Adolescence, 29(4), 589–611.
Kempe, D., Kleinberg, J. M., & Tardos, É. (2003). Maximizing the spread of influence through a social network (pp. 137–146). In KDD.
Kenny, P. G., Parsons, T. D., Gratch, J., & Rizzo, A. A. (2008). Evaluation of Justina: A virtual patient with PTSD. In IVA-08 (pp. 394–408). Heidelberg: Springer.
Kermack, W. O., & McKendrick, A. G. (1927). A contribution to the mathematical theory of epidemics. Proceedings of The Royal Society of London Series A, 115, 700–721.
Leskovec, J., Krause, A., Guestrin, C., Faloutsos, C., VanBriesen, J. M., & Glance, N. S. (2007). Cost-effective outbreak detection in networks. In KDD (pp. 420–429).
Lundqvist, L. O. (2008). Factor structure of the Greek version of the emotional contagion scale and its measurement invariance across gender and cultural groups. Journal of Individual Differences, 29(3), 121–129.
Mileti, D., & Sorensen, J. (1990).Communication of emergency public warnings: A social science perspective and state-of-the-art assessment. Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Murray, J. D. (2002). Mathematical biology (3rd ed.). New York: Springer.
Proulx, G., & Fahy, R.F. (2008). Human behavior and evacuation movement in smoke. ASHRAE Transactions, 114(2), pp. 159–165.
Pugh, S. D. (2001). Service with a smile: Emotional contagion in the service encounter. Academy of Management Journal, 44(5), 1018–1027.
Rogers, E. (1962). Diffusion of innovations. New York: The Free Press.
Schelling, T. C. (1973). Hockey helmets, concealed weapons, and daylight saving: a study of binary choices with externalities. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 17, 381–428.
Smith, C. A., & Ellsworth, P. C. (1985). Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(48), 813–838.
Tsai, J., Fridman, N., Bowring, E., Brown, M., Epstein, S., Kaminka, G., Marsella, S., Ogden, A., Rika, I., Sheel, A., Taylor, M.E., Wang, X., Zilka, A., & Tambe, M. (2011). ESCAPES: evacuation simulation with children, authorities, parents, emotions, and social comparison. In AAMAS-11 (pp. 457–464). New York: ACM Press.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the generosity of the VU University group that we have cited extensively in this work for sharing their experience and resources pertaining to the video evaluation. This research was sponsored in part by the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) Simulation Training and Technology Center (STTC). The content or information presented does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the Government, and no official endorsement should be inferred. This research was also supported by the United States Department of Homeland Security through the National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) under award number 2008-ST-104-000013. However, any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of the United States Department of Homeland Security, or the University of Southern California, or CREATE.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tsai, J., Bowring, E., Marsella, S. et al. Empirical evaluation of computational fear contagion models in crowd dispersions. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 27, 200–217 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-013-9220-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-013-9220-6