Abstract:
The communication of fear information within large human crowds often results in escape waves characterized by the contagion of heightened emotional arousal and then ensu...Show MoreMetadata
Abstract:
The communication of fear information within large human crowds often results in escape waves characterized by the contagion of heightened emotional arousal and then ensuing flight response between individuals. Once onset occurs, such escape waves spread fast and are difficult to control, leading to crowd disasters. In this context, a yet unexplored control parameter may exist at the level of an individual, specifically in their ability to put their emotions in check. The process of controlling one's emotion is called emotion regulation, and in this paper, we investigate the effect of emotion regulation on the spread of contagion. In a data-driven approach, we use experimental electroencephalogram (EEG) data from a previously published study, where individuals were exposed to images that aroused negative emotions such as fear, to first estimate a dynamical model of emotion generation. We then close the loop using proportional control to match data from the same study to represent the regulation of emotion by distraction. Next, we simulate a line of emotional agents, each represented by a closed loop control system, to investigate the effect of emotion regulation on the spread of contagion. This simple setup shows that emotion regulation can weaken the contagion in terms of the combined state of the group and the time it takes for a significant fraction of the group to reach a state of heightened fear. The framework described here presents a first step in a control-theoretic interpretation and modeling of emotion regulation and motivates future work in data-driven analysis of emotional contagion.
Published in: 2018 Annual American Control Conference (ACC)
Date of Conference: 27-29 June 2018
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 16 August 2018
ISBN Information:
Electronic ISSN: 2378-5861