Modelling the Role of Emotion Regulation and Contagion in Socially Affected Decision Making

Abstract

This paper addresses the role of emotion regulation in a social context by means of a computational social agent model. The model integrates three different phenomena namely emotion regulation, emotion contagion, and emotion-related valuing, in order to analyse the role of emotion regulation in socially affected decision making. The work presented in this paper is illustrated for the interaction between two persons, simulated through agent-based modelling methods. Simulation experiments for different kinds of parameter settings help to understand the underlying mechanism of socially affected decision making and how these decisions can be affected by regulating the emotions involved. Based on the introduced model an ambient intelligent system can be designed to monitor and support a person, for example, to adopt a healthy lifestyle.