ABSTRACT
Emotions play an important role in social interactions and as such, they are critical in creating engaging and believable characters that users can interact with.
Although there has been significant research on emotions, from a computational perspective, one area scarcely explored is the process of Emotional Contagion (EC). Emotional Contagion is the process through which a person's emotional state is influenced by other people's emotions. This process is especially important in group situations where the emotional states of individuals influence the behavior of others.
Our goal was to develop a computational model, based on the Emotional Contagion Scale (ECS), that would enrich group dynamics on virtual environments. This model supports agents with different susceptibilities to contagion, and also the influence of their extroversion personality trait and interpersonal relationships (intimacy and power difference) on the contagion process. It has been also included the process of emotional mood decay, as observed in humans. With these elements characterizing the agents at an individual level, this model can simulate a wide variety of social phenomena.
To evaluate the model, we developed a game prototype where the player (the main character) goes on a journey with two other characters (one with and another without our model).
The results suggest that players perceived differences in the emotional contagion susceptibility between those characters and considered the model-based agent significantly more enjoyable and friendlier.
- R. Aylett, S. Louchart, J. Dias, A. Paiva, and M. Vala. FearNot!-an experiment in emergent narrative. In Intelligent Virtual Agents, pages 305--316. Springer, 2005. Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Barsade. The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4):644--677, 2002.Google ScholarCross Ref
- L. Berkowitz. Causes and consequences of feelings. Cambridge Univ Pr, 2000.Google ScholarCross Ref
- J. Bispo and A. Paiva. A model for Emotional Contagion Based on the Emotional Contagion Scale. In Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops, 2009. ACII 2009. 3rd International Conference, pages 1--6. IEEE, 2009.Google ScholarCross Ref
- T. Bosse, R. Duell, Z. Memon, J. Treur, and C. van der Wal. A Multi-agent Model for Emotion Contagion Spirals Integrated within a Supporting Ambient Agent Model. Principles of Practice in Multi-Agent Systems, pages 48--67, 2009. Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. Buck. The communication of emotion. Guilford Press New York, 1984.Google Scholar
- R. Doherty. The emotional contagion scale: A measure of individual differences. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 21(2):131--154, 1997.Google ScholarCross Ref
- K. Fischer, P. Shaver, and P. Carnochan. How emotions develop and how they organise development. Cognition & Emotion, 4(2):81--127, 1990.Google ScholarCross Ref
- B. Fredrickson. The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American psychologist, 56(3):218--226, 2001.Google ScholarCross Ref
- B. Fredrickson and T. Joiner. Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. Psychological Science, 13(2):172, 2002.Google ScholarCross Ref
- J. Gratch and S. Marsella. A domain-independent framework for modeling emotion. Cognitive Systems Research, 5(4):269--306, 2004. Google ScholarDigital Library
- E. Hatfield, J. Cacioppo, and R. Rapson. Primitive emotional contagion. Review of personality and social psychology, 14:151--177, 1992.Google Scholar
- E. Hatfield, J. Cacioppo, and R. Rapson. Emotional contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2:96--99, 1993.Google ScholarCross Ref
- C. Hsee, E. Hatfield, J. Carlson, and C. Chemtob. The effect of power on susceptibility to emotional contagion. Cognition & Emotion, 4(4):327--340, 1990.Google ScholarCross Ref
- K. Isbister. Better game characters by design: A psychological approach. Morgan Kaufmann Pub, 2006. Google ScholarDigital Library
- D. Isla and B. Blumberg. New challenges for character-based ai for games. In AAAI Spring-Symposium on AI and Interactive Entertainment, 2002.Google Scholar
- H. Junseok, J. Chansun, P. Junhyung, R. Jihye, and K. Ilju. An artificial emotion model for visualizing emotion of characters. Proceedings of World Academy of Science: Engineering & Technology, 50:567--573, 2009.Google Scholar
- M. Kimura, I. Daibo, and M. Yogo. The study of emotional contagion from the perspective of interpersonal relationships. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 36(1):27--42, 2008.Google Scholar
- M. Mateas and A. Stern. Façade: An experiment in building a fully-realized interactive drama. In Game Developers Conference, Game Design track. Citeseer, 2003.Google Scholar
- I. Poggi. Enthusiasm and Its Contagion: Nature and Function. Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction, pages 410--421, 2007. Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Snodgrass. Women's intuition: The effect of subordinate role on interpersonal sensitivity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49(1):146--155, 1985.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- "I'm happy if you are happy.": a model for emotional contagion in game characters
Recommendations
Is it Happy?: Behavioural and Narrative Frame Complexity Impact Perceptions of a Simple Furry Robot's Emotions
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsCritical to social human-robot interaction is a robot's emotional richness, expressed within the parameters of its physical display. While emotion arousal is straightforward to convey, human valence (positivity) evaluations are famously ambiguous, ...
Affective agents for enhancing emotional experience
HAI '14: Proceedings of the second international conference on Human-agent interactionWe propose shared emotional experience agents. They enhance the user's emotional experience by emotional contagion. Our experiment has 12 participants watch videos together with a robot that expresses an emotional state by body and voice. The results ...
Happy Moves, Sad Grooves: Using Theories of Biological Motion and Affect to Design Shape-Changing Interfaces
DIS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive SystemsThe design of shape-changing interfaces to show emotions relies on craft skill with few clear guidelines. Through two experiments, we explore how to design such interfaces using theories of the relation between biological motion and affect. In the first ...
Comments