Analysis of Beliefs of Survivors of the 7/7 London Bombings: Application of a Formal Model for Contagion of Mental States

During emergency scenarios, the large number of possible influences inter se between cognitive and affective states of the individuals involved makes it difficult to analyse their (collective) behaviour. To study the behaviour of collectives of individuals during emergencies, this paper proposes a methodology based on formalisation of empirical transcripts and agent-based simulation, and applies this to a case study in the domain of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005. For this domain, first a number of survivor statements have been formalised. Next, an existing agent-based model has been applied to simulate the scenarios described in the statements. Via a formal comparison, the model was found capable of closely reproducing the real world scenarios.

[1]  J. Cacioppo,et al.  Social neuroscience : people thinking about thinking people , 2006 .

[2]  B. Fredrickson.  The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. , 2001, The American psychologist.

[3]  A. Damasio.  The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex. , 1996, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[4]  Peter Schlattmann,et al.  Theory and Algorithms , 2009 .

[5]  Michel C. A. Klein,et al.  Agent-Based Analysis of Patterns in Crowd Behaviour Involving Contagion of Mental States , 2011, IEA/AIE.

[6]  Pramod K. Varshney,et al.  Modern Approaches in Applied Intelligence - 24th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2011, Syracuse, NY, USA, June 28 - July 1, 2011, Proceedings, Part I , 2011, IEA/AIE.

[7]  Antonio Damasio,et al.  The somatic marker hypothesis: A neural theory of economic decision , 2005, Games Econ. Behav..

[8]  Marco Iacoboni,et al.  The Mirror Neuron System and Imitation , 2011 .

[9]  Tibor Bosse,et al.  Specification and Verification of Dynamics in Agent Models , 2009, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[10]  Mark Hoogendoorn,et al.  Modelling the Interplay of Emotions, Beliefs and Intentions within Collective Decision Making Based on Insights from Social Neuroscience , 2010, ICONIP.

[11]  Milind Tambe,et al.  ESCAPES: evacuation simulation with children, authorities, parents, emotions, and social comparison , 2011, AAMAS.

[12]  Tibor Bosse,et al.  A Language and Environment for Analysis of Dynamics by Simulation , 2005, Int. J. Artif. Intell. Tools.