Emotional contagion with virtual characters

In social psychology, emotional contagion describes the widely observed phenomenon of one person's emotions mimicking surrounding people's emotions [8]. While it has been observed in humanhuman interactions, no known studies have examined its existence in agent-human interactions. As virtual characters make their way into high-risk, high-impact applications such as psychotherapy and military training with increasing frequency, the emotional impact of the agents' expressions must be accurately understood to avoid undesirable repercussions.

[1]  Sigal G. Barsade.  The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and its Influence on Group Behavior , 2002 .

[2]  Lars-Olov Lundqvist,et al.  Factor structure of the Greek version of the Emotional Contagion Scale and its measurement invariance across gender and cultural groups , 2008 .

[3]  Milind Tambe,et al.  Empirical Evaluation of Computational Emotional Contagion Models , 2011, IVA.

[4]  Albert A. Rizzo,et al.  Development of a VR therapy application for Iraq war military personnel with PTSD. , 2005, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[5]  Deborah A. Small,et al.  The Face of Need: Facial Emotion Expression on Charity Advertisements , 2009 .

[6]  N. Stockert,et al.  Perceived similarity and emotional contagion , 1994 .

[7]  Jonathan Gratch,et al.  The effect of expression of anger and happiness in computer agents on negotiations with humans , 2011, AAMAS.

[8]  B. Rothbaum,et al.  Virtual reality exposure therapy for Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. , 2001, The Journal of clinical psychiatry.

[9]  Tibor Bosse,et al.  A Multi-agent Model for Emotion Contagion Spirals Integrated within a Supporting Ambient Agent Model , 2009, PRIMA.

[10]  Nicole C. Krämer,et al.  It's in Their Eyes: A Study on Female and Male Virtual Humans' Gaze , 2011, IVA.

[11]  Ana Paiva,et al.  A Generic Emotional Contagion Computational Model , 2011, ACII.

[12]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  Virtual Rapport , 2006, IVA.

[13]  S. Pugh,et al.  Service with a smile: Emotional contagion in the service encounter. , 2001 .

[14]  E. Hatfield,et al.  Emotional Contagion , 1995 .

[15]  Funda Durupinar.  From audiences to mobs: Crowd simulation with psychological factors (Kitlelerden güruhlara: Psikolojik faktörlerle kalabalık simülasyonu) , 2010 .

[16]  M. Schweitzer,et al.  Feeling and believing: the influence of emotion on trust. , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[17]  M. Erb,et al.  Are emotions contagious? Evoked emotions while viewing emotionally expressive faces: quality, quantity, time course and gender differences , 2001, Psychiatry Research.