Emotional Behavior: A Resource Management Approach

Emotions are the subject of study in many research areas, including psychology, physiology and artificial intelligence. However, there is not yet a general computational definition for emotions and many of the related works in artificial intelligence are based on uncertain assumptions about the origin, features , and applications of emotions. Therefore, we direct our studies toward achieving a better understanding of emotions and generating a computational model that could be a base for further research in the field. As a first step, we present the results of our study into the possible role of emotions in mental resource management. To do so, we will introduce a model of emotions based on managing mental resources. We have applied it to a general model of mind and the whole model has been implemented in an artificial life simulation environment called Zamin to evaluate its ability to produce emotional behavior and to make better decisions. The results, as discussed in this article, show that a resource management mechanism could be the source of emotion generation in the mind.