Modeling emotional contagion based on experimental evidence for moderating factors

There is a lot of evidence for the phenomenon describing the spread of emotion from one person to another, called emotional contagion. Although there is a large body of research on this topic, research containing evidence for factors that moderate the process of emotional contagion, is limited and inconclusive. Furthermore most of these studies are done in a dyadic lab-setting and consequently little is known about emotional contagion in groups. This paper presents, for the first time, a dynamic computational model of contagion in groups of agents based on factors that moderate contagion. These factors are strictly based on experimental evidence in the psychological literature. In this paper we first present our review of the psychological literature. We then present our computational model as well as a pilot study investigating several group contagion cases showing the flexibility and potential of this strategy.