A step toward irrationality

TLDR

Emotions strongly influence behavior and beliefs, and emotion‑focused coping—where individuals adjust goal‑importance beliefs to reduce distress—has been extensively studied psychologically but largely ignored computationally. The study aims to develop general computational models of emotion‑cognition‑behavior interplay, presenting a preliminary model of emotion‑focused coping and exploring how coping processes can be coupled to emotions and behavior to inform virtual human design. The model shows that emotion‑focused coping alters beliefs rather than prompting external action, and is implemented in a virtual reality training environment to generate virtual human characters for high‑stress social scenarios.

Abstract

Emotions have a powerful impact on behavior and beliefs. The goal of our research is to create general computational models of this interplay of emotion, cognition and behavior to inform the design of virtual humans. Here, we address an aspect of emotional behavior that has been studied extensively in the psychological literature but largely ignored by computational approaches, emotion-focused coping. Rather than motivating external action, emotion-focused coping strategies alter beliefs in response to strong emotions. For example an individual may alter beliefs about the importance of a goal that is being threatened, thereby reducing their distress. We present a preliminary model of emotion-focused coping and discuss how coping processes, in general, can be coupled to emotions and behavior. The approach is illustrated within a virtual reality training environment where the models are used to create virtual human characters in high-stress social situations.