Emotional contagion with virtual characters

Jason Tsai, Emma Bowring, Stacy Marsella, Milind Tambe

Abstract: 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.