Towards an Affective Intelligent Agent Model for Extrinsic Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Emotion regulation is the human ability to modulate one’s or other emotions to maintain emotional well-being. Despite its importance, only a few computational models have been proposed for facilitating emotion regulation. None of them prepare a plan of all the actions necessary for emotion regulation customized to the needs of a specific individual. To address this gap, we propose a computational model for an intelligent agent which, grounded in a multidimensional emotion representation, facilitates emotion regulation in individuals. This computational model is based on J. Gross’s theoretical framework of emotion regulation. An intelligent agent selects the most appropriate regulation strategy to maintain an individual’s emotional equilibrium considering the individual’s personality traits. A dynamic planner prepares a plan of emotion regulation actions which is dynamically adapted according to the emotional changes observed in the individual after applying the previous emotion regulation actions. This refinement of the initial regulatory action plan allows the proposed emotion regulation agent to adapt the plan to the specific characteristics of the individual, facilitating the individual to improve their emotion regulation capabilities and improve their emotional health.

Keywords

• emotion regulation
• affective computing
• intelligent agents
• affective agents