Search Results (8)

The spread of panic can swiftly trigger group behaviors, leading to public security incidents and significant social hazards. Increasing attention is being paid to the impact of human psychology and behavior on the evolution and management of emergencies. Drawing on the Weber–Fechner Law, we proposed an emotional contagion model to explore the dynamics of crowd panic during metro emergencies, focusing on the interplay of emotional levels and stimuli. Key influencing factors such as crowd density, personality traits, official interventions, and evacuation rates are analyzed. Additionally, a case study is conducted to validate the model’s effectiveness in quantifying emotions and characterizing the emotional contagion of crowd panic. Numerical results reveal that the initial intensity of panic stimuli significantly impacts peak panic levels, while contagion duration plays a minor role. Panic intensifies with increased crowd density, with sensitive individuals being more susceptible to extreme emotions, escalating negative contagion. Official intervention proves crucial in mitigating panic, though its effect is transient in enclosed environments. Evacuation rate minimally affects emotional contagion during the train’s motion but becomes pivotal post-arrival. Highly panicked passengers evacuate quickly, necessitating timely interventions to prevent secondary panic on platforms. This highlights the importance of immediate, effective control measures to manage panic dynamics and ensure public safety. Full article

The Safe Return to Port issue regarding cruise ships has been extensively researched, covering aspects such as performance, operations, and electrical systems. However, an often overlooked aspect is the potential eruption of negative emotions among passengers during SRtP. This study aims to investigate the prediction of collective emotions to facilitate timely safety planning and enhance the safety of the Safe Return to Port process. To achieve this objective, an improved susceptible-infectious-recovered model with bidirectional infection is proposed to describe the emotional contagion process during the Safe Return to Port process. This model classifies the population into five emotional (extremely anxious–anxious–normal–calm–very calm) states and introduces two sources of infection. Moreover, it allows for emotions to transition both positively and negatively, making it a more realistic representation of scenarios resembling long-term refuge scenarios. In this study, questionnaire data, collected and statistically analyzed, serve as the primary dataset. A machine learning technique (the weighted random forest algorithm) is integrated with the model to make predictions. The accuracy, precision, recall, and the F-measure of prediction results demonstrate good performance. Additionally, through simulation, this study illustrates the fluctuating nature of emotional changes during the Safe Return to Port process of the cruise ship and analyzes the effects of varying parameters. The findings suggest that the improved susceptible-infectious-recovered model proposed in this paper can provide valuable insights for cruise ship emergency planning and positively contribute to maintaining passenger emotional stability during the Safe Return to Port process. Full article

Live farming assistance, which is an important channel for emerging agricultural sales, alleviated the challenges of disrupted agricultural sales caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in past years. As the final purchasers of products, consumers are directly related to the sales conversion rate of live farming assistance. Unlocking the potential influence of consumers’ purchase intentions in live farming assistance and exploring ways to improve consumers’ purchase intentions will help the sustainable operation of live farming assistance. The hidden quality of agricultural products, the public welfare nature, and the high interactivity of live farming assistance make consumers more susceptible to the group effect during the shopping process. This paper analyzes the impact of the group effect on consumers’ purchase intentions based on reference group influence theory and emotional contagion theory. Data is obtained through questionnaires for empirical testing. Three kinds of group effects are examined: informational effect, normative effect, and emotional effect. The research results indicate that the group effect has a positive and direct impact on consumers’ purchase intentions, and experience value plays a critical mediating role in this relationship. We further predict a moderated-mediation model, whereby the indirect effect of the group effect on consumers’ purchase intentions, through experience value, is moderated by tie strength. The research findings contribute to the study of consumer buying behavior in live e-commerce, and provide insights for practitioners to improve the conversion rate of live farming assistance and promote sustainable operation of live farming assistance. Full article

Emotion plays an important role in decision making. In an emergency, panic can spread among crowds through person-to-person communications and can cause harmful effects on society. The aim of this paper is to propose a new theoretical model in the context of epidemiology to describe the spread of panic under an emergency. First, according to divisions in personality in the context of psychology, groups are divided into a level-headed group and an impatient group. Second, individuals in the two groups have unique personalities. Thus, the level-headed group only infects within the group, while the impatient group considers emotional infection within the group and cross infection between the groups. Then, a nonlinear infection rate is used to describe the probability of infection after an infected person contacts a susceptible person, which is more in line with the real situation. After that, the level-headed group–impatient group nonlinear SIRS panic spreading model is developed. Stable analysis of the model is obtained using the Lyapunov function method to study the stability of the panic-free equilibrium and panic-permanence equilibrium. Finally, simulations are carried out to dynamically describe the spread process of group emotional contagion. Full article

Negative emotions are prevalent in the online depression community (ODC), which potentially puts members at risk, according to the theory of emotional contagion. However, emotional contagion in the ODC has not been confirmed. The generalized estimating equation (GEE) was used to verify the extent of emotional contagion using data from 1548 sample users in China’s popular ODC. During interaction, the emotional themes were analyzed according to language use. The diurnal patterns of the interaction behaviors were also analyzed. We identified the susceptible groups and analyzed their characteristics. The results confirmed the occurrence of emotional contagion in ODC, that is, the extent to which the user’s emotion was affected by the received emotion. Our study also found that when positive emotional contagion occurred, the replies contained more hopefulness, and when negative emotional contagion occurred, the replies contained more hopelessness and fear. Second, positive emotions were easier to spread, and people with higher activity in ODC were more susceptible. In addition, nighttime was an active period for user interaction. The results can help community managers and support groups take measures to promote the spread of positive emotions and reduce the spread of negative emotions. Full article

In recent years, patient mistreatment of healthcare workers, especially nurses, has been frequent, endangering the interests of organizations while also threatening nurses’ own development. This study aims to examine from the perspective of nurses’ personal interests whether mistreatment by patients decreases nurses’ workplace well-being and career commitment, and how their susceptibility to emotional contagion and emotional regulation ability might mitigate these negative effects. This study adopted a cross-sectional study design (data were collected through self-reported questionnaires with a two-month time lag between the months of August–October 2017). A total of 289 nurses from three hospitals in Shandong province, China, were recruited to participate in our study. The results reveal that mistreatment by patients is negatively related to nurses’ workplace well-being and career commitment. Emotional contagion susceptibility moderates the relationships between mistreatment by patients and career commitment, while there is no significant buffering effect of mistreatment by patients on workplace well-being. Emotional regulation ability moderates the relationships between mistreatment by patients and both workplace well-being and career commitment. These results suggest that improvements in nurses’ emotional regulation ability and susceptibility to emotional contagion can alleviate the harmful impacts of mistreatment by patients. Full article

Results over the last decades have provided evidence suggesting that HPA axis dysfunction is a major risk factor predisposing to the development of psychopathological behaviour. This susceptibility can be programmed during developmental windows of marked neuroplasticity, allowing early-life adversity to convey vulnerability to mental illness later in life. Besides genetic predisposition, also environmental factors play a pivotal role in this process, through embodiment of the mother’s emotions, or via nutrients and hormones transferred through the placenta and the maternal milk. The aim of the current translational study was to mimic a severe stress condition by exposing female CD-1 mouse dams to abnormal levels of corticosterone (80 µg/mL) in the drinking water either during the last week of pregnancy (PreCORT) or the first one of lactation (PostCORT), compared to an Animal Facility Rearing (AFR) control group. When tested as adults, male mice from PostCORT offspring and somewhat less the PreCORT mice exhibited a markedly increased corticosterone response to acute restraint stress, compared to perinatal AFR controls. Aberrant persistence of adolescence-typical increased interest towards novel social stimuli and somewhat deficient emotional contagion also characterised profiles in both perinatal-CORT groups. Intranasal oxytocin (0 or 20.0 µg/kg) generally managed to reduce the stress response and restore a regular behavioural phenotype. Alterations in density of glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors, oxytocin and µ- and κ-opioid receptors were found. Changes differed as a function of brain areas and the specific age window of perinatal aberrant stimulation of the HPA axis. Present results provided experimental evidence in a translational mouse model that precocious adversity represents a risk factor predisposing to the development of psychopathological behaviour. Full article

Sentiment contagion is similar to an infectious disease that spreads in a crowd. In this study, we explore the law of emotional infection under sudden public events by SIR model. The paper adds an emotionally stable node and establishes a group emotional infection model of U-SOSPa-SPSOa model. Simulation results show that our model is reasonable and can better explain the entire contagion process by considering four groups (unsusceptible-susceptible-optimistic-pessimistic) of people. Our theoretical results show: When the pessimists were below the critical value of 0.34, the number of negative emotional groups first increased and then decreased. As the proportion increases, the emotional peak of pessimists increases. The cure probability θ_o has the least influence on the P(t), and at the same time, under the action of θ_p, the P(t) reaches the stable state first. The increase of the risk coefficient can promote the pessimist infection. When the degree of risk is low, the rate of emotional infection is increased. When the degree of risk is high, the rate of infection is slowed. Therefore, system customizers and related managers can improve the efficiency of stable groups, adjust the proportion of initial negative emotions, control the infection of the spontaneous infection process, and directly deal with negative emotions. They can carry out treatment and other means to stabilize group emotions and maintain social stability. Full article