Emotions in social interaction: theory, experiments, logical and computational studies – EmoTES

The project EmoTES focuses on the specific class of ”strategic emotions”, namely those emotions such as guilt, remorse, moral satisfaction, envy and anger which arise in the context of strategic interaction (that is, when an agent's utility of a given choice also depends on what other agents will decide to do). This kind of emotions are based either on the comparison of utilities, capabilities and powers between the interacting individuals or on evaluating one's behavior as “right” or “wrong”, that is, as good or bad with regard to another agent's goals (or with regard to some norm, ideal, standard, etc.). The primary aim of the project EmoTES is to emphasize the interplay between emotion theory and computational modeling of emotions by:
1. providing a psychological theory which identifies the general principles used by human reasoners to ascribe strategic emotions to agents and, consequently, which explains how humans interpret strategic emotions (e.g. what are the basic principles that a person use in order to infer that another person is feeling guilty or envious?);
2. providing a logical model of strategic emotions which precisely characterizes the cognitive structure of this kind of emotions and which is capable of explaining how this kind of emotions affect strategic decision;
3. systematically investigating a broad variety of consequences which can be derived from the basic assumptions and hypothesis of the logical model;
4. validating the logical model with respect to the psychological theory developed at point 1 (are the definitions of strategic emotions proposed in the logical model compatible with the way humans interpret and understand these emotions?);
5. exploiting the logical model developed at point 2 as the basis for the implementation of artificial agents which are capable of reasoning about strategic emotions and whose strategic decisions are affected by strategic emotions.