EmoTES projectDELIVERABLE n. 11:

Report describing the implementation in SocLabof the module to detect agents’ strategic

emotions.

Abstract

This report presents preliminary results of a work aiming at endow-ing artificial agents with strategic emotions. In this sense, the presentreport points towards: (a) identifying emotions in SocLab; and (b) gener-ating a Multi-Agent-Based (MABs) representation, which includes moraldimension and emotions in the interaction of actors constituting a teamresponsible for designing a planning methodology, which is part of a pub-lic organisation developing free technologies. Such a model is elaboratedfrom a sociological point of view by using SocLab, a formalisation ofCrozier’s organisational theory. The description of the organisation andthe team emphasises the cultural aspect, in order to explain the ’gener-ative’ forces and pressures the organisation suffers from its context, andthe norm/moralities of the actors. This will allow us to describe someparticular attitudes associated with different norms/moralities, which arealready being included in a new version of the SocLab platform.

1 IntroductionWe argue that emotions can be taken into account into the simulation ofhuman behaviors involved into social interaction context in two differentways.

First we can give to agents the capability to detect situations in whichthey may feel a particular emotion and we can modify their model ofbehavior by introducing elements corresponding to their reaction to thisemotion or to the modification of their behavior induced by feeling thisemotion. This approach is well adapted to Embodied ConversationalAgents. This research field includes most of researches about emotionsimulation. In particular, it aims at giving the possibility to artificialcharacters or avatars to be empathetic toward human beings in order toincrease the interaction efficiency. To this purpose, the avatar needs toexpress its own emotion or its recognition of the human being ones.

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Second we argue that every human behavior (we do not include reflexeshere) is motivated by a purpose (for a sake of space we do not discuss herethis statement). All behavior models in social simulation are based on thisprinciple, whatever the agent architecture (BDI, reactive with or withoutmemory, cellular automata...). The integration of emotions in humanbehavior is here done by introducing into the motivation elements aimingat preventing occurrences of situations prone to negative emotions 1.

The project task 3 aims at endowing artificial agents integrated inthe social simulation platform SocLab with strategic emotions. We firstplaned to follow the first approach presented above. First works haveshown that it does only bring few scientific progress. We thus chose toinvestigate the second approach. In the social simulation field, we do notclaim to work with mechanistic simulation models. Contrarily to modelsof physical phenomena, supply chains or even ecosystems, we do not aim athaving numerical reproduction of bio-physical and mechanistic processesproducing human beings behaviors 2.

A simulator of social system is composed of a society of software agents,without interaction with human beings, without any body support to emo-tions. There is thus no need for artificial agents to reproduce the feeling ofemotions (with all physical processes involved). In addition the manage-ment of these emotions could be very arbitrary and person and context-dependent. In the context of social simulation, we are more interested instabilized behaviors emerging from long-term interactions between agentsbehaviors rather than in details of behaviors of individuals and in pro-cessus steps having created them. In the T. Schelling’s social simulationparadigmatic example of spatial segregation, we are not interested in indi-vidual moves. The interesting point is the spatial macroscopic clusteringinto homogeneous populations emerging from local interactions. Takinginto account emotions in the social agents behaviors in a social simulationleads us to investigate properties of emerging configurations and to theconditions of their emergence.

The report is organized as follow. First we briefly introduce main con-cepts of the Soclab approach to deal with social actors behaviors in thecontext of collective action systems. In particular, we highlight how thisapproach is adapted to the integration of social emotions. Section 3 ana-lyzes the way emotions are represented in the Orthony et al.’s approach.Section 4 applies this characterization of emotions to the Soclab model oforganizations. Section 5 is dedicated to the presentation of the concreteorganization that will be our case study. Finally Section 6 provides a tasteof the implemented model. It is detailled in the Annex file.

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Figure 1: Meta-model of collective action system structure

2 The Soclab approach of social behaviorsand integration of emotions.The Soclab platform can be used either as a virtual laboratory for thesociology of organizations, or as an organizational audit tool for collectiveaction systems. Figure 1 presents using an UML class diagram mainelements of the collective action systems meta-model. It is composed ofactors and resources linked by control and depend associations.

Actors of the action system are the active entities. They interact viaresources, that are the objects they manipulate. Their actions change thestate of the relations. Each relation is underlied by one or several resourcesthat are useful to other actors and is controlled by one actor who is theone able to modify its state. The state of a relation corresponds to thebehavior of the actor controlling it. This behavior is evaluated in termsof cooperativity towards other actors who need this resource. In additioneach actor distributes his stakes on relations he needs to achieve his goals(including the controlled resource): the more necessary a relation is toachieve a goal, the higher will be the stake on this relation. The actor thusgets from the actor controlling the resource an action capability (namedrelation impact) to achieve his goals, determined by the application of aneffect function on the relation state weighted by the actor’s stake. Finallyeach actor can compute by aggregation of impacts he gets from all therelations he depends on a satisfaction or action capability given by theaccessibility to resources necessary to the achievement of his goals. Eachactor thus exercices a power on others, by aggregation of satisfactions itbrings to actors depending on relations he controls.

The model of a Collective Action System (CAS) can also includessolidarities among actors and constraints that the behavior of the actorcontrolling a relation can exercice on the control of another relation. Asociological interpretation of all these concepts is detailled in [8, 11].

Soclab allows to describe power relations between actors of an organ-isation. These relations define a game in which each actor chooses a way

1We consider that aiming at having a negative emotion is out of the scope of this work, asit is either pathologic or a strategic behavior too complex for our study.

2Even if neuro-cognitive sciences are doing great advances, data and knowledge they bringto the research community are only hardly useable in such a research program.

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to behave w.r.t. others, more of less cooperative and gets back a moreor less high capability to achieve his goals (he can use more or less easilyresources he needs). Formally, a CAS is defined as a game with:

• A = {a1, ..., aN}, the set of actor,

• R = {r1, ..., rM}, the set or relations,

• m : R→ A, the function specifying the actor controlling the relation,

• for each relation r, a function effectr : A×BS → [−10, 10] specifiesthe effect for each actor depending on the state of r,

• stake : A × R → [0, 10], the function specifying the stake given byeach actor on each relation, given the constraint: ∀a ∈ A,

∑r∈R stake(a,r) =

10,

• A state variable is associated to each relation. Its value is in theBehavio Space (BS) related to the relation. A configuration, or CASstate is then defined as the set of states of each relation, i.e. thevector s = (s1, ..., sM ) ∈

∏r∈R BS. For each configuration s and

each actor a of a CAS, we can thus define:

capability(a,e) =∑r∈R

stake(a,r) ∗ effectr(a,er)

power(a,e) =∑

r∈R;acontollerofr

∑b∈A

stake(b,r) ∗ effectr(b,er)

• The action that an actor can perform is defined as a vector (dr)r∈m−1(a)

so that er + dr ∈ BSr for each relation r ∈ m−1(a). The fact thatactors act synchronously leads to define the transition function:

Transition :State×Action→ State

(er1 , ..., erM )× (dr1 , ..., drM )→ (er1 + dr1 , ..., erM + drM )

where dri is chosen by actor m(ri), pour i = 1, ...,M .

This social game (by opposition to game in economy) aims at reach-ing a stationary state, in which every actor has stabilized his behavior,because he has enough action capability to achieve objectives that satisfyhim. We consider that stabilized behaviors correspond to a regulation inthe action system and to reach a state where it is able to function. We arethus focused on conditions leading to the existence of the action systemas a social construct and are not interested in its performances. An orga-nization cannot continue to exist without a relative stability in behaviors:this stability is mandatory for the anticipation of others’ behaviors, tocoordination and thus to the achievement of what justifies the existenceof this organization. One of the characteristics of a collective action sys-tem is to enhance the individual action capability of each actors thanks tohis belonging to the organization. The rationale et thus the perdurationcondition of the organization suppose a certain degree of collaborationbetween actors. The easiness to reach this actors behavior stabilization,i.e. to find a way to cooperate in an acceptable way for all, is an indicatorof the organization robustness.

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In Soclab, actors (of the model) of an organization are endowed by arationality allowing them to play the social game consisting in looking fora high action capability level. Following H. Simon’s bounded rationality[12], actors’ rationality aims at being cognitively and socially believable.It does thus only requiere limited cognitive capabilities and very few in-formation about the structure and the current state of the game [4, 10].This rationality follows the paradigm of reinforcement learning by trialand error and the actor is motivated by having a high action capabilitylevel [13]. Adopting Simon’s bounded rationality paradigm, each actormanages a variable representing his initial objective. It is initialized withthe maximum action capability he can get. This variable, names aspira-tion, is updated depending on the actual actor’s situation. The simulatoralgorithm considers that a stable configuration has been reached as soonas every actor gets a action capability level higher than his aspiration.This algorithm is Pareto global in the sense that it converges towardsPareto’s optima avoiding optima with a global capability for the orga-nization (evaluated as the sum of the actors’ capabilities) is low or tooinegalitarian.

The definition of the action capability of an actor and thus of whatmotivates the behavior he will choose, relies directly on actor’s objec-tives. The sociologist-modeler, analyst of a concrete organization or ex-perimenter of the functioning of a virtual, potential or imaginary, is incharge of the modeling of the game structure depending on his under-standing of each actor’s objectives and of the constraints and opportuni-ties that favor or oppose to the achievement of his objectives. Objectivesassigned to an actor are not only related to purely material and individualinterests. The Rational Choice Theory [1] is far from being able to takeinto account all kinds of actors’s objectives motivation, and in particularmoral ones.

Nevertheless the variable used in SocLab to drive actors’ behaviors,i.e. their action capability, does take into account only actor’s own inter-ests, omitting thus other actors’ situation. An actor is thus not able toperceive any social emotion. To deal with this limitation, we could give toactors reflexive capabilities allowing them given more information aboutthe structure and the state of the game to analyse the situation of otheractors and to modify their behavior in consequence. This would imposeto introduce a deliberative dimension into the social actors’ behavior andthus to question the believable characteristic of SocLab actors’ behavior,as most of the social behaviors are not deliberated [10]. We thus have tofind a new way to integrate emotions into actors’ behavior, in altering theway actors’ aspiration is defined.

Joseph El Gemayel PhD thesis [4] (in particular the Chapter 5) inves-tigates various modifications of the Pareto global rationality in order toconverge to specific stable configurations. By making actors equally soli-dar with all other actors, simulations converge to configuration optimizingthe global capability of the organization. By providing to actors additionalinformation allowing them to dynamically detect actors with the lowest orthe highest action capability and to integrate these information into theirown aspiration, simulations converge towards elitist (maximax) or anti-eletist (minmaxi), protective or anti-protective (maximin or minmin) or

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even egalitarian or anti-egalitarian (min(max - min) or max(max - min)),given some specific conditions on the structure of the organisation andwhat is taken into account in actors’ aspiration.

The second way to integrate emotion into actors’ behavior consists inredefining actors’ motivation as a linear combinaison of his own satisfac-tion and his own power depending on a moral sensibility variable, denotedms in the sequel, ms ∈ [−1, 1]:

aim(a, e) = (1abs(ms)).capability(a,e) +ms.power(a,e)

This approach is detailled in the sequel on the report, and is beingimplemented into the SocLab platform.

The aspiration of each actor is thus initialized to the maximum of hisobjective (Simon uses the word "aim" to name this state) and it aims athaving a satisfying value of this variable. Extrem values of ms representfollowing disposition in a coherent organization (i.e. actors have a goodreason to take part to this organization):

• ms = 0: the actor is only interested in his own capability;

• ms = 1: the actor is only looking for contributing the best he canto the good functioning of the organization. He thus wants to avoidany kind of guilt emotion he could feel for not having allowing theorganization to reach a configuration giving a good global capability;

• ms = −1: the actor is only looking for the less possible contributionto the functioning of the organization.

The case study presented in Section 5 will allow us to explore valuesof the parameter ms leading to a better functioning configuration of theconsidered organization. We have already mentioned above that the waysimulations converge brings information about the deep structure of anorganization: its robustness, its adaptability, its sensibility to deviantbehaviors... [2]. The analysis of the impact of ms variations will allow usto evaluate minimum changes needed to improve the functioning of theorganization. More genrally, in an organization where disfunctions aredue to actors or where cooperative configurations are difficult to reachet stabilize, which level of incentives to take into account overall interestcould improve this organization functioning? Conversely, which level ofdisengagement can support an organization functioning well?

3 Ortony’s Theory of EmotionsWe have chosen the theory of Ortony, Clore and Collins [7, 3], because ofseveral characteristics it presents: it is the more used/popular theory ofemotions in computer science; it is very concise and suited to represent in-dividuals in situation; and it is very well structured differentiating amongemotions related with events (event-based emotions), goals/stakes /ex-pectations (goal-based emotions), and principles / norms / moral (norm-based emotions). These characteristics are desirable for the purpose ofthis study, i.e., to model emotions as related to sources of dispositionsand behaviour (to reach goals, to comply norms/morality). In the model

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referenced in this report, it is of particular interest the strength of com-mitment to collaborate in an organisational environment: an actor can beeither strongly engaged or weakly engaged.

Following Ortony, Clore and Collins, emotions (in humans) have fourcomponents: the cognitive, the motivational-behavioural, the somatic,and the subjective-experiential one. The cognitive component "is the rep-resentation of emotional meaning or personal significance of some emo-tionally relevant aspect(s) of the person’s perceived world." [3](pp. 24)(either conscious or nonconscious). The motivational-behavioural compo-nent is related with the inclinations to act on the individualÂťs constru-als/interpretations of the world, in accordance to such representations.The somatic component has to do with the visceral and muculoskele-tal effects generated by the activation of the central and autonomic ner-vous systems. And the subjective-experiential component is the wholesubjective-feeling element of an emotion.

Thus cognition and emotion are not the same, but they are domainsthat intersect each other. Emotion has cognitive, motivational/behavioural,somatic and subjective/experiential meaning/significance. Similarly, cog-nition has different facets, of which one is emotion.

The named authors theory focus on the cognitive component, or inwhat the authors call appraisal and appraisal processes. Ortony et al.made an important affirmation, which will be central to this research,citing [6] "emotions depend on the perceived meaning or significance ofsituations", [6], and indeed "appraisal" simply refers to the assignmentof value or emotional meaning" [3](pp. 25). As we see, the authors con-sider that emotions depend on meaning or significance of situations, andthe associated appraisal or cognitive component is simply an emotionalvalue or an emotional meaning.

Before continuing, let us clarify the previous affirmation by consideringa case of appraisal: fear, which the authors define as: "displeasure at theprospect of an undesirable event". This definition has several noticeableelements: "displeasure", "prospect", "undesirabililty" and "event"; eachof them representing an important characteristic of an emotion: (i) dis-pleasure: character of value of the emotion (other option: pleasure); (ii)prospect : the emotion appears linked/associated to something that hasnot occurred yet (an entity/circumstance/occurrence that is not actual,in this case an event), but which has a certain potential to happen (otheroption: an actual event); (iii) undesirable: gives a negative character tothe emotion (associated to its displeasure feeling in this case); iv) event(the entity or circumstance to which the emotion is linked, other option:an individual). There are here four independent elements: the core ofthe feeling: pleasure or displeasure; the character of value (either positiveor negative; desirability or undesirability); the linked/associated event orentity; and the actual or prospective character of the linked event.

Ortony et al. indicate that emotions are both conceptually definedby appraisals and empirically constituted by them. This means that theprevious definition of fear is conceptually valid, and that in an empiricalcase of fear necessarily such appraisal should have occurred.

The characteristics named above, and especially that of having anactual or prospective link in reality, differentiates emotions from other

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affective feelings. For instance, depression and anxiety, as long as theydo not have a link to a specific event/circumstance or object, are notconsidered emotions. However, such states could create in certain casesemotions, or conversely could be created by persistent emotions. Thosecharacteristics in a more general manner differences emotions from moods,of which particular cases are anxiety and depression. For making the dis-tinction clearer, let us cite the definition of mood from on-line dictionaries(http://www.merriam-webster.com/ and http://www.thefreedictionary.com/):

• a prevailing atmosphere or feeling,

• a conscious state of mind or predominant emotion,

• a prevailing attitude or disposition,

• humour.

Thus a prevailing/predominant attitude/disposition/feeling/atmospherain life, in a group, etc., is not an emotion, but rather a humour, from thepoint of view of Ortony et al. and of this study. Such prevailing statedominates over other possible states and does not allow to connect/linkwith actual or prospective but real events/circumstances/objects. Thiskind of feelings sometimes do not have a direct real correlate, and arecalled free-floating feeling, as opposed to linked to event or objects emo-tions. Ortony et al. notice that biologically these are also emotions, butnot from a psychological point of view, as they are not so important forcoping (e.g., for problem solving, or for managing in life).

Following their account of cognition in emotion and appraisal, Cloreand Ortony present two forms of emotion generation (computed anewor reinstated), which are related to two forms of categorisation (theorybased and prototype), two forms of reasoning (rule-based or associative),and can serve to different functions (speed and flexibility). These issueswill be discussed in the sub section 4.2, after an account of the variablesaffecting intensity of emotions, in subsection 4.1. Then, in the follow-ing sub-sections we will review: (1) the idea that representativeness viaconnotative, rather than propositional, language of the relation betweenappraisal, on the one hand, and motivation and behaviour, on the otherhand, is more appropriate; and (2) ten propositions about emotion elici-tation.

3.1 Intensity variables[7] define three kind of intensity variables: i) the Central Intensity Vari-ables, used for the main classification shown Figure 2, namely the goal-based, norm-based and object-based emotions; ii) the Global Variables,present in all emotions, which can be seen as context variables; and, iii)the Local Variables, of which some apply in particular case, and other inanother case. In the following those variables are listed.

• Central Intensity Variables

– Desirability/undesirability (predisposition to be pleased/unpleased)– Praiseworthiness/blameworthiness (degree of coherence with stan-

dards)

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– Appealingness/unappealingness ((pre)disposition to like/dislike)

• Global Variables

– Sense of reality (degree of real the event, agent or object under-lying the affective reaction have)

– (Psychological) Proximity (distance in time/memory)– Unexpectedness– Arousal (subjective importance of a situation, e.g., abs(desirability))

• Local variables

– Likelihood– Effort– Desirability for others– Liking– Deservingness– Strength of cognitive unit (identification with the organisation)– Expectation deviation– Familiarity (related with number of exposures)

3.2 Routes to Appraisal and Related Dichotomies3.2.1 Two Routes to Appraisal

The first route to appraisal is called Bottom-up or situationalanalysis, and consists in assembling of relevant interpretations of theworld, which involves a continuous (on-line) computation of whether situ-ations are desirable or undesirable, and in what way. Desirability or unde-sirability is associated to how the event or object linked to the assemblingfavours (disfavours) or is coherent (incoherent/contrary) with our goalsand/or norms/moral. The actor then feels pleased or displeased.

[7, 3] present three kind of value structures (associated to judgementsof desirability or undesirability): goals/desires /wishes, standards/ prin-ciples/ moral, and tastes/ attitudes. They specify 22 emotion types anddescribe the variables that could influence the intensity of each type. Forinstance, our belief about the likelihood of an event influences the inten-sity of hope/fear, or the degree of awareness about the limitations of ouractions/capacities in relation to a certain expectation might affect thedegree of shame/pride.

Ortony et al. structure of emotions is summarised in a three follow-ing the named structures of value, as shown in Figure 2. Let us brieflyintroduce such a three: (1) in case the linked element be an event and itsoutput affects the achievement of a goal (source of value), the outcomeof the event is appraised either as desirable or as undesirable, and theactor feels either pleased or displeased, correspondingly; (2) in case thelinked element be an action and the source of value affected be a standard,the actor appraises the action either as praiseworthy or blameworthy, andhis reaction will be either approval or disapproval, correspondingly; (3)in case the linked element be an object and the source of value affectedbe a taste/attitude, the actor appraises the object either as appealing or

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unappealing, and he will either likes or dislikes it, correspondingly. Re-membering the case used above (fear) we have: displeasure (feeling) atthe prospect of an undesirable (appraisal of an immediate result whenconsidering the effect of the event in relation to a goal) prospective event(link).

Of all cases of emotions given by the three shown in Figure 2, thereare of particular interest for organisational issues and studies those emo-tions related with goals and actions of agents, and in the case of goalsthose linked to consequences for self have a special interest for the presentresearch. They will receive further considered in sub-section 4.3.

Figure 2: Ortony et al. classification of emotions (borrowed from [3], pp. 30)

The second route to appraisal is the so called top-down route orappraisal reinstatement, which also might occur when giving mean-ing/significance to a situation. In this case meaning, appraisal, and emo-tion appears from similarity (association) of a current situation to a pastsituation, rather than from a new analysis (top-down route). However,also in this case meaning, appraisal and emotion appear as a consequenceof a deep structure of meaning, as that shown in Figure 2. For instance,appraisal of treat and reaction of fear could appear in a current situationvia restatement of a past situation, which in some aspects (at least thoserelated with treat and fear) is similar to the present situation. In this case,earlier experiences (situations of meaning) with their significance, includ-ing the emotional one, are reinstated. This kind of experience seems tobe more related to procedural knowledge and with customs than situa-

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tional analysis, as well as to quick behaviour as reaction to certain issuesof situations requiring it.

Ortony et al. emphasise the importance of "the idea that a currentsituation can bring back whole prior episodes rather than some gener-alization derived from them or abstract rule implicit in them." [3](pp.34). This makes clear the difference of this form of appraisal and givingmeaning in relation to rule-based and abstract reasoning, or situationalanalysis.

3.2.2 Related dichotomies

The two routes to emotions described above are also routes to situationalmeaning and cognition in general. Those routes do not have to be pureand exclude each other, rather it is supposed that there are an interplaybetween anew computation and previously learned significance.

The distinction between these two forms of appraisals is clearer whenconsidering what [3] calls dual processes or related dichotomies, which arealso present in any process of meaning and of appraisal. Those dichotomiesare shown in Table 3.2.2.

Bottom-up preocesses Top-down processesRoutes of appraisal computed reinstatedKind of categorisation theory-based prototype-basedForms of reasoning rule-based associativeBehavioural function flexibility preparedness

In the previous section the routes to appraisal were described. Eachroute to appraisal corresponds to a kind of categorisation, a form of rea-soning and a behavioural function. In fact, reinstated (computed) ap-praisal appears in a prototype-based (theory-based) categorisation, whichis governed by associative (rule-based) reasoning, and, which promotesbehavioural preparedness (flexibility).

Theory-based vs. prototype-based categorisation. While waysfor emotion and meaning elicitation, the previous described routes of ap-praisals are equivalent to these two forms of categorisation: (i) (actual)situations are categorised in accordance to their similarity to a prototypeor best example (strong significance in previous experiences) of a categoryof situations; (ii) actual situation is categorised by their underlying aspects(properties), in accordance to a certain theory.

In (i), prototypes are based on features that are perceptually available,and prototype-based categorisation consist in matching features of theactual situation to those of the prototype. On the other hand, theory-based categorisation consist in reasoning about what the case seems to beand conceptual definitions of what the cases are. For instance, someonecan be categorised: (i) as a person that has to be avoided because of theway he talks (loud, etc.), in accordance to a prototype-based previousexperiences involving people with a similar attitude; (ii) in accordanceto what the person is doing (selling something in the street) and otherproperties of someone who does this kind of work, in a different way, assomeone who does not needs to be avoided.

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Prototype-based categorisation is useful for identification, classifica-tion, fast reasoning/heuristics and action; while theory-based based cat-egorisation is useful for reasoning and explanation. They can comple-ment each other. For instance, after or in parallel to an unsatisfactoryprototype-based output, the theory-based categorisation might generatea better answer. On the other hand, in a risky situation or in a situa-tion of life requiring high concentration (e.g., driving), while things are asexpected (normal), prototype-based categorisation would be more appro-priate and the unconscious choice (otherwise, theory-based categorisationwould appear).

Rule-based vs. associative forms of reasoning. Reinstated-based elicited meaning and appraisal, and prototype-based categorisationare coherent with associative processing or reasoning, where objects orwhat have been the cases are organised according to subjective similarityand temporal contiguity in experience. On the other hand, anew computedelicited meaning, and theory-based categorisation are coherent to rule-based reasoning or processing, which consist on manipulation of symbolicstructures. They seem to operate in parallel in life. Both of them canappear either consciously or unconsciously.

Flexibility vs. preparedness behavioural function. The pre-vious emotion and meaning elicitation forms, as well as the linked di-chotomies, serve for rapid action and/or for flexible action, which mightoccur separately, in parallel or sequentially. [3] (pp. 41) suggest an ex-ample of the last one (the sequential manner): first perceptual processes(associative reasoning) identify stimuli with emotional value and activespreparation for action, and then cognitive processes (theory-based rea-soning) verify the stimulus, situate it in context, and appraise its value.Additionally, in accordance to these authors such elicitation forms are re-lated with evolution of humans, and flexibility appears along an expandedcapacity for subjective experience.

3.3 Connotative vs. Denotative / Reflective /Propositional Expressibility, for Emotional Mean-ing[3] address the problem of communication of emotions or linguistic inex-pressibility of emotions, for instance, for communicating appraisal/meaningor cognition with experiential emotions, and suggest to use connotativelanguage, which allows to communicate emotions and experiences, ratherthan denotative language, which captures the physical and descriptiveattributes of the objects in order to discriminate among them. They ar-gue that for communicating emotional experiences connotative languageis better than denotative language, alike it is well communicated in theraw in music and in the prosody of speech.

This point is brought here because of it would inform future researchin modelling and simulation of emotions. For instance, communicationbetween actors could be better represented by using connotative language.

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3.4 Ten Proposals About Emotion ElicitationFinally, we summarise the [3] (pp. 53-55) proposal about emotion elicita-tion (only the proposal no mentioned above will be explained):

i) Appraisal are constituents of, and therefore also conditions for, emo-tions.

ii) Emotions are affective states with objects.

iii) There are two routes to emotional appraisal (reinstatement and com-putation).

iv) These forms of appraisal parallel two kinds of categorisation (proto-type and theory-based).

v) These forms of appraisal and of categorisation are governed by twoforms of reasoning (associative and theory-based).

vi) The two routes to emotional appraisal or categorisation may servedifferent behavioural functions (preparedness and flexibility).

vii) The fact that some components of an emotion can be triggered beforefull awareness of its cause does not conflict with a cognitive view.Emotions appear along the significance of the situation, what couldoccur before full awareness about the stimulus creating the emotion.Some significance and emotions could appear before the sensory cor-tex processes part of the stimulus. Thus, emotions could precede theprocess of the sensory cortex but not cognition, understanding thisas giving significance/meaning to a situation.

viii) Unconscious and conscious affect elicitation differ only in episodicconstraints on emotional meaning.[3] affirm that despite of contrary beliefs, unconscious and consciousaffect only differ on episodic constraints on emotional meaning. Anexample when this difference appears is the following two situations:(i) Unconscious stimuli is introduced without contextual/episodicinformation, which has been masked; (ii) the unconscious stimulusis later activated generating semantic and affective meaning without(contextual) constraint about its applicability (an example: sublim-inal messages on the TV.).

ix) Automated, conditioned, imitated, and reinstated emotions are allmanifestations of reinstated appraisals.

x) The experiential and motivational/behavioural manifestations of ap-praisals, although difficult to describe in language, can be commu-nicated through connotative meaning.

4 Identification of emotions in SocLabIn relation to the two routes of appraisal, in SocLab is of more interest theBottom-up or situational analysis. Actors’ decision making in SocLab isrule-based, and each rule is composed of: (i) a description of the situationin which the rule could be applied (the rule is applied if the Euclideandistance to the present situation is small enough); (ii) the goodness of the

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rule in accordance with how much it helped in increasing satisfaction inpast applications. Thus, representation of reasoning in SocLab is not oneof the above explained routes of appraisal in a pure form. Even more,SocLab rule-based appraisal is sourced on similarities between situations.

We assume that in this case, [7, 3] structure of emotions shown in Fig-ure 2 is valid. However, for SocLab the interest is in emotions appearingin organisational, or in Systems of Organised Action, settings, being ofparticular importance those emotions related with self-action, otherÂťsactions and with events. How emotions appear in SocLab is shown inFigure 3.

Figure 3: Emotions experienced by an actor in SocLab in according to Ortony’sstructure of emotions

In SocLab a new parameter has been introduced to model moralityand emotions: moral sensibility parameter, let us call it mS. This param-eter is used to weight two modelled aspects of emotions: the first onethe one called in SocLab Satisfaction or Instrumental Satisfaction, whichin Figure 3 is called Joy/Distress, and is related with well-being of thewhole organisation; and the norm or moral-based emotion, which is asso-ciated with all the other cases of emotions shown in Figure 3. The linearcombination of these two aspects gives the Aim of the actor, as showsthe equation shown below. Thus, the actor makes decisions in order tomaximise:

Aim = (1− abs(mS)) ∗ instrumSatisf +mS ∗moralSatisf

The actors modifies the weight of the rules in accordance with howgood the rules are in the iteration in which they are applied and in thefollowing iteration (i.e., in the iteration when the reactions of the otheractor to the application of the rule can be evaluated).

The following elements of SocLab are also involved in the modellingof emotions:

• Stakes.

• Effects

• Solidarities.

• Relations and constraints among relations

• Parameters: scope, tenacity, reactivity, oblivion, rewards, and mS.

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Below those emotions found in SocLab will receive further considera-tion.

4.1 Well-being emotions: Joy/DistressOrtony defines joy (distress) as: to pleased (displeased) about a desirable(undesirable) event.

This is an event-based emotion, where the event (Ortony talks about)is the output of social interaction, and no particular agent is consideredresponsible for the event/output, situation or state of issues. In SocLab,the joy/distress of an actor is associated mainly to the difference betweenthe actor’s aspiration level of satisfaction ("aspiration level of satisfac-tion/joy" - "actual satisfaction").

Also the following elements are related with this emotion:

• stakes, parameters and solidarities

• relations and constrains

4.2 Pride / ShameOrtony defines pride (shame) as approving (disapproving) one’s won praise-worthy (blameworthy) action.

In this case the self-action is evaluated, without connection to an event,related with self-achievements in social interaction, achievements in turncompared with a reference standard/norm/moral. The actor appraisesthe action either as praiseworthy or blameworthy in accordance to howclose his action is to the standard, and his reaction will be either approvalor disapproval (of his own action), what manifests as feelings of eitherself-pride/ego/self-regard or, self-shame, correspondingly.

In SocLab this emotion has the following elements:

• actions: those of the actor itself in the last (two) iterations.

• standard: to minimize the difference:

Case 1: Self-pride. What should be minimised: maximal value ofpower that the actor can give to himself - actual power given to himself

Seen as a proportion in the inteval [0,1], the actor evaluates:(maximal value of power that the actor can give to himself - power

given to himself) divided by (maximal value of power that the actor cangive to himself - minimal power that the actor can give to himself))

Case 2: pride of what is given from actor A to actor B.What should be minimised: maximal value of power that can be given byA to B - actual power given by A to B.

The smaller (larger) the value of these differences is, the higher thepride (shame) the A would feel.

In relation to the Ortony’s intensity variables for this case, we have:

• Degree praiseworthiness: function to be minimised, shown above.

• The strength of cognitive unit with the group, via:

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– Stakes (e.g., stakes to "non-unit" relation)– Constraints on (or between) relations

• Deviations of the agent’s actions from the person/role-based expec-tations, via:

– Effect functions (unit and non-unit relation rel.)– Constraints on and between relations

4.3 Gratification / RemorseOrtony et al. define gratification (remorse) as pleased (displeased) about adesirable (undesirable) event, related with self-action and then approving(disapproving) one’s won praiseworthy (blameworthy) action.

In the case of SocLab such event is associated with given power to allthe others (to the whole organisation or System or Organised Action).

This case is very similar to the previous one, but the function to beminimised is:maximal (whole) value of power that the Actor A can give - (whole) poweractually given by A.

The smaller (larger) the value of this difference be, the more gratified(remorse) the actor A would feel.

4.4 Admiration/Reproach and Gratitude/AngerOrtony et al. define admiration (reproach) as approving (disapproving) ofsomeone else’s praiseworthy (blameworthy) action. If this action is evalu-ated as the consequence for the whole organisation, then gratitude/angerappears (like the case of Gratification/Remorse when evaluating self-action, see previous sub-section).

These cases are very similar to the previous one but the actor A eval-uates the power given by the other actor B. Thus, in the case of Ad-miration/Reproach, the actor A evaluates de actor B, by checking thedifference:

maximal value of power that B can give to A - actual power given fromB to A

In the case of Gratitude/Anger, the actor A evaluates actor B, bychecking the difference:

maximal value of power that B can give to all other actors - actualpower given from B to all other actors

The functions can be normalised and are interpreted as those shownin the previous subsections.

4.5 Happy-for/resentment (jealousness), and Gloat-ing/pityThe definition of some of these emotions is already in Figure 3. For in-stance: A is happy-for/resentment (jealousness) if she is pleased/displeasedabout an event desirable for the other.

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This kind of emotions appears when the actor perceive what is hap-pening to other (a particular actor) as a consequence of an event or ofcollective action. To show how this kind of emotion can be observed inSocLab, let us have an example:Gloating : Suppose the following is part of actor B’s situation:

actor B is getting a low capacity from the others (from the whole),but he is giving a lot (of power) to the organisation, what means that heis collaborative and so expects the others be with him, and, consequentlylow collaboration from the others to him (B) is undesirable .

Under this situation, if actor A has negative solidarity towards actor B,then it feels pleased for what is happening to B, and so the actor A wouldfeel gloating. The degree of gloating can be measured as the differencebetween the power given by A and the power received by A, multipliedby the negative solidarity B feels towards A.

5 The organisation (CENDITEL) and itscontextIn this section, the formal goal, or formal ideal of the organisation willbe presented, and then the actual action, i.e., the "real" social game (asperceived from this research) going on the organisation is depicted. Thisgame will be described as a game of power, following Crozier’s ideas,and particularly the formalisation of Crozier and Bernoux’s theories oforganised action offered by the SocLab platform (see, [10, 11, 5, 9]).

We study a team aiming at designing a methodology for planning inthe public sector. This team is part of an organisation of the VenezuelanMinistry for Science and Technology, whose goal is: To investigate anddevelop socially pertinent free technologies, facilitating its use and im-provement by communities and other third parties for whom they can bevaluable.

5.1 The organisation and the modelled teamAs, said, this organisation aims at developing pertinent free pertinenttechnologies for the Venezuelan society (let us call this organisation De-vPertFreeTech). Workers in all units/departments should be highly cre-ative and committed, in order to increase usability, quality and perti-nence of the products for the Venezuelan society, and, in particular, forthe Venezuelan public organisations. It has four departments and eachworker is assigned to one of these. A worker in a department should knowthe basics about the work going on in the other departments, in order tofacilitate interaction with workers in such units. The units or departmentsare named in accordance to their duty, action (behaviour), or task to bedone, completing the cycle shown in Figure 4:

• Pertinence: its duty is to promote hight impact of the productsof the organisation (e.g., that the developed technologies respond toan important need in the sense that it has a wide number of usersin the country, or that it can support covering basic and/or cultural

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needs). People in this unit should advise workers in other units inorder to increase pertinence of the developed technologies. For this,the unit should know deeply (culturally, for instance) the society, andin particular the social ambit of interest for the project. In order toincrease their knowledge, members of this department have to workalong external (from outside the organisation) researchers with wideexperience in planning methodologies and their pertinence. It shouldwork very close to the Research unit.

• Research: this department is responsible for designing free tech-nologies both social (e.g., methodologies and organisational forms)and instrumental (tools) ones. For this, it studies that ambit (sphere/domain)of the society of its interest in accordance with its duty. This actorreceives (as well as the other actors) advise about pertinent technolo-gies from the Technological Pertinence unit. Its outputs are the de-sign of the methodologies/social technologies, and the requirementsfor the technological tools/instruments.

• Development: this unit is responsible for producing the tools forthe methodologies, or for other social needs, in accordance to re-quirements.

• Technological spread: This unit must help in increasing the im-pact of the organisation by working along the users of the generatedproducts, spreading its usage in the sector/ambit of the society ofinterest for the project.

Figure 4: Closed cycle or process showing the interaction among the basic ac-tivities of a team, starting from descriptions of the social issue of interest andfinishing with the spreading activity (promoting use of the products).

In addition to the named departments, the organisation has a Direc-tor and a Board of Directors, as well as an Administrative team.

The organisation is engaged in several projects. For each project,the team is conformed by chosen workers from the four described units.As said above, the group modelled in SocLab is the team responsible

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for designing a planning methodology for the public Venezuelan sector(Planning Methodology responsible team, or PMD team).

Apart from the above described activities carried out by the units,meetings (see the centre of Figure 4) where the state of the project andits planning, as well as replanning of tasks/activities, and relevant issuesare discussed, are often realised in each team/project. Such meetings arean important activity in order to coordinate action of the different actorsof a team working in a project, and increase the common understand-ing/view of the project. This activity is specially important for highlycommitted, and collaborative, actors. The higher the collaboration of anactor, the higher its compromise with his duties, and the higher the qual-ity of his activities and/or products. High compromised actors prefer togive than to take from the organisation and from the society, what definestheir morality. The higher the collaboration of all actors and the coordi-nation/synergy of their interaction, the better the quality of the productsof the project/team.

Thus, apart from the above mentioned behaviours (Pertinence, Re-search, Development, Spread of the developed technology and Direction),an additional attitude related with morality if found (both in the organisa-tion and in each team), associated to the degree of compromise, creativityand willing of the actor to give to the organisation and to the society asa whole, as described in the previous paragraph. Such attitudes are: (i)some actors of the team are highly compromised, creative, identified withthe organisation and thus their work is strategical in the sense that theyare continuously looking for ways of improving their work and their prod-uct, i.e., the quality of their action and product; (ii) other members ofthe team have a low willing to give, and they are more motivated to takefrom society, and so from the organisation, and thus, their work is of lessquality and they are little creative. These last actors are more dedicatedto operative work in the sense that they do AT MOST the job that isassigned to them from other members of the team, or from an externalactor, without questioning such a suggestion, and/or comparing it withother similar work, in order to increase their capabilities for decision mak-ing and increase the quality of their action and of the product. The firstkind of disposition and behaviour are strongly engaged while the secondones are weakly engaged. Actors strongly engaged are expected to havehigher power/Influence than those weakly engaged. These behaviours willbe better understood if we put the organisation in context.

5.2 The historical/cultural context of the organ-isationThe issue in this sub-section is organisational behaviour with a particularinterest on culture. Culture is understood as the essential character ofhuman being, that is, as his language; i.e., that on what giving sense tophenomenon and behaviour are based. It is generated in community, ina nation. A culture is in good state if people looks for and cultivatescommon good, and if it is auto-generative. A culture is auto-generativeif it autonomously generated in accordance to the needs of the society.

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If the culture is in a good state, material things, and strategies (and/orplanning) for achieving goals are created in relation to what is good forthat culture. A culture is not autonomous when it is highly imitative andoriented by external influence, actors and interests.

Until the first decades of 1900, Venezuelan culture was mainly rural,auto-generative and common good was cultivated, so the Venezuelan cul-ture was in a good state. From this decade on, a high percentage ofpeople from the country side moved to the cities (the relation: "peoplein the cities/ people in country side" changed from 80/20 to 20/80) dueto an increase of work opportunities in the cities, as a consequence ofthe important new monetary income, sourced on the export of oil. Alongthis, imitation of other cultures facilitated by the opportunities the newincome allowed, and promoted by communication media like radio, TV,CINEMA, etc., increased the demand for material good that was poorlypertinent for the Venezuelan society (material good non being commongood) in detriment of common good, and specially of non-material com-mon good (customs). Thus quality of education and caring of commongood in general decreased. Finally, the Venezuelan culture became ill inthe sense described above as it is not auto-generative and care of commongood is poor.

Under this state of things, two types of behaviour of our interest be-came common in public organisations. On the one hand, material commongood with low pertinence is considered important, and so its use, importand elaboration in the country. This tendency to promote use of materialcommon good without evaluating its value for the country can be calledinstrumentalist behaviour (Instrumentalism). On the other hand, indi-viduals, coalitions and/or groups aiming at getting benefits from commongood, and with low interested in cultivating it, appear. An importantrepresentative of these are the political parties (others examples are in-fluential members of public and community organisations). This kind ofbehaviour will be called politicised action (Politicisim).

Certain researchers and public servers aware of this situation havepromoted creation of public organisations aiming at dealing with such asituation, in order to promote cultivation of common good. The maingoal has been to improve the pertinence of public good created in publicorganisations, i.e., its social validity. In this sense, a critical/reflexiveaptitude should be promoted (reflective/CriticalAction). With such agoal was created the DevPertFreeTech, where the team PMD team is.

However, instrumentalist and politicised behaviours are also presentin the context of the public organisations, and in the actors for which theDevPertFreeTech organisation will generates its products. Probably thoseactors do not understand the goal of this organisation, and rather see it asa provider of any kind of products (not of free and pertinent ones). Thiscan explain why in fact such actors demand from it any kind of productand action, ranging from technical ones (instruments) to politics. Amongsuch influential actors we have: the Ministry of Science and Technology,the political parties, and heads of organisations representing geographicalneighbourhoods or communities of interest.

This demands and particular interests not always related with the goalsof DevPertFreeTech, appears because of the cultural problem described

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above, and will promote the rising (in this organisation) of behaviour notaiming at the duty of the organisation. The behaviours of this kind iden-tified in the organisation are: politics, instrumentalism and academics.The first two where mentioned above, and the last one consists in ef-fort directed towards accumulating academical curriculum which is not ofinterest for the organisation and deviates actors from their duties.

Actors with these behaviours are more kind "to take from, than togive to common good", and split their behaviour into two: (i) that workrelated with their duty that is usually done in an operative manner in thesense that they do at most what is assigned to them from other actors,and are not creative (their organisational compromise is weak); and (ii)work aimed at particular (non organisational) goals (usually academics orpolitics). Fortunately, not all actors have this kind of behaviour and therecan be found also actors highly compromised with the organisation. Wewill say that the first actors have a kind of morality: "take more and giveless" (M2), and the second actors have another kind of morality: "givemore and take less" (M1).

In particular, in the PMD team two kind of actors were observed con-sidering this issue: institutional or creative/highly engaged actors (withM1) and weakly engaged actors whose tendency was academics, or poli-tics (with M2). These actors have been further described in the previoussection.

6 The modelHere, an overview of the model been developed will be presented. Detailsabout the model will be presented in the SocLab report in Annex.Goal of the model: to investigate how collaborative behaviour appearsin the PMD team, responsible for designing a planning methodology andits tools, and on which variables/parameters such behaviour depends on,in order to suggest policies for promoting collaboration, and thus a betterproduct (methodology and tools).

This could include variation of solidarities and stakes (and norms ina future model). The suggestion from the simulation in terms of thesevariables can be interpreted and then implemented in terms of action forincreasing, for instance, friendship or group cohesion. For this, sociologicalor organisational theories could be useful (e.g., Peter Senge: the FifthDiscipline (personal compromise, learning in group, etc.)).Hypothesis:

The hypothesis are that the model allows:

i) To identify factors related with collaboration.

ii) To characterise the variations of collaboration as a function of thechange of those factors.

iii) To select the values of the factors more favourable to promote col-laboration.

iv) To develop some policies aimed at promoting collaboration, extrap-olating from the significance of the chosen values of the factors tothe real organisation.

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Aspects already represented: Actors:

• Strongly engaged (collaborative)

• Weakly engaged or distanced. This actors have an interest differentfrom that of the organisation and have behaviour similar to free rid-ers, being involved in relations with the environment for self benefitand of null (or scarce) interest for the organisation, such as Politics,or Academics.

Actually, 3 actors are highly engaged, and four weakly engaged (in-cluding the Director of the Team).What to investigate?, which scenarios are planned? In a firstinstance, we plan to run scenarios to investigate what happens if:

• the Director were highly engaged/identified?

• All or some actors were highly engaged/identified?

We are convinced the Director and other actors would learn from theSocLab simulation scenarios and help in improving the organisation, ifthey were opened to that. In this sense, in a future SocLab improvementsand extensions could be, in part, aimed at helping actors’ learning andchanging actors behaviour to improve the System of Organised Action,and to support participatory modelling as well as action (participative)research. SocLab has a strong potential to be used in many social andresearch projects, as well as in interdisciplinary research and collaboration.Emotions: In this model emotions as the described above will appear.The strongly engaged actors would probably feel proud, gratitude andgratification, while the weakly engaged and distanced actors would likelyfeel emotions such as shame, pity, gloating, etc.

7 ConclusionThis report shows the state of the work done in task 3 of the EMOTeSproject. It shows that are we are close to finish to endow SocLab agentswith social emotions. An actual example is presented. This model will beused as a realistic case study to assess the pertinence of our approach. Inaddition, the annex file presents the state of the model (and in particularits description), as it is produced by the SocLab platform.

The next steps of our work will be obviously to finalize both integrationof emotions into SocLab and the model of the organization. The final taskwill be to explore the model and in particular the influence of emotionson stable configurations.

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