Modelling Joint Decision Making Processes Involving Emotion-Related Valuing and Mutual Empathic Understanding

In this paper a social agent model for joint decision making is presented addressing the role of mutually acknowledged empathic understanding in the decision making. The model is based on principles from recent neurological theories on mirror neurons, internal simulation, and emotion-related valuing. Emotion-related valuing of decision options and mutual contagion of intentions and emotions between agents are used as a basis for mutual empathic understanding and convergence of decisions and their associated emotions. © 2011 Springer-Verlag