Data-driven modeling of group entitativity in virtual environments

Abstract

We present a data-driven algorithm to model and predict the socio-emotional impact of groups on observers. Psychological research finds that highly entitative i.e. cohesive and uniform groups induce threat and unease in observers. Our algorithm models realistic trajectory-level behaviors to classify and map the motion-based entitativity of crowds. This mapping is based on a statistical scheme that dynamically learns pedestrian behavior and computes the resultant entitativity induced emotion through group motion characteristics. We also present a novel interactive multi-agent simulation algorithm to model entitative groups and conduct a VR user study to validate the socio-emotional predictive power of our algorithm. We further show that model-generated high-entitativity groups do induce more negative emotions than low-entitative groups.