A Computational Model of Coping and Decision Making in High-stress, Uncertain Situations: an Application to Hurricane Evacuation Decisions

A Computational Model of Coping and Decision Making in High-stress, Uncertain Situations: an Application to Hurricane Evacuation Decisions” by Nutchanon Yongsatianchot and Stacy Marsella. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, vol. 14, no. 3, 2022, pp. 2539-2556.

Abstract

People often encounter highly stressful, emotion-evoking situations. Modeling and predicting peoples behavior in such situations, how they cope, is a critical research topic. To that end, we propose a computational model of coping that casts Lazarus theory of coping into a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework. This includes an appraisal process that models the factors leading to stress by assessing a persons relation to the environment and a coping process that models how people seek to reduce stress by directly altering the environment or changing ones beliefs and goals. We evaluated the model assumptions in the context of a high-stress situation, hurricanes. We collected questionnaire data from major U.S. hurricanes in 2018 to evaluate the model features for appraisal calculation. We also conducted a series of controlled experiments simulating a hurricane experience to investigate how people change their beliefs and goals to cope with the situation. The results support the model assumptions showing that the proposed features are significantly associated with the evacuation decisions and people change their beliefs and goals to cope with the situation.

BibTeX entry:

@article{YongsatianchotTACC2022,
   author = {Nutchanon Yongsatianchot and Stacy Marsella},
   title = {A Computational Model of Coping and Decision Making in
	High-stress, Uncertain Situations: an Application to Hurricane
	Evacuation Decisions},
   journal = {IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing},
   volume = {14},
   number = {3},
   pages = {2539--2556},
   year = {2022},
   url = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9772391}
}

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