Maladaptive Emotion-Based Behaviors in Autonomous Agents

In: Human and Artificial Information Processing, P. Koikkalainen ja S. Puuronen (eds.), Finnish Artificial Intelligence Society, 1998, pp. 218-226.

Aapo Hyvärinen
Helsinki University of Technology
Laboratory of Computer and Information Science
P.O.Box 2200, FIN-02015 Espoo, Finland
aapo.hyvarinen@@hut.fi

Timo Honkela
Media Lab, University of Art and Design Helsinki
Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki
timo@mlab.uiah.fi

Abstract

It has been recently suggested by a number of authors that modelling of emotions and related motivational systems in agents might have great practical value, apart from the interest of providing possible explanations for the emotional mechanisms of human agents. Emotions, or needs, may be used as signalling mechanisms between different subsystems (subagents) inside an agent, as well as between different agents. In this paper, we investigate problems that may arise with emotional agents. Since needs and emotions are largely global, stable reaction tendencies, they may exhibit rigidities that lead to different forms of maladaptive behavior, i.e. behavior that is not well suited to the present environment of the agent. Modelling emotional learning in agents, we show how agents may develop maladaptive patterns of behavior that closely resemble patterns found in emotional disorders in humans. It is shown that maladaptive emotion-based behavior can emerge from a very simple model of the agents' decision-making system.