Social Value Orientation and Integral Emotions in Multi-Agent Systems

Human social behaviour is influenced by individual differences in social preferences. Social value orientation (SVO) is a measurable personality trait which indicates the relative importance an individual places on their own and on others’ welfare when making decisions. SVO and other individual difference variables are strong predictors of human behaviour and social outcomes. However, there are transient changes in human behaviour associated with emotions that are not captured by individual differences alone. Integral emotions, the emotions which arise in direct response to a decision making scenario, have been linked to temporary shifts in decision making preferences. In this work, we investigated the effects of modifying social preferences according to transient integral emotions in multi-agent societies. We developed Svoie, a method for designing agents that make decisions based on established SVO policies, as well as alternative integral emotion policies in response to task outcomes. We conducted simulation experiments in a resource-sharing task environment, and compared societies of Svoie agents with societies of agents with fixed SVO policies. We find that societies of agents that adapt their behaviour through integral emotions achieved similar collective welfare to societies of agents with fixed SVO policies, but with significantly reduced inequality in welfare among agents with different SVO traits. We observed that by allowing agents to adapt their policy in response to task outcomes, our agent societies achieved reduced social inequality.