Emergence of Social Reality of Emotion through a Social Allostasis Model with Dynamic Interpretants

TL;DR

This paper presents a computational model demonstrating how social consensus on emotions emerges through interoceptive signals, symbol exchange, and active inference in agents, highlighting the dynamic formation of social emotional reality.

Contribution

It introduces a novel simulation of social emotion consensus formation using symbol emergence and active inference in a multi-agent system.

Findings

Agents' interoceptive preferences converge over time

Symbol probability distributions of agents align

Social emotional reality emerges from social interactions

Abstract

The theory of constructed emotion defines social reality as the community-level consensus on emotion concepts assigned to interoceptive sensations arising from bodily allostasis and social interaction. In this study, we simulate this emergence process using a computational model that integrates symbol emergence with degrees of freedom in symbol interpretation and active inference. Two agents receive interoceptive signals, exchange inferred symbols, and simultaneously adapt their bodily control goals and symbol interpretations to each other. Experimental results show that the interoceptive prior preferences and symbol probability distributions of the two agents converge, confirming the emergence of social reality grounded in social consensus.