Abstract
The emotional state of an individual is continuously affected by daily events. Stressful periods can be coped with by support from a person’s social environment. Support can for example reduce stress and social disengagement. Before improvements on the process of support are however made, it is essential to understand the actual real world process. In this paper a computational model of a network for mutual support is presented. The dynamic model quantifies the change in the network over time of stressors and support. The model predicts that more support is provided when more stress is experienced and when more people are capable of support. Moreover, the model is able to distinguish personal characteristics. The model behaves according to predictions and is evaluated by simulation experiments and mathematical analysis. The proposed model can be important in development of a software agent which aims to improve coping with stress through social connections.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to state that Lenin Medeiros' stay at Vrije Universtiteit Amsterdam was funded by the Brazilian Science without Borders program. This work was performed with the support from CNPq, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - Brazil, through a scholarship which reference number is 235134/2014-7.
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Medeiros, L., Sikkes, R., Treur, J. (2016). Modelling a Mutual Support Network for Coping with Stress. In: Nguyen, NT., Iliadis, L., Manolopoulos, Y., Trawiński, B. (eds) Computational Collective Intelligence. ICCCI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9875. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45243-2_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45243-2_6
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