Panic Spreading Model with Different Emotions under Emergency

Abstract

Emotion plays an important role in decision making. In an emergency, panic can spread among crowds through person-to-person communications and can cause harmful effects on society. The aim of this paper is to propose a new theoretical model in the context of epidemiology to describe the spread of panic under an emergency. First, according to divisions in personality in the context of psychology, groups are divided into a level-headed group and an impatient group. Second, individuals in the two groups have unique personalities. Thus, the level-headed group only infects within the group, while the impatient group considers emotional infection within the group and cross infection between the groups. Then, a nonlinear infection rate is used to describe the probability of infection after an infected person contacts a susceptible person, which is more in line with the real situation. After that, the level-headed group–impatient group nonlinear SIRS panic spreading model is developed. Stable analysis of the model is obtained using the Lyapunov function method to study the stability of the panic-free equilibrium and panic-permanence equilibrium. Finally, simulations are carried out to dynamically describe the spread process of group emotional contagion.