Addition of an Emotionally Stable Node in the SOSa-SPSa Model for Group Emotional Contagion of Panic in Public Health Emergency: Implications for Epidemic Emergency Responses

Abstract

Sentiment contagion is similar to an infectious disease that spreads in a crowd. In this study, we explore the law of emotional infection under sudden public events by SIR model. The paper adds an emotionally stable node and establishes a group emotional infection model of U-SOSPa-SPSOa model. Simulation results show that our model is reasonable and can better explain the entire contagion process by considering four groups (unsusceptible-susceptible-optimistic-pessimistic) of people. Our theoretical results show: When the pessimists were below the critical value of 0.34, the number of negative emotional groups first increased and then decreased. As the proportion increases, the emotional peak of pessimists increases. The cure probability θo has the least influence on the P(t), and at the same time, under the action of θp, the P(t) reaches the stable state first. The increase of the risk coefficient can promote the pessimist infection. When the degree of risk is low, the rate of emotional infection is increased. When the degree of risk is high, the rate of infection is slowed. Therefore, system customizers and related managers can improve the efficiency of stable groups, adjust the proportion of initial negative emotions, control the infection of the spontaneous infection process, and directly deal with negative emotions. They can carry out treatment and other means to stabilize group emotions and maintain social stability.