Online social media platforms enable influencers to distribute content and quickly capture audience reactions, significantly shaping their promotional strategies and advertising agreements. Understanding how sentiment dynamics and emotional contagion unfold among followers is vital for influencers and marketers, as these processes shape engagement, brand perception, and purchasing behavior. While sentiment analysis tools effectively track sentiment fluctuations, dynamical models explaining their evolution remain limited, often neglecting network structures and interactions both among blogs and between their topic-focused follower groups. In this study, we tracked influential tech-focused Weibo bloggers over six months, quantifying follower sentiment from text-mined feedback. By treating each blogger's audience as a single "macro-agent", we find that sentiment trajectories follow the principle of iterative averaging -- a foundational mechanism in many dynamical models of opinion formation, a theoretical framework at the intersection of social network analysis and dynamical systems theory. The sentiment evolution aligns closely with opinion-dynamics models, particularly modified versions of the classical French-DeGroot model that incorporate delayed perception and distinguish between expressed and private opinions. The inferred influence structures reveal interdependencies among blogs that may arise from homophily, whereby emotionally similar users subscribe to the same blogs and collectively shape the shared sentiment expressed within these communities.

Emotional contagion refers to the sharing of emotional states between individuals, and it has been observed in both animal and human models that the infectivity of negative emotions is much greater than that of positive emotions [1]. Negative emotional contagion has a powerful effect on our relationships - family, friends, teams, etc. - and can lead, for example, to depressive behavior in healthy people who live with depressed individuals. It is urgent to understand the mechanism of emotional contagion, especially negative emotional contagion. Emotional contagion has long been regarded as reflecting a mimicry-based process, for which mimicry of emotional expressions and its consequent feedback function are assumed and can be evoked by higher-order social processes or by a simple emotion-to-action response as well as the primary mimicry-based process [2]. At present, the emotional contagion models mostly adopt behavioral analysis and questionnaires, which are often affected by subjects' subjective factors. They have mainly focused on behavioral experiment such as analysing people's posts containing emotional information to extract affective evidence [3], using the Positive And Negative Affective Schedule (PANAS) scale to measure positive and negative emotions as a quantitive research [4] and the mathematical simulation model of emotional contagion in crowd evacuation [5]. Although behavioral analysis and questionaires can provide valuable insights into emotional contagion, they have limitations in terms of capturing the neural mechanisms, timing, and subtleties of this phenomenon.

This paper focuses on the crucial task of addressing the evacuation of hazardous places, which holds great importance for coordinators, event hosts, and authorities. To facilitate the development of effective solutions, the paper employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, specifically Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), to construct a simulation model for evacuation. NetLogo is selected as the simulation tool of choice due to its ability to provide a comprehensive understanding of human behaviour in distressing situations within hazardous environments. The primary objective of this paper is to enhance our comprehension of how individuals react and respond during such distressing situations. By leveraging AI and MAS, the simulation model aims to capture the complex dynamics of evacuation scenarios, enabling policymakers and emergency planners to make informed decisions and implement more efficient and effective evacuation strategies. This paper endeavours to contribute to the advancement of evacuation planning and ultimately improve the safety and well-being of individuals in hazardous places

In the next decade, social robots will be implemented in many public spaces to provide services to humans. We question the properties of these social robots to afford acceptance and spontaneous emotional interactions. More specifically, in the present study, we report the effects of idle motion frequency in a robot on emotional contagion in a face-to-face interactive task with a human participant. The robotic system Buddy was programmed to adopt a sad posture and facial expression while telling three sad stories and moving its head up/down at low, medium, and high frequency. Each participant (N=15 total) was invited to sit in front of Buddy and listen to the stories. Unconscious changes in posture in the human participant were recorded using a 3D motion capture system (Qualysis). Results show greater inclinations of the shoulder/torso towards the ground in low-frequency trials and more rigid postures in high-frequency trials. The quantity of spontaneous movement was also greater when Buddy moved at slow frequencies. These findings echo results reported in experimental psychology when two individuals are engaged in social interactions. The scores obtained in the Godspeed questionnaire further suggest that emotional contagion may occur when Buddy moves slowly because the robotic system is perceived as more natural and knowledgeable, e.g., at speed coherent with the expressed emotion. Our work explores the importance of body posture and frequency of idle motion in the conception of robotic systems. Such additions could provide social robots that afford emotional contagion in effortless robot-human collaborative tasks.

Dog-owners often feel that their pooches are good at picking up on their emotions. New studies show how behavioral and chemical cues from humans can affect dogs in ways that enable them to not only discriminate between their owners' fear, excitement, or anger, but also to "catch" these feelings from their human companions. Just as human toddlers look to their parents for cues about how to react to the people and world around them, dogs often look to humans for similar signs. When their people project feelings of calm and confidence, dogs tend to view their surroundings as safe and secure. "The emotional connection between humans and dogs is the essence of the relationship," says Clive Wynne, a professor of psychology and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University.

Limbic resonance is the idea that the capacity for sharing deep emotional states arises from the limbic system of the brain.[1] These states include the dopamine circuit-promoted feelings of empathic harmony, and the norepinephrine circuit-originated emotional states of fear, anxiety and anger.[2] The concept was advanced in the book A General Theory of Love (2000), and is one of three interrelated concepts central to the book's premise: that our brain chemistry and nervous systems are measurably affected by those closest to us (limbic resonance); that our systems synchronize with one another in a way that has profound implications for personality and lifelong emotional health (limbic regulation); and that these set patterns can be modified through therapeutic practice (limbic revision).[3]:170 In other words, it refers to the capacity for empathy and non-verbal connection that is present in mammals, and that forms the basis of our social connections as well as the foundation for various modes of therapy and healing. According to the authors (Thomas Lewis, M.D, Fari Amini, M.D. and Richard Lannon, M.D.), our nervous systems are not self-contained, but rather demonstrably attuned to those around us with whom we share a close connection. "Within the effulgence of their new brain, mammals developed a capacity we call'limbic resonance' -- a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other's inner states."[3]