Emotional BDI Model (eBDI) of the Peasants Families WellProdSim Social Simulator

This paper describes the emotional model eBDI developed for the BDI agents implemented in WellProdSim, a social simulator designed to assess and improve the productivity and well-being of peasant families. Overcoming some of the limitations of previous models, this innovative approach incorporates complex emotional dynamics into the representation of peasant families, allowing to obtain a more realistic adaptation and response to environmental and social changes of the simulated human agents. The key idea resides in the integration of emotions influenced by external factors into the deliberation process of the BDI system. The agent’s emotional state impacts on the estimation of the contribution and activation values of each of the agent’s potential goals; thus, it directly influences the desires management in the BDI engine, enriching the decision-making process and improving the simulation of social and economic interactions. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the model, providing simulations that more accurately reflect the complexity of human behavior and social dynamics in rural communities.