# Bridging the gap between emotion and joint action

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.06264 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.06264/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 450 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Aug 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Deep Facial Expression Recognition: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08348/) (2018)
- [Human-level performance in first-person multiplayer games with population-based deep reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01281/) (2018)
- [Hierarchical Multiscale Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.01704/) (2016)
- [Leveraging Activity Recognition to Enable Protective Behavior Detection in Continuous Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01776/) (2020)
- [Affect Control Processes: Intelligent Affective Interaction using a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.5279/) (2013)
- [Dynamic similarity promotes interpersonal coordination in joint-action](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.00368/) (2015)
- [Nose Heat: Exploring Stress-induced Nasal Thermal Variability through Mobile Thermal Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05144/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Our daily human life is filled with a myriad of joint action moments, be it children playing, adults working together (i.e., team sports), or strangers navigating through a crowd. Joint action brings individuals (and embodiment of their emotions) together, in space and in time. Yet little is known about how individual emotions propagate through embodied presence in a group, and how joint action changes individual emotion. In fact, the multi-agent component is largely missing from neuroscience-based approaches to emotion, and reversely joint action research has not found a way yet to include emotion as one of the key parameters to model socio-motor interaction. In this review, we first identify the gap and then stockpile evidence showing strong entanglement between emotion and acting together from various branches of sciences. We propose an integrative approach to bridge the gap, highlight five research avenues to do so in behavioral neuroscience and digital sciences, and address some of the key challenges in the area faced by modern societies.