Emotions are known to spread among people, a process known as emotion contagion. Both positive and negative emotions are believed to be contagious, but the mass spread of negative emotions has attracted the most attention due to its danger to society. The use of agent-based techniques to simulate emotion contagion in crowds has grown over the last decade and a range of contagion mechanisms and applications have been considered. With this review we aim to give a comprehensive overview of agent-based methods to implement emotion contagion in crowd simulations. We took a systematic approach and collected studies from Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE and ACM that propose agent-based models that include a process of emotion contagion in crowds. We classify the models in three categories based on the mechanism of emotion contagion and analyse the contagion mechanism, application and findings of the studies. Additionally, a broad overview is given of other agent characteristics that are commonly considered in the models. We conclude that there are fundamental theoretical differences among the mechanisms of emotion contagion that reflect a difference in view on the contagion process and its application, although findings from comparative studies are inconclusive. Further, while large theoretical progress has been made in recent years, empirical evaluation of the proposed models is lagging behind due to the complexity of reliably measuring emotions and context in large groups. We make several suggestions on a way forward regarding validation to eventually justify the application of models of emotion contagion in society.

众所周知，情绪会在人与人之间传播，这一过程称为情绪传染。积极情绪和消极情绪都被认为具有传染性，但消极情绪的大规模传播因其对社会的危害而备受关注。在过去十年中，使用基于代理的技术来模拟人群中的情绪传染已经有所发展，并且已经考虑了一系列传染机制和应用。通过这篇综述，我们旨在全面概述在人群模拟中实施情绪传染的基于代理的方法。我们采用了系统的方法，并从 Web of Science、Scopus、IEEE 和 ACM 收集了研究，这些研究提出了基于主体的模型，其中包括人群中的情绪传染过程。我们根据情绪传染的机制将模型分为三类，并分析传染机制、应用和研究结果。此外，还广泛概述了模型中通常考虑的其他代理特征。我们得出结论，尽管比较研究的结果尚无定论，但情绪传染机制之间存在根本的理论差异，反映了对传染过程及其应用的看法差异。此外，虽然近年来取得了很大的理论进展，但由于可靠地测量大型群体的情绪和背景的复杂性，对所提出模型的实证评估滞后。