People often encounter highly stressful, emotion-evoking situations. Modeling and predicting people's behavior in such situations, how they cope, is a critical research topic. To that end, we propose a computational model of coping that casts Lazarus's theory of coping into a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework. This includes an appraisal process that models the factors leading to stress by assessing a person's relation to the environment and a coping process that models how people seek to reduce stress by directly altering the environment or changing one's beliefs and goals. We evaluated the model's assumptions in the context of a high-stress situation, hurricanes. We collected questionnaire data from major U.S. hurricanes in 2018 to evaluate the model's features for appraisal calculation. We also conducted a series of controlled experiments simulating a hurricane experience to investigate how people change their beliefs and goals to cope with the situation. The results support the model's assumptions showing that the proposed features are significantly associated with the evacuation decisions and people change their beliefs and goals to cope with the situation.

中文翻译：

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高压力、不确定情况下的应对和决策计算模型：在飓风疏散决策中的应用


人们经常会遇到压力很大、情绪激动的情况。建模和预测人们在这种情况下的行为以及他们如何应对是一个重要的研究课题。为此，我们提出了一种应对计算模型，将拉扎勒斯的应对理论融入部分可观察马尔可夫决策过程（POMDP）框架中。这包括一个评估过程，通过评估一个人与环境的关系来模拟导致压力的因素，以及一个应对过程，模拟人们如何通过直接改变环境或改变一个人的信念和目标来寻求减轻压力。我们在高压力情况（飓风）的背景下评估了模型的假设。我们收集了 2018 年美国主要飓风的问卷数据，以评估模型的评估计算功能。我们还进行了一系列模拟飓风经历的对照实验，以研究人们如何改变信念和目标来应对这种情况。结果支持模型的假设，表明所提出的特征与疏散决策显着相关，并且人们改变他们的信念和目标来应对这种情况。