Interaction between emotions and mental models in engineering

Interaction between emotions and mental models in engineering and design activities by de Boer and Badke-Schaub. The objective of this chapter is to describe the interaction between emotions and the preservation of ideas in engineering and design activities. Johnson-Laird’s mental model construct of internal representations is utilized to define cognitive resistance.

A description of the interaction between emotions and cognitive resistance is presented. A value function that forecasts a subject’s behaviour when confronted with stimuli that are contradictory to his mental model is derived from a reinforcement learning framework. An experimental study has been conducted to validate the theory. The relevant results, confirming the predictions of the value function, are presented.