An emotion-driven virtual counselling system in computer-mediated communication

We present and evaluate a virtual counselling system that is devoted to improving user awareness of emotional situations in computer-mediated communication and making informed decisions on actions to recommend to the users involved in a conversation. Starting from elements such as the moods and emotions of the users involved in a conversation, the system constructs the emotional signatures of individuals and groups that are used to characterize a situation. It then uses an approximate reasoning mechanism based on three-way decisions to classify recognized situations with respect to particular emotional dynamics based on emotional contagion. A prototype of the system has been experimented on in a real context based on collaboration between university students for the realization of project work. The distinctive features of the system have been evaluated with accuracy measures, and the results are promising.