Details view: 2021/11/02 Joshua Epstein

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2021/11/02 Joshua Epstein

Triple Contagion: Toward Cognitive Epidemiology

Abstract: In this colloquium, differential equation and agent-based models in which contagious disease transmission is affected by contagious fear of the disease and contagious fear of the control, in this case vaccine will be presented. The three contagions—one viral-particulate and two cognitive--are coupled. The two fears evolve and interact in ways that shape distancing behaviour, vaccine uptake, and their relaxation. These behavioural dynamics in turn can amplify or suppress disease transmission, revealing several coupled contagion mechanisms for multiple pandemic waves, including cases where waves increase in amplitude. Methodologically, the coupled contagion approach advances infectious disease modelling by including human behavioural adaptations, grounded in the cognitive neuroscience of fear learning, extinction, and transmission.

Joshua M. Epstein is Professor of Epidemiology at NYU with Affiliated Appointments to the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Politics. He is External Faculty Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute and founding Director of the NYU Agent-Based Modelling Lab. Among his awards are the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Amherst College, his alma mater. He holds a Ph.D. from MIT and before moving to NYU was Professor and Director of the Center for Advanced Modelling in the Social, Behavioural and Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Nonlinear Dynamics, Mathematical Biology, and Social Science (Wiley); Growing Artificial Societies with Robert Axtell (MIT Press); Generative Social Science: Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modelling (Princeton); and Agent_Zero: Toward Neurocognitive Foundations or Generative Social Science (Princeton).