The influence of individual emotions on the coupled model of unconfirmed information propagation and epidemic spreading in multilayer networks

Epidemic outbreaks are often accompanied by the unconfirmed information propaga-tion Especially in the early stages of an epidemic outbreak, because of the lack of adequate verification, some unconfirmed information appears, which has a significant impact on the epidemic. Meanwhile, individuals under different emotions can also have different response to epidemics. In the paper, an interplay between epidemic spreading and unconfirmed information propagation model is established considering individuals' emotional factors in multilayer networks. The mean-field method is used to analyze the interaction dynamic propagation process and the threshold of epidemic is obtained. Finally through the theoretical analysis and numerical simulations of scale-free network, the validity of the results is verified. The results show that the information, although unconfirmed, is still conducive to curb the spread of the epidemic. In addition, individuals with different emotions will adopt different self-protective behaviors, so as to further affect the spread of the epidemic. (c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.