Evaluating the Uncanny Valley Theory Based on Human Attitudes

Abstract

Background The uncanny valley theory is an idea that was proposed by Masahiro Mori in 1970 regarding the psychological effects of lifelike robotics (Mori, 1970). The uncanny valley is a phenomenon that occurs in animation and robotics, wherein things that look extremely similar to the human face, but differ slightly from its natural appearance or from its natural movements and expressions, are perceived to be disturbing, uncanny, and revolting (Mewes & Heloir). This study aims to analyze participants’ attitudes towards digital characters in order to understand how the uncanny valley affects audiences. Mori’s graph has been criticized on the grounds that familiarity is difficult to define ? that it is difficult to determine which emotion accurately represents the opposite of familiarity, and that the word “familiarity” itself may not actually be an accurate description of a positive human response to human-like entities (Ho, MacDorman, & Pramono, 2008). The word “likability” has been proposed as an alternative translation of Mori’s original word, because it is claimed by some to be a more accurate representation of the phenomena Mori was describing in his original article (Tinwell, Grimshaw, & Williams, 2011). Methods This study investigates attitudes toward digital stimuli through employed a quantitative approach based on semantic differential questionnaires. Perceived Humanness and Familiarity indices, based on indices developed by Ho & Macdorman (2011), were used to determine overall perception of human-likeness and familiarity toward all the stimuli, while other subscales, were determined based on the following six factors: hair animation, eye animation, lip sync, lighting, facial expression and the body movement of all the stimuli. The study was conducted in the conference hall of the Yahos Training Centre in Kuching, Malaysia. We applied a systematic sampling method for this study, because we preferred participants with a moderate knowledge of digital characters ? either in games or movies. Participants consisted of gamers, university students, moviegoers and creative professionals aged between 18 and 35. Participants were invited via email, on Facebook and over the phone. Participants rated all the stimuli based on the questionnaires. Conclusion Our findings have concluded that digital Emily has surpassed the uncanny valley in terms of realism and familiarity compared to other stimuli with high ratings in terms of lifelikeness, organicity and familiarity. Animation style and techniques should not focus on avoiding realistic animation but instead on other factors such as target audiences and the animation’s genre.