“Either people, or dolls”

In the late 70s, engineers and industrial designers noticed a strange perceptual effect: the more “human” an object, such as a robot, doll, or cartoon character, the more emotionally it arouses the observer. But only up to a certain limit: too realistic models, on the contrary, inspire fear and disgust.

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• “What I Tell My Doll”

This effect, with the light hand of the Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori who described it, was called the “uncanny valley” effect. However, in the art world, of course, they knew about him a long time ago: the favorite characters of the horror genre – zombies, creepy clowns, vicious dolls come to life and other evil spirits – are very similar to people, but not quite people, and this is what scares them even before as they embark on their bloody adventures.

If you depict the effect of the “uncanny valley” in the form of a graph, then it will look like this (hence the name – the “dip” in the curve looks like a valley sandwiched between high mountains):

Recently, a team of Harvard psychologists led by Katherine Powers found that not all people are equally affected by the Uncanny Valley effect*. 30 students who participated in the experiment examined faces created with the help of computer graphics and combining in different proportions the features of a living person in a real photograph and the features of a drawn “non-human” face. Among the images he proposed were a real human face, a “non-human” face and their “hybrids” with a predominance of more or less human or “non-human” features. Here is an example of one of these series used in the study:

Accordingly, participants were asked to identify which faces they considered to be “alive” and which were “inanimate”. Students then completed questionnaires to assess whether they experienced a lack of social connections: for example, they were asked to what extent they agree with statements such as “I want other people to accept me.”

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• I’m only good when I’m alone

In the second, participants – 49 people – did not fill out the questionnaires. They were divided into two groups, and one was told that in their life there would be many stable, full and varied connections with other people, while the other was ruthlessly predicted loneliness.

In both cases, the result was the same: those participants who felt more alone or were forced to experience this feeling were mistaken for real faces with a greater proportion of “inhuman” features. Moreover, in the first experiment, among those who really suffer from loneliness, this effect turned out to be more pronounced than in the second, where loneliness was presented only in the form of a hypothetical life perspective.

By the way, the average result was 68,9% (that is, in order to take the image for the face of a living person, it must consist of 68,9% of the features of a real photo). This, of course, does not mean that lonely people are not at all affected by the effect ” ominous valley”, simply due to a different perception of their faces, they can be attracted to what others seem repulsive.

“From an evolutionary standpoint, overestimating “animacy” may be an adaptive strategy to allow humans to push the limits of social bonding and maximize the chance of establishing and renewing relationships with people,” write the authors in an article published in the journal Psychological Science, published by the American Association for Psychological Sciences.

* K. Powers et al. «Social Connection Modulates Perceptions of Animacy», Psychological Science, August 2014.