The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 42 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Empirical evaluation of the uncanny valley hypothesis fails to confirm the predicted effect of motion
Open accessAbstract
The uncanny valley hypothesis states that the acceptability of an artificial character will not increase linearly in relation to its likeness to human form. Instead, after an initial rise in acceptability there will be a pronounced decrease when the character is similar, but not identical to human form (Mori, 1970/2012). Moreover, it has been claimed but never directly tested that movement would accentuate this dip and make moving characters less acceptable. We used a number of full-body animated computer characters along with a parametrically defined motion set to examine the effect of motion quality on the uncanny valley. We found that improving the motion quality systematically improved the acceptability of the characters. In particular, the character classified in the deepest location of the uncanny valley became more acceptable when it was animated. Our results showed that although an uncanny valley was found for static characters, the deepening of the valley with motion, originally predicted by Mori (1970/2012), was not obtained.
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In the citing paper
“Two other studies provided results that resembled the uncanny curve (McDonnell et al., 2012; Piwek et al., 2014); however, closer inspection suggested that these results could have been explained by outlier stimuli—that is, in terms of the hypothesis H1c.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Piwek et al., 2014
In the citing paper
“Two other studies provided results that resembled the uncanny curve (McDonnell et al., 2012; Piwek et al., 2014); however, closer inspection suggested that these results could have been explained by outlier stimuli—that is, in terms of the hypothesis H1c.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Piwek et al., 2014
In the citing paper
“That is, more humanlike movement was found to elicit higher affinity (H2b) in both studies, whereas a nonlinear uncanny valley curve (H2a) was not observed in either one of them.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Piwek et al., 2014
In the citing paper
“Two studies demonstrated modulatory movement effects; however, these effects were specific to plausible outlier characters (ill-looking face in McDonnell et al., 2012; and zombie character in Piwek et al., 2014).”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Piwek et al., 2014
In the citing paper
“That is, more humanlike movement was found to elicit higher affinity (H2b) in both studies, whereas a nonlinear uncanny valley curve (H2a) was not observed in either one of them.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Piwek et al., 2014
In the citing paper
“We were able to identify only two studies (Thompson et al., 2011; Piwek et al., 2014) that could be taken as evidence for the independent movement hypotheses H2a and H2b (Table 4).”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Piwek et al., 2014
In the citing paper
“Furthermore, these studies provided conflicting evidence: the former reported a significant increase and the latter a significant decrease in negative affinity for the moving characters.”
From A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness (2015) · cites this paper as Piwek et al., 2014
Citations
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The Uncanny Valley [From the Field]
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Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Hanson, D. (2006). Exploring the aesthetic range for humanoid robots. In Proceedings of the ICCS/CogSci-2006 long symposium: Toward social mechanisms of android science (pp. 39–42).
- Mori, M. (2012). The uncanny valley. In K. F. MacDorman, & N. Kageki (Trans.), IEEE robotics and automation, 19(2), 98–100 (Original work published in 1970).
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Mende, M., Scott, M. L., van Doorn, J., Grewal, D., & Shanks, I. (2019) · Journal of Marketing Research · doi:10.1177/0022243718822827 · Cited by 1,197
Pan, X., & Hamilton, A. F. D. C. (2018) · British Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1111/bjop.12290 · Cited by 801
Kätsyri, J., Förger, K., Mäkäräinen, M., & Takala, T. (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00390 · Cited by 500
The Uncanny Valley: Existence and Explanations
Wang, S., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Rochat, P. (2015) · Review of General Psychology · doi:10.1037/gpr0000056 · Cited by 357
MacDorman, K. F., & Chattopadhyay, D. (2015) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.019 · Cited by 266
Metadata
- Authors
- Piwek, L., McKay, L. S., & Pollick, F. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Glasgow (GB)
- Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Pollick, Frank E.
- Venue
- Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-03
- Volume
- 130
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 271-277
- ISSN
- 0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2080595165
- Cited by
- 106
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 10.48
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- eprints.uwe.ac.uk
- Licence
- Locations
- Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- KNAW research portal (Royal Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW)) (publishedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- UWE Research Repository (UWE Bristol) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- KNAW Research Portal (The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design › Human Motion and Animation
- Keywords
- uncanny valley, movement quality, human-likeness, computer animation, human-robot interaction, anthropomorphism
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Affect, Female, Humans, Male, Motion Perception, Motion Pictures, Robotics, Social Perception, User-Computer Interface, Young Adult
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