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Cited by 257

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 67 of the 67 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not

Open access
MacDorman, Karl F., Chattopadhyay, Debaleena·2016·Cognition
DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.019
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Abstract

Human replicas may elicit unintended cold, eerie feelings in viewers, an effect known as the uncanny valley. Masahiro Mori, who proposed the effect in 1970, attributed it to inconsistencies in the replica's realism with some of its features perceived as human and others as nonhuman. This study aims to determine whether reducing realism consistency in visual features increases the uncanny valley effect. In three rounds of experiments, 548 participants categorized and rated humans, animals, and objects that varied from computer animated to real. Two sets of features were manipulated to reduce realism consistency. (For humans, the sets were eyes-eyelashes-mouth and skin-nose-eyebrows.) Reducing realism consistency caused humans and animals, but not objects, to appear eerier and colder. However, the predictions of a competing theory, proposed by Ernst Jentsch in 1906, were not supported: The most ambiguous representations-those eliciting the greatest category uncertainty-were neither the eeriest nor the coldest.

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Metadata

Authors
MacDorman, K. F., & Chattopadhyay, D.
Venue
Cognition
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2016-01
Volume
146
Pages
190-205
ISSN
0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.019
OpenAlex
W1867827413
Cited by
257
References
67
FWCI
18.77
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
hybrid

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.019
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MacDorman, K. F., & Chattopadhyay, D. (2016). Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not. Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.019

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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