A mismatch in the human realism of face and voice produces an uncanny valley
Open accessAbstract
The uncanny valley has become synonymous with the uneasy feeling of viewing an animated character or robot that looks imperfectly human. Although previous uncanny valley experiments have focused on relations among a character's visual elements, the current experiment examines whether a mismatch in the human realism of a character's face and voice causes it to be evaluated as eerie. The results support this hypothesis.
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The Ho and MacDorman (2010) scale has already been applied in at least two studies.
“The scale has already been applied in at least two studies (Mitchell et al., 2011; MacDorman et al., 2013).”
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 Mitchell et al., 2011
The evidence from Mitchell et al. (2011) for H4a is limited because only one pair of stimuli was used.
“This result was included as support for H4a, although it should be noticed that these results are somewhat limited because only one pair of stimuli were used in the study.”
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 Mitchell et al., 2011
Mitchell et al. (2011) demonstrated that mismatched face-voice pairs elicited higher eeriness than similar matched pairs.
“One study (Mitchell et al., 2011), which had used a factorial design between the realism of a face (robot or human) and voice (synthetic or human), demonstrated that mismatched face–voice pairs elicited higher eeriness than similar matched pairs.”
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 Mitchell et al., 2011
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Cites
Bukimi no tani [the uncanny valley]
Mori, M. (1970) · Energy · Cited by 1,485 · see citing works
The uncanny advantage of using androids in cognitive and social science research
MacDorman, K. F., & Ishiguro, H. (2006) · Interaction Studies Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems · doi:10.1075/is.7.3.03mac · Cited by 658 · see citing works
Self-citationThe Uncanny Valley: Effect of Realism on the Impression of Artificial Human Faces
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MacDorman, K. F., Green, R. D., Ho, C.-C., & Koch, C. T. (2009) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2008.12.026 · Cited by 533 · see citing works
Self-citationHo, C.-C., & MacDorman, K. F. (2010) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.05.015 · Cited by 496 · see citing works
Self-citationDoes Japan really have robot mania? Comparing attitudes by implicit and explicit measures
MacDorman, K. F., Vasudevan, S. K., & Ho, C.-C. (2008) · AI & Society · doi:10.1007/s00146-008-0181-2 · Cited by 322 · see citing works
Self-citationEmpathy with Inanimate Objects and the Uncanny Valley
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Uncanny behaviour in survival horror games
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Danger Avoidance: An Evolutionary Explanation of Uncanny Valley
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Research works printed but not linked: 1
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Kätsyri, J., Förger, K., Mäkäräinen, M., & Takala, T. (2015) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00390 · Cited by 500 · see citing works
The impact of chatbot conversational skill on engagement and perceived humanness
Schuetzler, R. M., Grimes, G. M., & Scott Giboney, J. (2020) · Journal of Management Information Systems · doi:10.1080/07421222.2020.1790204 · Cited by 357 · see citing works
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Piwek, L., McKay, L. S., & Pollick, F. E. (2014) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.001 · Cited by 106 · see citing works
Seymour, M., Yuan, L., Dennis, A., & Riemer, K. (2020) · Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences · doi:10.24251/hicss.2020.574 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
Girondini, M., Stefanova, M., Pillan, M., & Gallace, A. (2023) · International Journal of Human-Computer Studies · doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2023.103106 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mitchell, W. J., Szerszen, K. A., Lu, A. S., Schermerhorn, P. W., Scheutz, M., & MacDorman, K. F.
- Affiliations
- Indiana University Indianapolis (US)
- Indiana University Bloomington (US)
- Tufts University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mitchell, Wade J
- Szerszen, Kevin A
- Lu, Amy Shirong
- Schermerhorn, Paul W
- Scheutz, Matthias
- MacDorman, Karl F
- Venue
- i-Perception
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2011-01
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 10-12
- ISSN
- 2041-6695 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3485769
- OpenAlex
- W2116385068
- Cited by
- 239
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 7.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- i-Perception (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Keywords
- uncanny valley, facial expressions, voice, robot perception, eeriness, animated characters, human-likeness
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