The perception of humanness from the movements of synthetic agents
Abstract
As technology develops, social robots and synthetic avatars might begin to play more of a role in our lives. An influential theory of the perception of synthetic agents states that as they begin to look and move in a more human-like way, they elicit profound discomfort in the observer--an effect known as the Uncanny Valley. Previous attempts to examine the existence of the Uncanny Valley have not adequately manipulated movement parameters that contribute to perceptions of the humanness or eeriness. Here we parametrically manipulated three different kinematic features of two walking avatars and found that, contrary to the Uncanny Valley hypothesis, ratings of the humanness, familiarity, and eeriness of these avatars changed monotonically. Our results indicate that, when a full gradient of motion parameter changes is examined, ratings of synthetic agents by human observers do not show an Uncanny Valley.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
More humanlike movement was found to elicit higher affinity (H2b) in both Thompson et al. (2011) and Piwek et al. (2014).
“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 Thompson et al., 2011
Only two studies (Thompson et al., 2011; Piwek et al., 2014) could be taken as evidence for the independent movement hypotheses H2a and H2b.
“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 Thompson et al., 2011
A nonlinear uncanny valley curve (H2a) was not observed in either Thompson et al. (2011) or Piwek et al. (2014).
“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 Thompson et al., 2011
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 24 · Cited by 75
- Authors
- Thompson, J. C., Trafton, J. G., & McKnight, P.
- Affiliations
- George Mason University (US)
- United States Naval Research Laboratory (US)
- Corresponding author
- Thompson, James C
- Venue
- Perception
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2011-01-01
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 695-704
- ISSN
- 0301-0066 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-4233
- OpenAlex
- W2062694288
- Cited by
- 75
- References
- 24
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 4.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Perception (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- uncanny valley, synthetic agents, social robots, walking motion, kinematic parameters, eeriness, familiarity, human-robot interaction
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Biomechanical Phenomena, Computer Simulation, Discrimination, Psychological, Female, Humans, Human Activities, Judgment, Male, Motion Perception, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Robotics, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
