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Categorization difficulty is associated with negative evaluation in the “uncanny valley” phenomenon
Open accessAbstract
Abstract Human observers often experience strongly negative impressions of human‐like objects falling within a particular range of visual similarity to real humans (the “uncanny valley” phenomenon). We hypothesized that negative impressions in the uncanny valley phenomenon are related to a difficulty in object categorization. We produced stimulus images by morphing two of each of real, stuffed, and cartoon human face images (Experiment 1). Observers were asked to categorize each of these images as either category and evaluated the likability of the image. The results revealed that the longest latency, the highest ambiguity in categorization, and the lowest likability score co‐occurred at consistent morphing percentages. Similar results were obtained even when we employed stimulus images that were created by morphing two of each of real, stuffed, and cartoon dog images (Experiment 2). However, the effect of categorization difficulty on evaluation was weak when two real human faces were morphed (Experiment 3). These results suggest that the difficulty in categorizing an object as either of two dissimilar categories is linked to negative evaluation regardless of whether the object is human‐related or not.
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“Hence, it is possible that the lower pleasantness ratings for intermediate morphs could have resulted from morphing artifacts rather than intermediate human-likeness level.”
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 Yamada et al., 2013
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“One of the studies in Table 4 (Yamada et al., 2013) was excluded from the total count because of plausible morphing artifacts.”
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 Yamada et al., 2013
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“One image morphing study (Yamada et al., 2013) demonstrated that the slowest identification task response times and the most negative likability evaluations coincided with each other; however, these results were excluded because the likability evaluations could plausibly have been influenced by morphing artifacts (cf. Section Naïve and Morbidity Hypotheses).”
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 Yamada et al., 2013
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“Consistently, two participants in this study had reported spontaneously after the experiment that “they [had] evaluated the likability of the images based on the presence or absence of morphing noise” (ibid., 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 Yamada et al., 2013
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Metadata
- Authors
- YAMADA, Y., KAWABE, T., & IHAYA, K.
- Affiliations
- Yamaguchi University (JP)
- NTT (Japan) (JP)
- Kyushu University (JP)
- Corresponding author
- YAMADA, YUKI
- Venue
- Japanese Psychological Research
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2012-09-03
- Volume
- 55
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 20-32
- ISSN
- 0021-5368 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-5884
- OpenAlex
- W2122384877
- Cited by
- 170
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 3.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Japanese Psychological Research (publishedVersion)
- Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) (submittedVersion)
- Kyushu University Institutional Repository (QIR) (Kyushu University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Aesthetic Perception and Analysis
- Keywords
- uncanny valley, negative evaluation, face perception, likeability, cartoon faces, stuffed animals, dogs
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