The uncanny valley has been observed in a variety of spheres. In light of Mori’s description of the uncanny valley, Darwin’s experience, as we would discuss later, seems to unveil certain cognitive processes possibly underlying this phenomenon.Įxternal Factors Impacting the McGurk Effect It must be noted that while the uncanny valley may have originated as a concept with the work of Mori, Mori was not the first person who discerned its existence.įollowing the observation of a trigonocephalous viper’s face, Charles Darwin wrote in The Voyage of the Beagle: “I imagine this repulsive aspect originates from the features being placed in positions, with respect to each other, somewhat proportional to the human face and thus, we obtain a scale of hideousness” (Darwin, 1839). At this stage, the robot who looks almost like a human, constitutes a strange spectacle to the observer who feels a sense of uneasiness or revulsion. The emotional revulsion takes place in the uncanny valley between the barely human appearance and the fully human appearance. However, as the robot’s appearance continues to become even more human, the positive emotions return, and the level of empathy approaches the level seen in interactions between human beings. In his original hypothesis, Mori held that the more a robot resembles an actual human, the more empathetic and positive the emotional response of the observers become-until the resemblance reaches a certain point (Mori, 1970).Īt this point, the positive and empathetic emotional response is quickly turned into intense revulsion. Subsequently, this Japanese term was translated into English as the ‘uncanny valley’ by Jasia Reichardt in her book ‘Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction’ in 1978 (Kageki, 2012). In an article published in 1970, the Japanese professor of robotics Masahiro Mori identified this phenomenon as bukimi no tani genshō (Mori, 2012).
The uncanny valley has manifold implications for artificial intelligence, robotics and devices that are designed to serve and assist people. The humanoid objects may include a variety of entities including 3D animations, virtual reality, photorealistic animation, robotics and lifelike dolls (MacDorman & Chattopadhyay, 2017).Īs the object’s appearance gradually becomes indistinguishable from reality, the observers may feel a sense of creepiness, unease or even disgust. The ‘valley’ herein signifies a drop in the affinity of the observer for the humanoid object this affinity would otherwise rise in proportion to the object’s human likeness (MacDorman & Chattopadhyay, 2016). The theory holds that humanoid entities which closely resemble actual humans can provoke strangely familiar or ‘uncanny’ feelings of revulsion or eeriness in the onlookers. The uncanny valley can be described as the hypothesized relationship between the extent to which a humanoid entity resembles an actual human being and the emotional response such an entity evokes.
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