On the Ugliness and Distortedness: The Observers’ Perception of the "Uncanny Valley" Phenomenon in Photorealistic Computer Animated Faces

Abstract

This study aims at investigating students' assessments when observing the photorealistic computer animations of faces, which were previously categorized as belonging to the "uncanny valley". The participants of the study included 72 students of Novi Sad Business School (aged between 20 and 30 years, M=21.81, SD=1.59, 76.4% women). The Stimuli consisted of six photographs of faces (3 male and 3 female faces). There were two instruments. The first one consisted of four bipolar seven-point scales in the form of semantic differentials (e.g., ugly/beautiful; distorted/normal; creepy/pleasing and robot-likeness/human-likeness). The second instrument measured the components (cognitive, affective, and conative) of Connotative Dimension of Meaning using 15 seven-point bipolar rating scales of opposite adjectives.  The results have shown that the affective component stands out. The students' assessments are ambivalent when rating photorealistic computer animations of faces. Ugliness positively predicts the cognitive, affective and conative component.  In addition, distortedness negatively predicts the cognitive component, while creepiness positively predicts the affective one. These findings indicate that the response aroused by a photorealistic computer animation which is "barely human" plays a significant role in relation to the uncanny valley phenomenon. On the basis of these findings, the possibilities of application of the obtained results are discussed.