Uncanny Valley

The “Uncanny Valley” phenomenon is a psychological sense of uneasy, empathetic or repulsive, feeling a person has when seeing an object that resembles a human appearance and motion. The effect is determined by how realistic the movement and appearance are. This phenomenon can be felt when viewing man made lifelike animations, robots, dolls, or mannequins. The feeling is not always negative, in fact, people can have positive feelings when seeing a human lifelike creation. The easier it is to see the difference between artificial and human, the more positive the feeling is. The more realistic it is can bring more of a negative feeling. Some negative examples of this are found in realistic imagery of video games and human life like robots which appear so real that they create an uneasy feeling in people. The only positive example to me would be that we know this exists and as creators we can use this to our advantage by pushing the boundaries of realism without crossing the threshold. By using noticeable differences between real and artificial we can create a pleasant experience for the game players or robot users.

Another aspect of this can be related to trust as imagined in the book “Ready Player One”. In the virtual world we can create any avatar that we like. In the virtual world other players only see what we want them to see, and we accept the appearance of the avatar. So, when meeting someone in the real world that we met in online gaming and the appearance is off, it can be shocking and uneasy. This is similar to the “Uncanny Valley” phenomenon.

more examples found in this video: