Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

More than appearance: the uncanny valley effect changes with a robot’s mental capacity

  • Published:
Current Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Robots are being used to socially interact with humans. To enhance the quality of human-robot interaction, engineers aim to build robots with both a humanlike appearance and high mental capacity, but there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding how these two characteristics jointly affect people’s emotional response to robots. The current two experiments (each N = 80) presented robots with either a mechanical or humanlike appearance, with mental capacities operationalized as low or high, and with either self-oriented mentalization to mainly concentrate on the robot itself or other-oriented mentalization to read others’ minds. It was found that when the robots had a humanlike appearance, they were more dislikeable than when they had a mechanical appearance, replicating the uncanny valley effect for appearance. Importantly, given a humanlike appearance, robots with high mental ability elicited stronger dislike than those with low mental ability, showing an uncanny valley effect for mind, but this difference was absent for robots with a mechanical appearance. In addition, this effect was limited to robots with self-oriented mentalization ability and did not extend to robots with other-oriented mentalization ability. Hence, the exterior appearance and interior mental capacity of robots interact to influence people’s emotional reaction to them, and the uncanny valley as it pertains to the mind depends on the robot’s appearance in addition to its mental ability. This implies that social robots with humanlike appearances should be designed with obvious other-directed social abilities to make them more likeable.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The measurement of likeability can be treated as reverse-scaled measure of eeriness.

References

  • Appel, M., Weber, S., Krause, S., & Mara, M. (2016). On the eeriness of service robots with emotional capabilities. In 2016 11th ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction (HRI) (pp. 411–412). IEEE.

  • Appel, M., Izydorczyk, D., Weber, S., Mara, M., & Lischetzke, T. (2020). The uncanny of mind in a machine: Humanoid robots as tools, agents, and experiencers. Computers in Human Behavior, 102, 274–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bartneck, C., Kulić, D., Croft, E., & Zoghbi, S. (2009). Measurement instruments for the anthropomorphism, animacy, likeability, perceived intelligence, and perceived safety of robots. International Journal of Social Robotics, 1(1), 71–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradford, E. E. F., Jentzsch, I., & Gomez, J.-C. (2015). From self to social cognition: Theory of mind mechanisms and their relation to executive functioning. Cognition, 138, 21–34.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bradford, E. E. F., Jentzsch, I., Gomez, J.-C., Chen, Y., Zhang, D., & Su, Y. (2018). Cross-cultural differences in adult theory of mind abilities: A comparison of native-English speakers and native-Chinese speakers on the self/other differentiation task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(12), 2665–2676.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradford, E. E. F., Gomez, J. C., & Jentzsch, I. (2019). Exploring the role of self/other perspective-shifting in theory of mind with behavioural and EEG measures. Social Neuroscience, 14(5), 530–544.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Broadbent, E., Kumar, V., Li, X., Sollers, J., Stafford, R. Q., MacDonald, B. A., & Wegner, D. M. (2013). Robots with display screens: A robot with a more humanlike face display is perceived to have more mind and a better personality. PLoS One, 8(8), e72589.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Broadbent, E. (2017). Interactions with robots: The truths we reveal about ourselves. Annual Review of Psychology, 68(1), 627–652.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Burleigh, T. J., Schoenherr, J. R., & Lacroix, G. L. (2013). Does the uncanny valley exist? An empirical test of the relationship between eeriness and the human likeness of digitally created faces. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 759–771.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cross, E. S., & Ramsey, R. (2021). Mind meets machine: Towards a cognitive science of human-machine interactions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(3), 200–212.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, T. S., & Boulos, M. N. K. (2013). Robots in health and social care: A complementary technology to home care and telehealthcare? Robotics, 3(1), 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dang, J., & Liu, L. (2021). Robots are friends as well as foes: Ambivalent attitudes toward mindful and mindless AI robots in the United States and China. Computers in Human Behavior, 115, 106612.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diel, A., & MacDorman, K. F. (2021). Creepy cats and strange high houses: Support for configural processing in testing predictions of nine uncanny valley theories. Journal of Vision, 21(4), 1–20.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Diel, A., Weigelt, S., & MacDorman, K. F. (2022). A meta-analysis of the uncanny valley’s independent and dependent variables. ACM Transactions on Human–Robot Interaction, 11, 1.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dunfield, K. A. (2014). A construct divided: Prosocial behavior as helping, sharing, and comforting subtypes. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 958.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberg, N., & Miller, P. A. (1987). The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors. Psychological Bulletin, 101(1), 91–119.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Eyssel, F., Hegel, F., Horstmann, G., & Wagner, C. (2010). Anthropomorphic inferences from emotional nonverbal cues: A case study. In 19th international symposium in robot and human interactive communication (pp. 646–651). IEEE.

  • Feinberg, M., Willer, R., Stellar, J., & Keltner, D. (2012). The virtues of gossip: Reputational information sharing as prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(5), 1015–1030.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fong, T., Nourbakhsh, I., & Dautenhahn, K. (2003). A survey of socially interactive robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 42(3–4), 143–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gates, B. (2007). A robot in every home. Scientific American, 296(1), 58–65.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, H. M., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Dimensions of mind perception. Science, 315(5812), 619.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, K., Jenkins, A. C., Heberlein, A. S., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Distortions of mind perception in psychopathology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(2), 477–479.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2012). Feeling robots and human zombies: Mind perception and the uncanny valley. Cognition, 125(1), 125–130.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Han, J., Park, I. W., & Park, M. (2015). Outreach education utilizing humanoid type agent robots. In Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on human-agent interaction (pp. 221–222). ACM.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, D. (2005). Expanding the aesthetic possibilities for humanoid robots. In IEEE-RAS international conference on humanoid robots (pp. 24–31).

  • Hegel, F., Gieselmann, S., Peters, A., Holthaus, P., & Wrede, B. (2011). Towards a typology of meaningful signals and cues in social robotics. In robot and human interactive communication (pp. 72–78). RO-MAN.

  • Heyes, C. M. (1998). Theory of mind in nonhuman primates. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21(1), 101–114.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ho, C. C., MacDorman, K. F., & Pramono, Z. A. D. (2008). Human emotion and the uncanny valley: A GLM, MDS, and Isomap analysis of robot video ratings. In 2008 3rd ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction (HRI) (pp. 169–176). IEEE.

  • Horstmann, A. C., & Krämer, N. C. (2019). Great expectations? Relation of previous experiences with social robots in real life or in the media and expectancies based on qualitative and quantitative assessment. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 939.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Ishiguro, H., & Nishio, S. (2007). Building artificial humans to understand humans. Journal of Artificial Organs, 10(3), 133–142.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jentsch, E. (1997). On the psychology of the uncanny (1906). Angelaki, 2, 7–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kang, J., & Sundar, S. S. (2019). Social robots with a theory of mind (ToM): Are we threatened when they can read our emotions? In international symposium on ambient intelligence (pp. 80–88). Springer, Cham.

  • Kätsyri, J., Förger, K., Mäkäräinen, M., & Takala, T. (2015). A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: Support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 390.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kätsyri, J., de Gelder, B., & Takala, T. (2019). Virtual faces evoke only a weak uncanny valley effect: An empirical investigation with controlled virtual face images. Perception, 48(10), 968–991.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kim, S. Y., Schmitt, B. H., & Thalmann, N. M. (2019). Eliza in the uncanny valley: Anthropomorphizing consumer robots increases their perceived warmth but decreases liking. Marketing Letters, 30(1), 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacDorman, K. F., & Ishiguro, H. (2006). The uncanny advantage of using androids in cognitive and social science research. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 297–337.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacDorman, K. F., & Entezari, S. (2015). Individual differences predict sensitivity to the uncanny valley. Interaction Studies, 16(2), 141–172.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacDorman, K. F., & Chattopadhyay, D. (2016). Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not. Cognition, 146, 190–205.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mathur, M. B., & Reichling, D. B. (2016). Navigating a social world with robot partners: A quantitative cartography of the uncanny valley. Cognition, 146, 22–32.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mathur, M. B., Reichling, D. B., Lunardini, F., Geminiani, A., Antonietti, A., Ruijten, P. A. M., Levitan, C. A., Nave, G., Manfredi, D., Bessette-Symons, B., Szuts, A., & Aczel, B. (2020). Uncanny but not confusing: Multisite study of perceptual category confusion in the uncanny valley. Computers in Human Behavior, 103, 21–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mori, M. (1970). The uncanny valley. Energy, 7, 33–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mori, M., MacDorman, K. F., & Kageki, N. (2012). The uncanny valley [from the field]. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 19(2), 98–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Müller, B. C. N., Gao, X., Nijssen, S. R. R., & Damen, T. G. E. (2020). I, robot: How human appearance and mind attribution relate to the perceived danger of robots. International Journal of Social Robotics, 13(4), 1–11.

  • Orehek, E., & Weaverling, C. G. (2017). On the nature of objectification: Implications of considering people as means to goals. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(5), 719–730.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Orehek, E., Forest, A. L., & Wingrove, S. (2018). People as means to multiple goals: Implications for interpersonal relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(10), 1487–1501.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Otterbacher, J., & Talias, M. (2017). S/he's too warm/agentic! The influence of gender on uncanny reactions to robots. In 2017 12th ACM/IEEE international conference on human-robot interaction (HRI) (pp. 214–223). IEEE.

  • Poliakoff, E., Beach, N., Best, R., Howard, T., & Gowen, E. (2013). Can looking at a hand make your skin crawl? Peering into the uncanny valley for hands. Perception, 42(9), 998–1000.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Povinelli, D. J., & Vonk, J. (2003). Chimpanzee minds: Suspiciously human? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(4), 157–160.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4), 515–526.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenthal-von der Pütten, A. M., & Krämer, N. C. (2014). How design characteristics of robots determine evaluation and uncanny valley related responses. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 422–439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sabelli, A. M., & Kanda, T. (2016). Robovie as a mascot: A qualitative study for long-term presence of robots in a shopping mall. International Journal of Social Robotics, 8(2), 211–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saygin, A. P., Chaminade, T., Ishiguro, H., Driver, J., & Frith, C. (2012). The thing that should not be: Predictive coding and the uncanny valley in perceiving human and humanoid robot actions. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(4), 413–422.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Seyama, J., & Nagayama, R. S. (2007). The uncanny valley: Effect of realism on the impression of artificial human faces. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 16(4), 337–351.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, B., & Willer, R. (2008). Altruism and indirect reciprocity: The interaction of person and situation in prosocial behavior. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71(1), 37–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skewes, J., Amodio, D. M., & Seibt, J. (2019). Social robotics and the modulation of social perception and bias. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 374(1771), 20180037.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stafford, R. Q., MacDonald, B. A., Jayawardena, C., Wegner, D. M., & Broadbent, E. (2014). Does the robot have a mind? Mind perception and attitudes towards robots predict use of an eldercare robot. International Journal of Social Robotics, 6(1), 17–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stein, J. P., & Ohler, P. (2017). Venturing into the uncanny valley of mind—The influence of mind attribution on the acceptance of human-like characters in a virtual reality setting. Cognition, 160, 43–50.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Stein, J. P., Appel, M., Jost, A., & Ohler, P. (2020). Matter over mind? How the acceptance of digital entities depends on their appearance, mental prowess, and the interaction between both. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 142, 102463.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Takahashi, H., Terada, K., Morita, T., Suzuki, S., Haji, T., Kozima, H., Yoshikawa, M., Matsumoto, Y., Omori, T., Asada, M., & Naito, E. (2014). Different impressions of other agents obtained through social interaction uniquely modulate dorsal and ventral pathway activities in the social human brain. Cortex, 58, 289–300.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Urgen, B. A., Kutas, M., & Saygin, A. P. (2018). Uncanny valley as a window into predictive processing in the social brain. Neuropsychologia, 114, 181–185.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, S., Lilienfeld, S. O., & Rochat, P. (2015). The uncanny valley: Existence and explanations. Review of General Psychology, 19(4), 393–407.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wedekind, C., & Milinski, M. (2000). Cooperation through image scoring in humans. Science, 288(5467), 850–852.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yamada, Y., Kawabe, T., & Ihaya, K. (2013). Categorization difficulty is associated with negative evaluation in the “uncanny valley” phenomenon. Japanese Psychological Research, 55(1), 20–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yogeeswaran, K., Złotowski, J., Livingstone, M., Bartneck, C., Sumioka, H., & Ishiguro, H. (2016). The interactive effects of robot anthropomorphism and robot ability on perceived threat and support for robotics research. Journal of Human-Robot Interaction, 5(2), 29–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang (Grant no. SJWZ2020001).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, No. 616 Fenghua Rd, Ningbo, 315211, China

    Jun Yin, Shiqi Wang, Wenjiao Guo & Meixuan Shao

  2. Center of Group Behavior and Social Psychological Service, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China

    Jun Yin, Shiqi Wang, Wenjiao Guo & Meixuan Shao

Authors
  1. Jun Yin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shiqi Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Wenjiao Guo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Meixuan Shao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Jun Yin, Shiqi Wang, and Meixuan Shao contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Jun Yin, Shiqi Wang, Wenjiao Guo and Meixuan Shao. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jun Yin and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

All raw data can be accessed at the link: https://osf.io/9u54k/?view_only=fadfff217fb64bc8b8692e0ccb0981db

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jun Yin.

Ethics declarations

Ethics Statement

The research was conducted in accordance with the relevant APA and authors’ national ethical guidelines and the experimental protocol was approved by the institutional review board at the department of psychology at Ningbo University. All participants received information sheets about the experimental procedure and signed informed consent forms after learning the purpose and procedure of the experiment.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

ESM 1

(DOCX 4751 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Yin, J., Wang, S., Guo, W. et al. More than appearance: the uncanny valley effect changes with a robot’s mental capacity. Curr Psychol 42, 9867–9878 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02298-y

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02298-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation