ArticleJournal of vision2016
Familiar faces rendered strange: Why inconsistent realism drives characters into the uncanny valley.
Article in Journal of vision, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Computer-Controlled Virtual Humans in Patient-Facing Systems: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Pooled it
- Artificial Intelligence Physician Avatars for Patient Education: A Pilot Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Persuasive differences between human and virtual influencers in health supplement advertising: evidence from eye-tracking.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- A review of level-1 visual perspective-taking: potential relationship with the uncanny valley effect.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Asynchrony enhances uncanniness in human, android, and virtual dynamic facial expressions.BMC research notes · 2023Article
- A database of heterogeneous faces for studying naturalistic expressions.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The inversion effect on the cubic humanness-uncanniness relation in humanlike agents.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Monkey visual attention does not fall into the uncanny valley.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Familiarity, orientation, and realism increase face uncanniness by sensitizing to facial distortions.Journal of vision · 2022Article
- The deviation-from-familiarity effect: Expertise increases uncanniness of deviating exemplars.PloS one · 2022Article
- Aspects of visual avatar appearance: self-representation, display type, and uncanny valley.The Visual computer · 2022Article
- Creepy cats and strange high houses: Support for configural processing in testing predictions of nine uncanny valley theories.Journal of vision · 2021Article
- Virtual Reality Immersion Rescales Regulation of Interpersonal Distance in Controls but not in Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2020Article
- Swiping right: face perception in the age of Tinder.Heliyon · 2019Review
- The doctor's digital double: how warmth, competence, and animation promote adherence intention.PeerJ. Computer science · 2018Article
- The uncanny valley effect in typically developing children and its absence in children with autism spectrum disorders.PloS one · 2018Article
- Understanding the Uncanny: Both Atypical Features and Category Ambiguity Provoke Aversion toward Humanlike Robots.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Chikamatsu, Mori, and the uncanny valley.i-PerceptionArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Computer-modeled characters resembling real people sometimes elicit cold, eerie feelings. This effect, called the uncanny valley, has been attributed to uncertainty about whether the character is human or living or real. Uncertainty, however, neither explains why anthropomorphic characters lie in the uncanny valley nor their characteristic eeriness. We propose that realism inconsistency causes anthropomorphic characters to appear unfamiliar, despite their physical similarity to real people, owing to perceptual narrowing. We further propose that their unfamiliar, fake appearance elicits cold, eerie feelings, motivating threat avoidance. In our experiment, 365 participants categorized and rated objects, animals, and humans whose realism was manipulated along consistency-reduced and control transitions. These data were used to quantify a Bayesian model of categorical perception. In hypothesis testing, we found reducing realism consistency did not make objects appear less familiar, but only animals and humans, thereby eliciting cold, eerie feelings. Next, structural equation models elucidated the relation among realism inconsistency (measured objectively in a two-dimensional Morlet wavelet domain inspired by the primary visual cortex), realism, familiarity, eeriness, and warmth. The fact that reducing realism consistency only elicited cold, eerie feelings toward anthropomorphic characters, and only when it lessened familiarity, indicates the role of perceptual narrowing in the uncanny valley.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.