Mortality salience and the uncanny valley

It seems natural to assume that the more closely robots come to resemble people, the more likely they are to elicit the kinds of responses people direct toward each other. However, subtle flaws in appearance and movement only seem eerie in very human-like robots. This uncanny phenomenon may be symptomatic of entities that elicit a model of a human other but do not measure up to it. If so, a very human-like robot may provide the best means of finding out what kinds of behavior are perceived as human, since deviations from a human other are more obvious. In pursuing this line of inquiry, it is essential to identify the mechanisms involved in evaluations of human likeness. One hypothesis is that an uncanny robot elicits an innate fear of death and culturally-supported defenses for coping with death's inevitability. An experiment, which borrows from the methods of terror management research, was performed to test this hypothesis. Across all questions subjects who were exposed to a still image of an uncanny humanlike robot had on average a heightened preference for worldview supporters and a diminished preference for worldview threats relative to the control group

I. Introduction

An experimental apparatus that is indistinguishable from a human being, at least superficially, has the potential to contribute greatly to an understanding of face-to-face interaction in the social and neurosciences. Such a device could be a perfect actor in controlled experiments, permitting scientists to vary precisely the parameters under study. It could also serve as a testbed for cognitive theories, including theories about how the brain acts as a control system in mediating whole-bodied communication. The device would also have the advantage of having the physical presence that simulated characters lack. Unfortunately, no such device yet exists, nor will one any time soon; nevertheless, robots are being built that with each new generation more closely simulate human beings in appearance, facial expression, and gesture [11][9][10]. They are capable of eliciting some of the kinds of responses that people direct toward each other but not toward mechanical-looking robots.