Citation

Abubshait A, Momen A, Wiese E. Proc. Hum. Factors Ergon. Soc. Annu. Meet. 2017; 61(1): 870-874.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1541931213601690

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Uncanny Valley (UV) hypothesis states that agents that look humanlike but are not perfectly human elicit feelings of eeriness in human observers, associated with negative ratings of mind, trust and likability. However, empirical evidence for the UV is sparse and individual dispositions are not considered to moderate the UV. The present study assesses whether dispositions like empathy, social reasoning and mentalizing skills moderate the UV during a task that requires rating agents of varying degrees of humanness in terms of likability, trust and the capability of having a mind. Nested model comparisons showed that ratings of likability, trust and internal states followed a UV pattern, but that this pattern was not further moderated by individual differences in empathy, social reasoning or mentalizing abilities. These results indicate that the UV is a robust phenomenon when assessing attitudes towards agents of varying degrees of humanness that is not dependent on specific individual preferences or abilities.

Language: en