PW#7 The Uncanny Valley Phenomenon

Have you ever looked at a human-looking doll or robot and felt uneasy? This may be caused by something that is called “The Uncanny Valley” phenomenon. This term is used to describe the relationship between the human-like appearance of an object and the emotional reaction it creates. Phenomenon makes people feel a sense of unease and repulsive sensations in response to humanoid figures that are highly realistic. In the modern world its quite easy to stumble across a human-like object, since their creators aim to make them as realistic as possible. But upon examination of them, people tend to notice those objects are not human enough, something is off about them. Scientists even made a graph that shows this so-called “valley”, and if the object lies in that “valley”, object’s observer may feel a sense of creepiness, disgust or unease. Everyone must’ve felt this feeling while watching some CGI scene or playing a video game or maybe even seeing it in reality – like a mannequin. They might be realistic, but if its not realistic enough u will get this uneasy feeling.
The phenomenon was first described by the Japanese robotics engineer Masahiro Mori in an article published in 1970. Mori identified the phenomenon as “bukimi no tani gensho”, meaning “valley of eeriness.” In 1978, author Jasia Reichardt translated the term to “uncanny valley” in the book “Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction.” Mori noticed that people found his robots pretty cool and realistic, but this only worked to the certain point.
There has been a number of proposed explanations for why people experience the phenomenon, but no clear explanation has been found. Some theories suggest that the phenomenon is biological, while others suggest that there are cultural explanations as well.
Mori suggests that it might be a survival response humans developed long time ago. It might mean that at some point humans needed this type of response to avoid human-like objects like, maybe, baits. As we know some animals have developed special patterns on their skin to resemble something for protection or baiting other species. So, maybe, long-long time ago there was a creature that hunted humans with its human-like looks, thats why we developed this reaction in order to avoid this type of objects.