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The attribution of emotional state: How embodiment features and social traits affect the perception of an artificial agent
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Division of Visual Information and Interaction. Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology, Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Information Technology, Computerized Image Analysis and Human-Computer Interaction. (Uppsala Social Robotics Lab)
Univ Paris Saclay, Telecom ParisTech, LTCI, F-75013 Paris, France.
Sorbonne Univ, Inst Syst Intelligents & Robot, CNRS, UMR7222, Paris, France.
Sorbonne Univ, Inst Syst Intelligents & Robot, CNRS, UMR7222, Paris, France.
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2018 (English)In: Proc. 27th International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, IEEE, 2018, p. 495-502Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Understanding emotional states is a challenging task which frequently leads to misinterpretation even in human observers. While the perception of emotions has been studied extensively in human psychology, little is known about what factors influence the human perception of emotions in robots and virtual characters. In this paper, we build on the Brunswik lens model to investigate the influence of (a) the agent's embodiment using a 2D virtual character, a 3D blended embodiment, a recording of the 3D platform and a recording of a human, as well as (b) the level of human-likeness on people's ability to interpret emotional facial expressions in an agent. In addition, we measure social traits of the human observers and analyze how they correlate to the success in recognizing emotional expressions. We find that interpersonal differences play a minor role in the perception of emotional states. However, both embodiment and human-likeness as well as related perceptual dimensions such as perceived social presence and uncanniness have an effect on the attribution of emotional states.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IEEE, 2018. p. 495-502
National Category
Human Computer Interaction
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-398384DOI: 10.1109/ROMAN.2018.8525700ISI: 000494315600079ISBN: 978-1-5386-7980-7 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-398384DiVA, id: diva2:1375659
Conference
RO-MAN 2018, August 27–31, Nanjing, China
Available from: 2018-11-08 Created: 2019-12-05 Last updated: 2020-09-06Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. The Novelty in the Uncanny: Designing Interactions to Change First Impressions
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Novelty in the Uncanny: Designing Interactions to Change First Impressions
2020 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

In 1970, Japanese researcher Masahiro Mori published a seminal paper where he hypothesized that robots that appear human-like but are still distinguishable from being human would not attract people towards them, but instead cause an uncanny sensation. This phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley effect, has been widely studied within the social robotics community, and a multitude of experiments have since been conducted supporting Mori's hypothesis. The specifics of a robot's appearance and behavior leading to such an uncanny sensation, however, remain an open research question and require further study. These gaps in the causal relationship between uncanny feelings and a robot's design have lead uncanniness being increasingly used to explain any lack of enthusiasm towards robots, both in the scientific community and the general public. It is then often implicitly assumed that uncanny feelings towards a robot have damaging consequences for long-term human-robot interaction. Most empirical studies on the subject, however, focus on still images or short video clips of robots and participants are only exposed to these stimuli for small frames of time. The current literature on the uncanny valley does not thus allow a conclusion to be drawn about the persistence of uncanny feelings. This thesis addresses this gap in the body of knowledge by implementing interactive scenarios and performing a series of empirical investigations to study the development of people's uncanny feelings towards social robots over the course of one or several such interactive encounters with them. The findings suggest that novelty plays an important role in the feeling of uncanniness: Merely interacting with a robot for a brief period and thus giving human observers access to the robot's full behavioral stream lowers their rating of uncanny feelings towards the robot as compared to how they perceive it at first sight. Furthermore, repeated interactions with a robot can further lower uncanny impressions. These results contribute to the field of human-robot interaction, as they posit that increased exposure may result in limited feelings of uncanniness. This, in turn, potentially reduces the impact of uncanny feelings on long-term interactive encounters with robots. Instead of focusing on reducing the elicitation of uncanny first impressions, it may thus be more sustainable to further study how interactions can help people efficiently get to know a robot and overcome their initial reluctance towards it.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2020. p. 112
Series
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology, ISSN 1651-6214 ; 1960
Keywords
Human-Robot Interaction, Uncanny Valley, Social Robotics, Human Perception of Robots, Multimodal Behavior
National Category
Computer Sciences
Research subject
Computer Science with specialization in Human-Computer Interaction
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-418921 (URN)978-91-513-0997-2 (ISBN)
Public defence
2020-10-23, Polhemsalen, Ångströmlaboratoriet, Lägerhyddsvägen 1, 75237 Uppsala, Uppsala, 10:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2020-10-01 Created: 2020-09-06 Last updated: 2020-10-06

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Paetzel, MaikeCastellano, Ginevra

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