Unease beyond the uncanny valley: How people react to the same faces
Researchers examined people's emotional response to cloned faces, which
could soon become the norm in robotics

Date:
August 30, 2021
Source:
Ritsumeikan University
Summary:
If humanoid robots with the same appearance are mass-produced
and become commonplace, how will human beings react to them? In a
series of six experiments, scientists examined peoples' reactions
when presented with images of people with the same face. Their
results reveal a new phenomenon they call the clone devaluation
effect -- a greater eeriness associated with cloned faces than
with different faces.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Increasingly, movies featuring humanoid robots, like Terminator or
Ex Machina, are showing the titular "robot" akin to humans not only
in intelligence but also appearance. What if Terminator-esque robots
became the norm, making it difficult for us to tell them apart from
actual human beings?

==========================================================================
This is the premise of a new study published in PLOS ONE, which evaluated
how human beings respond to images of people with the same face. It
is not too far- fetched to imagine a future where human-like androids
are mass-produced and are indistinguishable from flesh-and-blood
human beings. Robotics and artificial intelligence are advancing at
an unprecedented rate, with very closely human- like robots and CG
characters, such as Geminoid, Saya, and Sophia already having been
produced. Developers are optimistic they will one day create robots that surpass the uncanny valley -- a well-known phenomenon where humanoids
elicit unpleasant and negative emotions in viewers when their appearance becomes similar to that of humans.

In such a future, how would we react? A team of researchers from Kyushu University, Ritsumeikan University, and Kansai University, collaboratively conducted a series of six experiments involving different batches of
hundreds of people to try and find that answer.

The first experiment involved rating the subjective eeriness, emotional valence, and realism of a photoshopped photograph of six human subjects
with the exact same face (clone image), six people with different faces (non-clone image), and one person (single image). The second experiment comprised rating another set of clone images and non-clone images, while
the third experiment consisted of rating clone and non-clone images of
dogs. The fourth experiment had two parts: rating clone images of two sets
of twins and then rating clone faces of twins, triplets, quadruplets,
and quintuplets. The fifth experiment involved clone images of Japanese animation and cartoon characters. And the sixth and final experiment
involved evaluating the subjective eeriness and realism of a different
set of clone and non-clone images while also answering the Disgust Scale Revised to analyze disgust sensitivity.

The results were striking. Participants from the first study rated
individuals with clone faces as eerier and more improbable than those
with different faces and a single person's face.

The researchers termed this negative emotional response as the clone devaluation effect.

"The clone devaluation effect was stronger when the number of clone
faces increased from two to four," says lead author Dr. Fumiya
Yonemitsu from Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies at
Kyushu University, who is also a Research Fellow of Japan Society
for the Promotion of Science. "This effect did not occur when each
clone face was indistinguishable, like animal faces in experiment
three involving dogs." According to him, "We also noticed that the
duplication of identity, that is the personality and mind unique to
a person, rather than their facial features, has an important role in
this effect. Clone faces with the duplication of identity were eerier,
as the fourth experiment showed. The clone devaluation effect became
weaker when clone faces existed in the lower reality of the context,
such as in the fifth experiment. Furthermore, the eeriness of clone
faces stemming from improbability could be positively predicted by
disgust, in particular animal-reminder disgust, as noticed in the sixth experiment. Taken together, these results suggest that clone faces induce eeriness and that the clone devaluation effect is related to realism
and disgust reaction." These results show that human faces provide
important information for identifying individuals because human beings
have a one-to-one correspondence between face and identity. Clone faces
violate this principle, which may make humans misjudge the identity of
people with clone faces as being the same.

So, what does this mean for a future in which humanoids are inevitable? According to the researchers, we need to think critically about
introducing new technology in robotics or human cloning because of the potential for unpleasant psychological reactions other than the uncanny
valley phenomenon.

"Our study clearly shows that uncomfortable situations could occur due
to the rapid development of technology. But we believe our findings
can play an important role in the smooth acceptance of new technologies
and enhance people's enjoyment of their benefits", observes co-author
Dr. Akihiko Gobara, Senior Researcher from BKC Research Organization of
Social Science at Ritsumeikan University.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Ritsumeikan_University. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
*
An_edited_photo_shows_one_of_the_study_author's_face_as_an_example_of_a
clone_image.

========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Fumiya Yonemitsu, Kyoshiro Sasaki, Akihiko Gobara, Yuki Yamada. The
clone
devaluation effect: A new uncanny phenomenon concerning facial
identity.

PLOS ONE, 2021; 16 (7): e0254396 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254396 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210830104914.htm

--- up 16 weeks, 3 days, 22 hours, 45 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1:317/3)