Uncanny sociocultural categories

Frontiers in Psychology

Jordan R. Schoenherr¹ 

关键词: uncanny valley;    cultural artifacts;    categorical perception;    categorization;    social identity;    cultural transmission;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01456

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Humans are well adapted to their social environments. Experimental evidence suggests that humans are either born with, or quickly learn, the necessary affective and cognitive processes that allow them to recognize others, and to understand their mental states and social behavior. Mori's (1970) proposal of an uncanny valley, which describes affective response as a function of distance from a human category defined by morphological and behavioral features (i.e., human likeness), appears to be a sensible extension of these ideas. Following Mori's initial proposal, the uncanny valley has largely been considered in the context of cultural artifacts such as robotics, prosthetics, toys, and puppets. He associated “healthy people” with the greatest level of familiarity and positive affect, prosthetic hands and corpses with a global negative affective maximum, and bunraku puppets and humanoid robots with intermediate levels of familiarity and positive affect. It is important to note that these cultural artifacts represent the most contemporary features of human societies. The uncanny valley likely depends on extensions of prepotent responses to stimuli via general learning mechanisms (e.g., face recognition; Haxby et al., 2002; Sperber and Hirschfeld, 2004). Empirical studies of the uncanny valley have just begun to explore the authenticity of Mori's proposal.

【 授权许可】

CC BY