Differences in the Uncanny Valley between Head-Mounted Displays and Monitors

The uncanny valley describes a relationship between the degree of the emotional response with respect to a character's resemblance to an actual human being. It has been a topic for several decades and has been discussed by scholars of different disciplines and in various aspects such as robotics, 3D computer animations, interactive applications, and even lifelike dolls. With the increasing popularity of photo-realistic computer animation and telepresence applications, we are more and more exposed to characters that might be affected by the uncanny valley effect. Recent research suggests that the output medium, such as a monitor or head-mounted display, can have a significant effect on how we perceive given visualizations. In relation to the uncanny valley, we observe a similar effect in our study: characters appear significantly more eerie as well as humanlike when watched on a head-mounted virtual reality headset instead of a monitor. The amplification we see is similar to the findings that the uncanny valley effect is more pronounced when the respective characters are in motion.