The Importance of Beliefs in Human Nature Uniqueness for Uncanny Valley in Virtual Reality and On-Screen

The current study had two main goals—evaluation of the impact of robot stimuli presentation type (virtual reality vs. on-screen simulation) and investigation of the relation between essentialism beliefs and the uncanny valley effect. The experiment involved a virtual café in which participants confronted four characters ranging from robotic to humanlike. The results showed that robotic characters were rated more eerie than humanlike characters. The robotic character with moderate humanlikeness received the highest eeriness rating, which was interpreted by us as evidence of the uncanny valley effect. Contrary to previous research’s suggestion, participants assessed the humanlikeness and eeriness of characters in the same manner in VR and on-screen. Our results show the importance of essentialism beliefs in attitudes toward the most eerie artificial agents. Strong beliefs in the uniqueness of human nature deepen the uncanny valley effect. Additionally, groups with and without previous knowledge of the uncanny valley effect did not differ in their assessments of variables related to this phenomenon.