Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not

Source record macdorman-chattopadhyay-2016 · 2016 · Cognition
Evidence tier: B (peer-reviewed-journal) · Verification: verified-abstract (compiler confidence: high)
Bottom line: Reducing realism consistency made humans and animals (not objects) eerier and colder; the most category-ambiguous stimuli were neither the eeriest nor the coldest, contradicting the category-uncertainty account.

Citation

Karl F. MacDorman, Debaleena Chattopadhyay (2016). Reducing consistency in human realism increases the uncanny valley effect; increasing category uncertainty does not. Cognition, 146, 190-205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.019

Verification entry (identifiers, resolvers, claims with source locations): /data/citations.json#macdorman-chattopadhyay-2016

Study design

Field	Value
Design	Three rounds of experiments; categorisation and ratings of humans, animals and objects from computer-animated to real; realism consistency reduced by manipulating feature sets (for humans: eyes-eyelashes-mouth vs skin-nose-eyebrows)
Modality	cg-face
Stimuli	Human, animal and object continua from computer-animated to real
Participants (N)	548
N detail	across three rounds
Topics	uncanny-valley, mechanisms

Results

Metric	Value	Note
Realism inconsistency → eeriness/coldness	increase for humans and animals; not objects
Max category uncertainty → eeriness	no peak	Jentsch (1906) predictions not supported

Mechanism relevance

perceptual-mismatch, against-categorization-ambiguity

Limitations

CG stimuli
Online samples

Cited in

MR-0002: The Uncanny Valley and Synthetic Media: Does It Exist, What Causes It, and Have Deepfakes Crossed It?

Verification

Field	Value
Status	`verified-abstract`
Compiler confidence	high
Checked on	2026-10-07
Via	Semantic Scholar API abstract

Values on this page have not all been checked against the full text. Confirm them against the primary source before high-stakes use.