What is "Uncanny Valley"?

Attention: This article has a great number of horrible pictures! If you are brave enough, feel free to read it.

Recently I came across a the conception of Uncanny Valley. Unexpectedly, it has answered my doubts for many years! Have you ever wondered why the horrid images in horror films can make people feel terrible? Is it really because they are too ugly?

1. There are many categories of "fear".

"Terror, "fear" and "creepy" are not exactly the same feeling.

For example, when you see a cliff, you feel the fear of falling. Being threatened by someone with a knife, you feel strong hostility and fear. Or walking on a dark path, you feel afraid because of lack of security. Those fears are very straightforward.

From this point of view, creepiness is a state of uncertainty, a state of inability to judge whether the other party is hostile or threatening. So you may know that the simplest way to generate a creepy feeling is through "the inability to let people judge your intention".

If people usually judge each other's intentions by facial expressions, wearing masks is obviously a good choice to hide what they want. Take the following two pictures for example:

You may sense the strangeness in the two pictures. And because of the masked people, the pictures seem not that simple as well. The more you look at it, the more uncomfortable you feel. But it is hard to tell why.

2. The theory of "Uncanny Valley" has been studied for a long time.

There are two kinds of things that people fear (excluding abstract concepts):

1. Things that are very different from yourself;

2. Things that are very similar to yourself with slight differences.

The first kind of fear is generated by the unknown. While the second kind is still controversial, but it may be related to the defensive psychology generated in the process of human evolution. Physical deformities may lead to disease, and the probability of death caused by contact with them will increase significantly. Such defensive psychology makes humans feel a sense of fear of human-like and non-human individuals.

In 1969, Japanese robot expert Masahiro Mori proposed what later generations called the "Uncanny Valley Theory":

1. Because robots are similar to humans in action and appearance, humans will have a positive emotion towards them. As the degree of similarity increases, this emotion will also increase.

2. However, when the degree of similarity reaches a certain level, people will be extremely disgusted with it, and their liking will drop sharply. This is "Uncanny Valley".

3. When the degree of similarity continues to rise, the human's favorable feeling towards it will return to the positive and continue to rise.

3. Horror features consistent with the theory of "Uncanny Valley".

Warning: The following images may cause discomfort!

To put it simply, the explanation for "Uncanny Valley" is that people's liking and disgust for non-humans suddenly decrease when they approach humans. And three main conditions must be met:

1. Showing a living trait or thought.

2. The appearance is 100% clear that it is an abnormal human being.

3. The specific purpose of the expression cannot be speculated.

Take this picture for example:

Another example is this very famous one. Teddy with human teeth, makes the smile surprisingly creepy. This picture is also taken as an example of a video about "Uncanny Valley" on YouTube.

In fact, the "Uncanny Valley" effect takes time to commence, and it is not as stimulating as that caused by frightening or bloody or horrible ghosts. In fact, this has seldom applied in ghost movies now. A classic example is the masks in various thrillers, such as: