Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about why we as humans derive fear from things that look almost human, but not fully. There are a lot of theories attempting to explain the unsettling feeling, but I haven’t been able to settle on one.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about why we as humans derive fear from things that look almost human, but not fully. There are a lot of theories attempting to explain the unsettling feeling, but I haven’t been able to settle on one.
Comments
Welcome to r/TrueAskReddit. Remember that this subreddit is aimed at high quality discussion, so please elaborate on your answer as much as you can and avoid off-topic or jokey answers as per subreddit rules.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
I heard it comes from the fact that early man lived with different species of homonid. They looked kinda like us but… off. They actually represented a threat to early man so whoever was more keen to the threat most likely passed on those traits. I heard that the uncanny valley is a holdover from that time.
Because they look like humans gone wrong, and we don’t like going wrong.
On a reptile brain level, we are deciding if we want to have kids with that thing.
Humans are very strongly geared not only to recognize faces, but to read even tiny “micro expressions” in other humans. Most of the things that provoke that uncanny valley effect fail in that essential facial mobility.
Which may be why we think folks that have had a lot of “work” done look somewhat repulsive….
As one person already mentioned, probably from when our ancestors walked side by side with other species of hominids. I suspect the interactions generally did not end well.
Do you know what causes an animal to look just off from normal in an incredibly sinister way that frequently results in violence or shocking self-harm?
Brain prion diseases.
We have a very strong evolutionary ick to things that act like they have prion disease and for excellent reasons. Just look up how rabid deer act and tell me you wouldn’t shit yourself if you saw a dead-eyed human doing that.
Most likely, we developed the uncanny valley to avoid corpses. Hanging around corpses is dangerous because whatever killed the corpse (predator, disease) can easily kill us too.
I see a parallel between uncanny valley in human representation, and Hollywood special effects. Neither of these feel problematic if the artist isn’t trying to be realistic. South Park doesn’t have an uncanny valley, because its not trying to fool anyone. Neither is Japanese anime.
But as the artist tries harder to fool the eye into seeing a human being, it gets harder and harder to be convincing. Just as realistic scenery and explosions and magic stunts, get harder to pull off, once movies start including visual trickery.
Its one reason directors like to use a bunch of different tricks in rapid succession, so as not to let the audience get used to the “tells” of any single technique. They’ll jump from using puppets, to CGI to matte painting all so its harder for us to tell how we are being fooled.
I’ve seen some animals fooled by stationary decoys of their species and react with negativity or caution.
My best guess is that the perception of an uncanny valley is an ancestral trait (it evolved in a common ancestor rather than in Homo sapiens). As others mentioned, it could be helpful in keeping distance to diseased or dead individuals.
If it was an ancestral trait, my guess would be that perceptual clues are in conflict, resulting in an inability to confidently identify the thing as safe or familiar.
The term “uncanny valley” comes from a 1970 essay by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori titled “Bukimi no Tani” or “valley of eeriness”. It is a reference to the point where the artificial thing gets closer and closer to appearing human, which we feel better about, but then reaches a dip, or valley, where it is too close but still not there. That reverses the sense of comfort and creates the uneasiness.
I don’t think the uncanny valley is based on fear. I think that’s a made up very modern take on it. Nobody my age (early 40s) is afraid of human looking things with unnatural eyes or whatever. We just notice it’s not human.
I suspect we’ve repurposed the idea because younger people have been trained to be afraid of literally anything older than them or that isn’t perfectly natural. PS1 graphics automatically scare young people for some reason, regardless of context. Old photographs, porcelain dolls, freaking liminal spaces scare the crap out of kids now.
So I think the premise is off. I don’t think we’re inclined to fear it, just notice it. The fear is a modern invention of people trying to get views.
I hope you’ll find your answer somewhere. I was going to reply, but I realized I’d be pulling stuff from my shoe like everyone else here instead of pointing to the factual information you need.
Data point: im pretty sure dogs have it too. A dog that likes people and is chill around general noisy environments with a lot of novelty (like a city park) is often scared or aggressive or at least suspicious of a person on rollerblades. Looks like a person, sounds like a person, doesn’t move like a person, do not like.
There are a lot of answers here about it being an evolved trait to protect us from human-shaped dangers but I think that it might just be an extension of a broader human characteristic.
We look for patterns to save brain cycles. When things don’t conform perfectly to the pattern that we’ve assigned them, it bothers us. This could be kernning, a picture hanging skew, or another human that doesn’t act exactly as we predicted them to.
Probably wired into our brain from when home sapiens existed alongside other hominins like Neanderthals and Denisovans. Home sapiens likely played a part in their extinction. They were human-like, but not human, therefore they were an enemy
I don’t know why everyone jumps to the conclusion that there was an evolutionary benefit. Humans are good with visual patterns. Really good at picking “the odd one out”.
Give someone a picture of 1000 perfect squares, but make one of them a squircle, and most sighted people will be able to pick it out of the group incredibly quickly.
Similarly so, people (generally) are amazing at interpreting facial expressions. Instinctually, without training. Now make them look at the human equivalent of a squircle, and of course it will feel off to them.
Take a look at studies of the effects of uncanny valley on autistic people, they experience it at a much lower rate. Same for people with low levels of empathy.
Uncanny valley exists because we’re used to reading people from their natural visual cues, and robots / bad animation are missing them.
[removed]
The biggest factor I can think of is that it could be helpful for disease avoidance and mate selection
Another contributor could be that it’s an emergent trait from all of these general pattern recognition and preferences we have… Like in a lot of areas of life, especially prehistoric life, it seems like it could be helpful to have a preference for either known safe patterns and things or novel things, but not slightly “off” things
And of course, if enough people shunned those who provoked the uncanny valley feeling from our ancestors then it also becomes evolutionarily beneficial to instinctively shun them too, so that you don’t also get shunned. Like a secondary factor giving the first reason disease avoidance and mate selection, more weight