Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces

As virtual humans approach photorealistic perfection, they risk making real humans uncomfortable. This intriguing phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, is well known but not well understood. In an effort to demystify the causes of the uncanny valley, this paper proposes several perceptual, cognitive, and social mechanisms that have already helped address riddles like empathy, mate selection, threat avoidance, cognitive dissonance, and...