Investigating the effect of visual realism on empathic responses to emotionally expressive virtual humans

With the remarkable improvement in technical systems for generating realistic virtual humans, there comes a requirement to quantify the effects that different aspects of realism can have on users. The study outlined here sought to advance research on emotion perception and virtual humans by assessing basic empathic responses to high fidelity emotionally expressive characters. We report findings on participants experiences of cognitive, affective and compassionate empathy, as well as measurements for the uncanny valley at two levels of visual realism. We find that the levels of emotion expressed by virtual humans within our study influenced ratings of empathy and the uncanny valley, with positive and negative valence having significant effects on empathic responses and perceived appeal. We discuss these findings in relation to studies which have measured empathy responses to animated characters, as well as notable differences in uncanny valley measurements.