Freud once wrote of a concept called the ‘Unheimliche’, (Arnzen, para. 2), also known as the Uncanny, describing it as ‘an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange’. (Wikipedia, “The Uncanny”, para. 1) He went on to discuss the emotional response and psychological implications of the not-quite right, theorizing that the uncanny was a reaction to unconscious fears that reassert themselves upon our psyche when we glimpse an individual or experience a situation that is perceived as somewhat off, or not completely real. This uncomfortable feeling is most often seen when individuals encounter death and dead bodies, and arises from the fear of the return of those who are dead, our own death, and the appearance of ghosts (Freud, para. 15). In Freud's view, the apprehension felt when one encounters the uncanny is instinctual, and it is firmly ingrained within our perception of the world.

"Madame Tussauds' waxworks are a good example of the phenomenon, ...for all the detail that goes into their models, you can't help thinking that something is not quite right.” (AGE, para. 6)

General definitions of the Uncanny aside, in this website we are most interested in the use of Freud's concept within Mashahiro Mori’s ‘Uncanny Valley’ (Bryant, para.1), a theory regarding how humans identify with robotic or near-human beings that he developed in 1970. Shown below, the uncanny valley graph documents a series of reactions that can be identified into three parts. The first zone, seen in the initial rise of the graph (reading from left to right) and cutting off before the line abruptly falls, is graphed on a scale of a robot’s increase in realism, ranging from not realistic to indistinguishable from human. The rise or fall of the line indicates a human observer’s empathetic response to this level of realism. The theory begins on the premise that robots that have some human characteristics, but are still obviously not human, receive a forgiving amount of empathy from humans, as we can identify with their few human traits without having contend with the moral implications of a near-human form. Like a beloved pet, the robot’s human behaviours are endearing, but it is still obviously a different, often cute, being. (Wikipedia, “Uncanny Valley”)

“When an android, such as R2-D2 or C-3PO, barely looks human, we cut it a lot of slack. It seems cute. We don't care that it's only 50 percent humanlike. But when a robot becomes 99 percent lifelike—so close that it's almost real—we focus on the missing 1 percent. We notice the slightly slack skin, the absence of a truly human glitter in the eyes. The once-cute robot now looks like an animated corpse. Our warm feelings, which had been rising the more vivid the robot became, abruptly plunge downward. Mori called this plunge "the Uncanny Valley," the paradoxical point at which a simulation of life becomes so good it's bad.” (Thompson, para. 2)

In the centre of the graph lies the infamous valley mentioned above; the empathy scale abruptly plummets, and the robot’s design crosses the line from well rendered into the creepy realm of almost human but not quite. Before this level of realism, individuals identified with the robot’s human-like characteristics, but now they are focused on the elements of its design that separate it from being human at all. The robot is “no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a good job at pretending to be human, but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person”. (Wikipedia, “Uncanny Valley”, para. 4)

The last section of the graph is the upthurst of empathy as the robot’s design becomes the most human, and the last remnants of creepy discrepancies are removed. As the outside observer can no longer distinguish the robot from another human, the level of human empathy skyrockets beyond any they had given to the lovable robotic version, and becomes on par with the level of empathy they would give to any other human. The lower portions of the scale represent a robot that the interacting human would realize is a robot, but not be able to find any mistake with, empathy is higher, but apprehension is still rampant, as this concept is still somewhat disquieting, if not terrifying. Later, as the graph shoots up to its highest point, the robot is no longer known to be a robot, and there is no way to tell that it is not human.

Now that the basics of the Uncanny Valley concept have been covered, you can explore each zone of it in detail by clicking on the part 1, part 2 and part 3 links below.