Experiments have shown that the "sinister valley" effect occurs in childhood, and babies do not yet feel any dislike for anthropomorphic robots.
The Sinister Valley Hypothesis indicates that robots and objects that look very similar to humans, but do not accurately copy them, cause us disgust and dislike. However, the effect turned out to be a purely cultural phenomenon: experiments with children showed that the youngest still do not find anything sinister in such robots. University of Michigan psychologist Kimberly Brink spoke about this work in an interview with NPR.
The effect of the "sinister valley" was noticed by Japanese researchers back in the late 1970s, who showed that the more a robot looks like a person, the more attractive it seems to us, but the most humanoid ones turn out to be unexpectedly unpleasant. The reasons for this phenomenon are unclear, but it may not be as deeply "wired" in our psyche as it was thought.
Kimberly Brink and her colleagues interviewed 240 children between the ages of 3 and 18: they were shown videos of three different robots and asked to describe their attitude towards them. One of the machines looked like a classic robot (like everyone's familiar from the Wall-E cartoon), the other looked like a man, and the third looked like a combination of both.
It turned out that the kids still do not feel any dislike for humanoid machines at all: changes occur at about nine years. This, according to scientists, indicates that the effect of the "sinister valley" develops with age. According to them, from the point of view of the child, robots have their own “consciousness” (as indicated by their anthropomorphism) is very attractive. Conversely, for an adult, the “consciousness” of a robot and its ability to act independently is more of a frightening thing.
Sergey Vasiliev
