Fear and Humanity in the uncanny valley

Fear and Humanity in the uncanny valley

People being afraid is a natural biological response to an external stimuli that can be dangerous, this kept our ancestors alive as being afraid of big dangerous animals taught them to flee and not mess with them.

However in todays modern age most of us don't come into contact with a huge bear in our daily life but we are still afraid by many things, this is because fear is biologically caused by experiencing something so stressful to the extent that our brains release adrenaline into our body. This either causes us to take flight and get away or stay and attempt to overpower whatever's causing distress.

Horror films cause this typical biological reaction all the time, people are exposed to things that are so unreal, violent and terrifying that the brain exhibits this response of adrenaline.

However not everything we see is dangerous and a threat to us yet we are still scared, here is an example:

This broken doll is not dangerous or could cause us any harm, it cannot move, an inanimate object should not be scary. Yet even when looking at it my skin feels itchy, posture uncomfortable and the hairs on the back of my neck stand, its an uneasy feeling of being on edge and anxious.

When a human face is altered even a small amount it speaks volumes to the levels we notice it and the amount we are unsettled by it, just as those dolls eyes are exposed it is so unnatural we are afraid.
This is the theory of uncanny valley, that the less likeness to a human something has the creepier it gets, it falls into this valley of creepy. But the further unlike us it gets and less human, it's not creepy it becomes something else altogether. There are some examples below o

Masks as mentioned in an earlier post cause a lot of fright to us, when a mask is on a face its conceals a person facial features therefore making them more unknown to us, this ambiguity makes us uneasy and questions wether this person is a friend or a foe to us. When I was 9 I received a DVD series of Dr who for Christmas which at the time my 9 year old self was crazy about. I was up especially late watching an episode by myself when I screamed and cried so loud my Dad came into the room to calm me down. The cause of this was a character called the empty child, a small boy with a gas mask, wondering about and uttering 'are you my mommy' when he touches you, you grow a gas mask through the holes in your face and become lifeless. I only know this because I rewatched the episode when I was 18.

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