Effects of avatar's blinking animation on person impressions

ABSTRACT

Blinking is one of the most important cues for forming person impressions. We focus on the eye blinking rate of avatars and investigate its effect on viewer subjective impressions. Two experiments are conducted. The stimulus avatars included humans with generic reality (male and female), cartoon-style humans (male and female), animals, and unidentified life forms that were presented as a 20-second animation with various blink rates: 9, 12, 18, 24 and 36 blinks/min. Subjects rated their impressions of the presented stimulus avatars on a seven-point semantic differential scale. The results showed a significant effect of the avatar's blinking on viewer impressions and it was larger with the human-style avatars than the others. The results also lead to several implications and guidelines for the design of avatar representation. Blink animation of 18 blinks/min with a human-style avatar produces the friendliest impression. The higher blink rates, i.e., 36 blinks/min, give inactive impressions while the lower blink rates, i.e., 9 blinks/min, give intelligent impressions. Through these results, guidelines are derived for managing attractiveness of avatar by changing the avatar's blinking rate.

REFERENCES

• 1: Argyle, M., Lefebvre, L., and Cook, M. The meaning of five patterns of gaze. European Journal of Social Psychology, 4, 125--136 (1974).
• 2: Baylor, A. L. The impact of pedagogical agent image on affective outcome. In Proc. Workshop on Affective Interactions: Computers in the Affective Loop, International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, (2005).
• 3: Baylor, A. L., Rosenberg-Kima, R. B., and Plant, E. A. Interface agents as social models: the impact of appearance on females' attitude toward engineering. In Proc. CHI 2006, ACM Press, 526--531 (2006).
• 4: Cook, M. and Smith, J. M. C. The role of gaze in impression formation. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 14, 19--25 (1975).
• 5: Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., and Ellsworth, P. Emotion in the human face: guide-lines for research and an integration of findings. New York Pergamon Press (1972).
• 6: Fukayama, A., Ohno, T., Mukawa, N., Sawaki, M., and Hagita, N. Messages embedded in gaze of interface agents - impression management with agent's gaze -. In Proc. CHI 2002, ACM Press, 41--48 (2002).
• 7: Garau, M., Slater, M., Bee, S., and Sasse, M. A. The impact of eye gaze on communication using humanoid avatars. In Proc. CHI 2001, ACM Press, 309--316 (2001).
• 8: Garau, M., Slater, M., Vinayagamoorthy, V., Brogni, A., Steed, A., and Shasse, A. M. The impact of avatar realism and eye gaze control on perceived quality of communication in a shared immersive virtual environment. In Proc. CHI 2003, ACM Press, 529--536 (2003).
• 9: Harrigan, J. A. and O'Connell, D. M. How do you look when feeling anxious? Facial display of anxiety. Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 205--212 (1996).
• 10: Harris, C. S., Thackray, R. I., and Shoenberger, R. W. Blink rate as a function of induced muscular tension and manifest anxiety. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 22, 155--160 (1966).
• 11: Hess, E. H. The tell-tale eye: how your eyes reveal hidden thoughts and emotions. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold (1975).
• 12: Itti, L., Dhavale, N., and Pighin, F. Realistic avatar eye and head animation using a neurobiological model of visual attention. In Proc. SPIE, 5200, 64--78 (2003).
• 13: Kawano, S. and Kurokawa, T. Facial and head movements of a sign interpreter and their application to Japanese sign animation. ICCHP 2004, 3118, 1172--1177 (2004).
• 14: Lee, S. P., Badler, J. B., and Badler, N. I. Eyes alive. In Proc. SIGGRAPH 2002, 637--644 (2002).
• 15: Mori, M. Bukimi no tani [The uncanny valley]. Energy, 7(4), 33--35 (1970).
• 16: Nowak, K. L. and Rauh, C. The influence of the avatar on online perceptions of anthropomorphism, androgyny, credibility, homophily, and attraction. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11 (1), 153--178 (2005).
• 17: Omori, Y. and Miyata, Y. Eyeblinks in formation of impressions. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 83(2), 591--594 (1996).
• 18: Omori, Y. and Miyata, Y. Estimates of impressions based on frequency of blinking. Social Behavior and Personality, 29(2), 159--167 (2001).
• 19: Osgood, C. E. The nature and measurement of meaning. Psychological Bulletin, 49(3), 197--237 (1952).
• 20: Parise, S., Kiesler, S., Sproull L., and Waters, K. My partner is a real dog: cooperation with social agents. In Proc. CSCW 1996, ACM Press, 399--408 (1996).
• 21: Patterson, M. L., Churchill, M. E., Burger, G. K., and Powell, J. L. Verbal and nonverbal modality effects on impressions of political candidates: analysis from the 1984 presidential debates. Communication Monographs, 59, 231--242 (1992).
• 22: Pelachaud, C., Badler, N. I., and Steedman, M. Generating facial expressions for speech. Cognitive Science, 20(1), 1--46 (1996).
• 23: Persson, P. Exms: an animated and avatar-based messaging system for expressive peer communication. In Proc. GROUP 2003, 31--39 (2003).
• 24: Seyama, J. and Nagayama, R. S. The uncanny valley: effect of realism on the impression of artificial human faces. Presence, 16(4), 337--351 (2007).
• 25: Stass, J. W. and Willis, F. N. Eye contact, pupil dilation and personal preference. Psychonomic Science, 7, 375--376 (1967).
• 26: Stern, J. A., Walrath, L. C., and Goldstein, R. The endogenous eyeblink. Psychophysiology, 21(1), 22--33 (1984).
• 27: Shioiri, T., Someya, T., Helmeste, D., and Tang, S. W. Misinterpretation of facial expression: a cross-cultural study. Psychiatry Clinical Neuroscience, 53(1), 45--50 (1999).
• 28: Su, W.-P., Pham, B., and Wardhani, A. High-level control posture of story characters based on personality and emotion. In Proc. IE 2005, 179--186 (2005).
• 29: Walker, J. H., Sproull, L., and Subramani, R. Using a human face in an interface. In Proc. CHI 1994, ACM Press, 85--91 (1994).
• 30: Yee, N., Bailenson, N. J., and Rickertsen, K. A meta-analysis of the impact of the inclusion and realism of human-like faces on user experiences in interfaces. In Proc. CHI 2007, ACM Press, 1--10 (2007).
• 31: Zanbaka, C., Goolkasian, P., and Hodges, L. Can a virtual cat persuade you? The role of gender and realism in speaker persuasiveness. In Proc. CHI 2006, 1153--1162 (2006).

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.1 Project and People Management
          Subjects: Life cycle

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.7 THE COMPUTING PROFESSION
      K.7.m Miscellaneous

Keywords:
blinking, character, computer-mediated communication, facial animation, graphics, psychology