Raise Your Eyebrows Higher: Facilitating Emotional Communication in Social Virtual Reality Through Region-Specific Facial Expression Exaggeration

要旨

While exaggerated facial expressions in cartoon avatars can enhance emotional communication in social virtual reality (VR), they risk triggering the uncanny valley effect. Our research reveals that this effect varies significantly across different emotions. In Study 1 (N=30), participants evaluated scaled facial expressions during simulated VR conversations. We found that expression exaggeration had opposing effects: it decreased facial realism for joy, surprise, and disgust due to overly dramatic mouth movements, while enhancing realism for fear, sadness, and anger—emotions that rely on upper facial expressions typically constrained by HMD pressure. Based on these findings, we developed a region-specific facial expression exaggeration strategy that enhances under-expressed upper facial features while maintaining natural lower facial movements. Study 2 (N=20) validated this approach, demonstrating enhanced emotional intensity and contagion for negative emotions while mitigating the uncanny valley effect. Our research provides practical guidelines for optimizing avatar-mediated emotional communication in social VR environments.

著者
Xueyang Wang
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Sheng Zhao
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Yihe Wang
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Howard Ziyu. Han
Carnegie Mellon University, pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Xinge Liu
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Xin Yi
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Xin Tong
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China
Hewu Li
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
DOI

10.1145/3706598.3713688

論文URL

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713688

動画

会議: CHI 2025

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2025.acm.org/)

セッション: XR and Virtual Characteristics

G314+G315
7 件の発表
2025-04-30 18:00:00
2025-04-30 19:30:00
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