Toward Understanding the Effects of Virtual Character Appearance on Avoidance Movement Behavior

This virtual reality study was conducted to assess the impact of the appearance of virtual characters on the avoidance movement behavior of participants. Five experimental conditions were examined. Under each condition, one of the five different virtual characters (classified as mannequin, human, cartoon, robot, and zombie) was studied. Each participant had to experience only one condition and was asked to perform the collision avoidance tasks two times. During the walking task, the motion of participants was recorded. After finishing the collision avoidance segment of the study, a questionnaire that examined different concepts (emotional reactivity, emotional contagion, attentional allocation, behavioral independence, perceived skill, presence, immersion, virtual character realism, and virtual character unpleasantness) was distributed to the participants. Based on the collected measurements (avoidance movement behavior and self-reported ratings), we tried to understand the effects of the appearance of a virtual character on the avoidance movement behavior, and its possible correlation to subjective ratings. The results obtained from this study indicated that the appearance of the virtual characters did affect the avoidance movement behavior and also some of the examined concepts. Additionally, participant avoidance movement behavior correlates with some subjective ratings.