A bit off topic and hopefully not to detract from your work, but I remember Clemson U for their ballin' automotive engineering program. Saw your guy's Formula SAE team at Michigan last season.

It's pretty darn cool they offer a curriculum based on human centered computing. Wasn't aware that was a separate field until I watched this lol.

Cool! For the most part the different departments don't interact with each other, but I am proud to know that Clemson's covering some pretty darn exciting things! c:

Human Centered Computing is actually in the Computer Science Department, alongside Digital Production Arts and the C.S. degrees. I'm glad you learned something! ^^

Hey Bering! Thank you tons for the detailed comment! :P

I want to test how morally affected/attached people get to characters of different realisms(Would you be more likely to save a furry or a robot from a train, etc. XD) And there are no results yet! This is a question I want to tackle this semester, so I'm starting with making 3-D model hands(of different realisms) that you can control with motion capture gloves, to make sure the technology can be applied to full body characters.

I also didn't realize I'd be getting so many questions afterwards, so I'll ask about if we can set up a camera in the room next time. ^__^ And I don't have a Nyxis fursuit(Yet!) But THAT'S A GREAT IDEA. OMG.

...*Adds the song to her pop drawing playlist* >w<

There might be an uncanney valley effect! =) It's definitely on my list of possibilities to keep in mind.

Nyxis fursuit will have to come when I'm not doing college--or at least, over a summer. I've thought about just buying one, but no, I'm too picky about all the possible custom details to leave the task to anyone but me. XP

Thanks for posting! Yay research!

Playing Skyrim the other day I noticed that I kill humans without worry, but if there is an Argonian or Khajiit bandit I try to figure out how to avoid killing. Because they are suddenly unique. I wonder how much perceived uniqueness has to do with it. I mean, with no prior context at all a cartoonish human feels sort of iconic and unique so we might want to preserve it more. But in a world of caroon humans, some few more realistic ones might be unique and worth saving.

This is REALLY interesting! Although I haven't played it myself, my advisor has brought up Skyrim and mods as potential research resources(And if I played, I have a feeling I might be reluctant to kill the animal people too XD).

Thank you for sharing!

Yeah, it's not a perfect example since anyone on a site called Fur Affinity might have a predisposition against killing the cat-people. I'm attributing it to uniqueness just because I've seen studies on the psychological effect of perceived uniqueness before.

But I do think making 'cartoony' characters is somewhat about making them feel unique. Well, I suppose cartoons have large eyes and round heads, and are clearly appealing to some instinct regarding children; cartoon characters are meant to be relatable, and apparently we make easier emotional connection with kids, which makes sense. But any sort of character design, including cartoonifying, also tries to make the character unique. An artist wants them to be easily recognized. So I guess I'd argue (without much evidence mind you...) that, like I said above, without further context a cartoon-ified person is going to feel somewhat unique and worth saving.

So let's see, how many variables are involved here... Realism is what you want to study. Realism seems like a 'real' variable to me thanks to that study on people being more judgmental about the realism of the movements when the model being moved was more realistic. But what is the relationship between cartoonyness and realism? Intuitively speaking, we would say that cartoon figures are less realistic. But would a cartoon make people less critical of the realism of the motion, the same way the robot or the dots did in that study?

Of course, cartoonyness is intimately connected with cuteness, the third important variable. Maybe cute yet realistic things would be a good control; like kittens, or little kids. That way realism could be tested more independently.

And then (perceived/relative) uniqueness is a marginally relevant variable. Mainly it's just another thing which might alter moral response, though personally I think it's automatically tied in with peoples' reaction to aliens or cartoons or whatever random figure you throw at them.

Imagine someone is participating in the gait study and sees several gait/character combinations in a row (dunno if the study was set up that way; it would make sense to show each subject only one combo). And then they see one more gait, but the animation is clearly different from the others. Like maybe it's a much faster or more athletic run, or maybe the runner actually stumbles a bit. No matter what sort of difference there is, the test subject will 'perk up' so to speak and take a fresh look at things. They will come up with new criteria to judge realism on, or they will judge realism solely on the perceived difference (the stumbling runner might be more realistic, even if it has other flaws). Of course I haven't tested that but I'm saying it's a plausible reaction.

Would perceived uniqueness of the character model have the same effect? If the subject didn't realize the animation was independent of the model, it might. And anything which can influence realism judgments can potentially influence moral attachment.

Anyway, on with the listing of variables... I recall a study showing teams who wear red are quite simply more likely to win sports games, even after controlling for skill etc. The idea was mentioned that there could be an instinct making people more merciful when they see red, to help stop combat when the opponent is already bleeding. So color is potentially a meaningful variable for moral response.

I guess attractiveness would be, too. Aren't people instinctively nicer to others with good looks? I'm sure I've seen results like that... Ah, and perceived similarity to self. If a character has a trait which you also have, that can make a difference. Oh and what if you had to name the character?...

OK so there are a bunch of variables and it seems like it would be easy to think of more, though clearly they need not all be relevant. The point is, what would it show to do something like the train scenario with different combinations of the variables? Sure maybe some people would tend to save a realistic human over a cartoony one... but there might also be more complicated effects such as degree of 'moral engagement'. Like suppose people are very rational about one type of character, and save the larger number of that people; but with another, they have the drive to save but also feel more guilty about killing the smaller number.

That's something I suppose, but in truth I don't think these trolley scenarios tell you a lot. The decisions people actually make in games are part of a larger situation. For example you might not want to kill the unique character on sight because unique characters tend to give out quests. Or a character reacting to a situation with realistic actions (eg, gestures, emotions, speech) is probably not a combatant and need not be killed. I guess the most useful goal would be to determine what *type* of realism (ie, as you say, not just degree of realism) gets people morally engaged in a manner comparable to real life, since the people most worried about this would be writing sims that train firefighters or some such. From a storytelling perspective too, we want to know what gets people engaged...

Which makes me think the spectrum of realism should include giving characters clear goals and character traits, and other such tricks games use to engage the audience. Maybe testing those 'storytelling' types of realism against more physical-type realism like movement or appearance.

OK, I've rambled long enough, sorry. :P You'll figure out your own way about all of this.

Sounds interesting, I might read it. :)

Actually though I think both tendencies exist: fear the unknown / shun the different, versus preserving that which is unique and being curious about those who are different. It's hard to tell which one would come to the fore if we encountered aliens. It would all depend on the way it happened.

I think the human moral response depends on a few factors. Upbringing, for one. If you are raised to hate robots, you will. If you are raised around robots, you probably wouldn't.

It also depends on personal moral codes in general. If someone was in danger, I'd save them if I could do so with a reasonable possibility for success. I'd prefer not to throw my life away for nothing.

In video games, I like to be as evil and violent as possible, yet I would never act that way if it was the same scenario in real life. Like Fallout. I like playing the bad guy because I can. Though in reality I think I'd try to be as good of an alignment as I could, because of the way I try to live my life.

I'm a sucker for cute things, I know I am. If a care bear was in danger, I'd try and save it.

I think third, it also depends on the situation. If you see a guy stained in blood with a knife standing in front of said train, you'd probably think it was a good thing that he gets hit based on the information at hand.

Of course, in general, there's the old rule that humans fear what they don't understand, and things like ET may work out in movies, but in reality, it probably wouldn't be that family friendly.

Thank you for your thoughts. =)

It's always tricky to isolate the things you want to study, and indeed there are a lot of branching questions and complications that can go into exploring something like this. But someone's got to do it; I hope I find something new. =)

Good luck with it!

My basic philosophy in life is 'don't be a d*ck'. If I can help you, I will. If I can save your life without dying myself, I will. I don't make life harder than it needs to be on others if I can help it, and the only reason I might let someone not live is if they'd shown repeated intentional misconduct sans remorse. With luck I'll never need to test that philosophy, but there are people....

Right, right. But there are also scenarios where you may have the option of only saving one person or another(For example, a train is going out of control, sending it down the right track would kill a human, sending it down the left track would kill a furry. Would people rather save the furry or the human? Would their choice change if they talked to one or the other before the train runs loose?) It's very much about asking you to make difficult decisions on the spot, and if priority in people as a whole can be generalized to preferring to save a certain one, I am interested as a story-writer in exploring why that is!

Well, of course putting a furry in the equation sort of makes it a 'furry' question. I've observed that if you ask a non furry about furry, you'll get a different answer. Kind of like how Hollywood makes werewolf movies versus how the fandom would, with likely more friendly or at least conversational werewolves. It's something that always bugged me a little. 'Mundane' views of furry. I could be wrong, normal people could surprise me and save the furry, but my guess would be they'd be species centric.

Personally, it's hard to answer spontaneously, I think the surest way would be to actually do it, but then you'd become Jigsaw and things would get illegal real fast. LOL.

My priority would be to save as many as possible, and if you had to choose, it would possibly depend on who that person was, 'your bff vs a stranger', but insofar as just a general case, I'd have to answer too little information. It's like asking chocolate or vanilla, preferences that are subjective and situational possibly (did I just make up a word?).

I guess I can't be too helpful here. LOL.

There's a contrast with sandbox games like Saint's Row, where you're required to take a casual approach to violence against characters: the insurance scam game where you try to have yourself flung impossibly far and violently, the general violence and all.

I was a bit confused about the tail thing - if the tail is uncontrollable, it's necessarily going to be harder to avoid damaging it, and the sort of hip-based control sounds more like secondary motion than an actual limb.

*nodnod* If it's not a game with that kind of context though, participants will default to what they would normally do in real life. I'm sure experiments could be made to see what kind of context in games lets someone decide on when violent behavior is acceptable.

Here's the .pdf to the tail experiment, if you'd like clarification on that as well: http://publicationslist.org/data/me.....38/steptoe.pdf

Ah... I see. OK, interesting.