1. EXAMPLES ABSTRACT RESEARCH QUESTIONS DISCUSSION FUTURE DIRECTIONS Very little is known about how and to what extent emotions are conveyed through avatar facial expressions. This study showed that human subjects can reach nearly 100% consensus on which emotion an avatar is expressing as long as the expression of the avatar is unambiguous. The findings were consistent through all demographic categories with the exception of age where several significant differences were found in the identification of emotion by age band. METHOD FINDINGS Participants (N=287, 226 female, 61 male; mean age = 27, SD = 8) were undergraduates from a large southwestern university who received research credit for participation. Subjects were shown images of 15 avatars on a computer screen and were asked to identify which emotion each avatar was expressing using Ekman’s (1973, 1978) scale of six emotions, including anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Participants were also able to choose “None of These” when they felt that none of the choices from Ekman’s scale was adequate identifications of the emotion being expressed by the avatar. Participants were also asked to explain why they chose a particular emotion. For additional information, please contact Fred Kuch, email: kuch@unlv.nevada.edu Paul Ekman’s cross-cultural research on the conveyance of emotion through facial expressions has shown that in both literate (i.e., those exposed to media depictions of emotion) and preliterate cultures (i.e., those who have not been exposed), general agreement exists with regard to emotions including, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. However, as many disciplines within psychology begin to use video games, virtual environments, and simulations to teach social behavior, very little is known about how and to what extent emotions are conveyed through avatar facial expressions. As the use of video games, virtual environments, and simulations to teach social behavior increases, having an evidence-based understanding of how humans perceive emotions as expressed by avatars is fundamental. This study showed that subjects could identify human emotions as expressed by avatars. However the more ambiguous the avatar’s expression, the less consensus existed. This suggests that the level of detail given to the design of avatars may be critical in order to teach social behavior, particularly among populations where interpretive challenges (e.g., autism) already exist. These findings also imply that humans use the same mechanisms to recognize an emotion whether expressed by an avatar or another human. Do Avatar-Based Facial Expressions Convey Emotion? Can human subjects identify emotions expressed by avatars? Do people agree on which emotion is being expressed by an avatar? Future possibilities include repeating this experiment with special education children to see if their perceptions of avatar emotions differ from those of college students. Another avenue of exploration to examine is to test how much or how little of an avatar’s facial features are needed to generate a judgment of emotion by a human subject. Also, qualitative analysis of the data from this study can be done. Each subject was asked to explain why they chose a particular emotion for each avatar image. Whereas this study was based on still images, would similar results be obtained for video images? We found that subjects reached nearly 100% consensus on which emotion some avatars were expressing. For other avatars, there was considerable difference due to the ambiguity of the avatar expression. We looked for differences in judgments based on demographic characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, age, GPA, experience and familiarity with MMOGs, and weekly hours of use of social media. With the exception of a very few differences based on age bands, there were no significant differences in the judgment of emotion by demographic. We had predicted general agreement with Ekman’s cross-cultural findings (1973, 1978) on the conveyance of emotion through facial expressions in both literate and preliterate cultures where general agreement was found with regard to the identification of emotion. Moreover, our findings suggest that there is no difference between human subjects’ judgment of emotion whether expressed by human faces or avatar images. College of Education 98% Surprise 60% Anger, 21% Other, 17% Disgust 57% Sadness, 23% Other, 14% Fear Fostering Social Connection: Do Avatar-Based Facial Expressions Convey Emotion? Nicholas M. Nardi, Michael P. McCreery, Ph.D. & Fred Kuch, Ph.D., UNLV This research is dedicated to mentor, colleague, and friend, Paul Jones.