Do We Perceive Emotional Gender Gesture of Virtual Avatar As Intended?

Abstract

This study aimed to examine how the user correctly perceives the avatar's gesture emotional status as intended for a target emotion. The designer needs to decide which emotion is challenging to develop for the user's perception. The experiment variables were emotional expression and gender specificities. We developed expressing virtual avatars for emotional expression—fear, sadness, joy, and anger combined with gender. As a total eight types of emotional gesture was provided to the experiment. Eighty-five college students (29 males and 56 females) participated in evaluating the avatar animation. Repeated measures were applied to identify any differences between emotion and gender factors. Participants saw the videos expressing emotion by the gesture of the mock-up avatar. The results indicated that sadness, joy, and anger gestures could express target emotion. However, the fear gestures could be perceived with sadness emotion. Also, there were interaction effects with gender and emotions. The sad female gesture was perceived as more sorrowful than a male gesture. Joy was perceived significantly more with female gestures than with male gestures. The male gestures were perceived with considerably more fear than the female gestures. However, anger gestures did not have any interaction.