Abstract
Humans form stable impressions of others' personalities, even after only a brief social exchange. But on what dynamic features are these impressions based? Previous research has focused on ratings of human actors trying to convey different personalities. In the present research we examined this question with three-dimensional animated heads that were programmed to display various emotions and dynamic movements during the delivery of an approximately 15-second voice-track that was the same in all conditions. These heads can be programmed independently at the level of morphology, emotional expression, and dynamic movement (e.g., nodding, blinking, turning). We designed four different personality types by combining two levels of affiliation (low, high) and two levels of dominance (low, high) (Wiggins et al., 1988). As a first approximation, we associated two basic emotions with each of these personalities (e.g., surprise and joy with high-affiliation, high-dominance; fear and sadness with low-affiliation, low-dominance) and we associated two dynamic head moves with each level of dominance and affiliation (e.g., frequent blinking and nodding with low dominance). Participants in Experiment 1 watched 8 different head morphologies acting out each of these 4 personalities and rated them using a standard personality adjective scales. Other participants in Experiment 2 rated the strength of the emotions. The results indicated that it is possible to implement plausible and stable personality differences in animated heads using this combination of emotional expressions and dynamic head movement.