A perceptual study on the manipulation of facial features for trait portrayal in virtual agents

Human perceptual studies have shown that facial characteristics affect judgments about the personality of a person. For example, larger facial width has been associated with judgments of aggressiveness, dominance, and untrustworthiness. Previous studies of virtual faces have not been able to reflect the same perceptual rules, but have used characters with unrealistic feature sizes or highly abstract characters. For this study, we created virtual characters with realistic feature dimensions and investigated the effects of facial width and eye size on personality perception. Our results indicate that virtual characters may indeed follow different perceptual rules for facial width, and care must be taken when manipulating eye size. These findings are useful for effective character design for video games, movies, and embodied virtual agents.