The field of robotics and 3D animation generated a counter-intuitive theory in the 1970’s called the Uncanny Valley. The premise was that as non-human things, like robots and cartoons, initially become more human in their appearance and behavior, people tended to empathize with them and enjoy interacting with them more. But as they became very close but not quite human, a creep factor comes in that actually generates a feeling of revulsion. So things that are 100% human or 60% human get a warm positive reaction, while things that are 90% human get a strongly negative reaction.
Things that fall into the Uncanny Valley include corpses, zombies, and Polar Express-like animations. Early previews of the Shrek movie actually led the makers to make the Princess Fiona character less realistic and more cartoony to avoid falling into the Uncanny Valley. The effect has been noted many times, and various theories abound as to what causes it. The most popular explanation is that it triggers our evolutionary impulse to identify unhealthy humans. Our genes don’t want to mate with or catch a contagious disease from a sick human. So when we sense something that’s really close but not quite human, it triggers an instinctual reaction to avoid it.
Big Data is about to enter an Uncanny Valley of its own. As we get better at tracking people’s behavior and interests, the potential is to create an individualized experience. We can be more relevant, responsive, and more human. But the better we get at doing that, the closer we get to the creep out factor. An experience that falls in-between partially individualized and entirely individualized will likely generate the most negative reaction. Ironically, this pattern would predict the complaints around data-based marketing will increase as we get better at creating more human interactions. To avoid falling into the Uncanny Valley, marketers will have to take a lesson from Dreamworks, and focus less on what the technology can do and more on how people truly experience it.
The Ryan Report 