http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/the-uncanny-valley-what-robot-theory-tells-us-about-mitt-romney/252235/
The GOP front-runner looks just enough like the perfect picture of an American president to make us uncomfortable.
Mitt Romney is the storybook presidential candidate. He's successful, good-looking and a family man, to boot. Yet one of this political season's enduring puzzles has been the former governor's consistent inability to bond with voters. It's been suggested that Romney's robotic persona may be to blame -- and perhaps the analogy isn't far off. Much as people are repulsed and disturbed by automatons that mimic humans closely but imperfectly, Romney inexplicably turns voters off despite looking like the textbook image of an American president. Roboticists call this unsettling effect "the uncanny valley" -- and Romney is stuck deep at the bottom of it.
If the past year's media coverage of Romney tells us anything, it's that the electorate is attempting to reconcile conflicting impressions of the man. Romney is defined by two, now-familiar narratives. One focuses on the candidate's naturally presidential demeanor. The other examines his decidedly unnatural comportment in the presence of ordinary people. For the most part, Team Romney has successfully ignored the tension arising from these contradictory signals. But the style problem is one they'll have to face sooner or later -- particularly if Romney wins the GOP nomination, as he trails Obama on likeability and in fact tends to become less liked the more exposure he gets.
How a candidate of Romney's pedigree could cut such an unsympathetic figure has become a minor obsession in the media. Explanations range from his association with the corporate one percent to his willingness to contradict himself on key issues. All these are true, but the underlying dynamic governing our reaction to his controversial affiliations and positions is a completely natural psychological response to competing stimuli -- one that's best summed up with a technological metaphor.
In robotics, researchers have observed that as an object acquires human-like properties, more at link
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