Believability Author: Elena Pasquinelli [INSTNICOD] Contributors: Current version (on 2005-07-11) In normal cases one does not notice that the real world is going on in a believable fashion: the real world is trivially believable. But in some situations perceptual experience appears to be bizarre to the perceiver, i.e. when a paradox is perceived, when a conflict is experienced or when experience is inconsistent with acquired knowledge. These situations are associated with a reaction of surprise, which is more or less strong depending on the contents of the experience and on the attitude of the perceiver. Also, appropriate responses to the environment are suspended by a sort of paralysis of actions [Stein & Meredith, 1993] It is hence when expectations are unfulfilled or coherence is violated that the problem of believability arises. In these circumstances, one is not disposed to form a (true) belief. One hence judges the experience as unbelievable. Conversely, the judgment of believability corresponds to the condition of being disposed to hold beliefs susceptible of being true. The notion of believability, however, is more in use in the characterization of virtual and fictional context than in the realm of natural experience. Believability is an objective for experiences in mediated interactions with fictional or artificial environments, in analogy with Presence. Whether a film is judged to be nonbelievable, audiences are deceived and might want to stop the projection. A non-believable experience in VR can produce a lack of the desired responses in the user. Is believability in virtual and fictional contexts the same thing than believability in real ones? An influential current in philosophy states that the appropriate reaction to fictional contents proposed through different traditional media is not the production of beliefs, but the production of imaginings: an activity of imagination [Walton, 2001; Currie, 1995]. This activity shares a number of analogies with the activity of believing, at the point that it can be considered as a form
of simulation of having beliefs that preserves the connections within beliefs and between beliefs and behaviours [Currie, 1995]. The same consideration can be extended to virtual contents, since, as traditional media, virtual reality produces representations that are intended (by the authors or designers of the experience) to produce certain effects in the users or spectators. These effects are as varied as emotional involvement, appropriate perceptual responses (object recognition, patterns identification), appropriate motor actions (reaching, walking, exploring), appropriate cognitive behaviours (learning, judging). Believability in fictional and virtual contexts cannot hence be characterized in terms of the susceptibility to produce beliefs, but rather in terms of the susceptibility to raise imaginings that correspond to the intentions of the authors of the experience, or that put the user in the condition of behaving (at the emotional, perceptual, motor and cognitive level) in the way auspicated by the authors of the experience. The reference to the intentions of the authors of the experience – in association with the possibilities that the medium makes available - helps defining the appropriate effects that are expected from believable experience (visual perceptual identification cannot be expected from radio, motor interactions cannot be expected from cinema, walking with one’s own legs cannot be expected from many virtual reality systems), hence designing suitable instruments for the evaluation of believability in subjective and objective terms. As in the case of believable or unbelievable experiences in the real world, violations of coherence and the frustration of expectations have a dramatic effect upon believability in fictional and virtual worlds, because they make it difficult for users and spectators to interpret what is happening [Bordwell, 1985; Davidson, 1984]. For this reason, the fulfilment of users’ expectations and coherence and the presence of appropriate reactions constitute the basic elements for a characterization of believability which is at the same time minimalist (it does not consist of a list of indications, but of two basic principles from which indications can be extracted in relationship to different contexts and contents), operational (it allows to provide indications for the enhancement of believability and for its evaluation) and general (it applies to real, virtual and fictional contents).
References: Bordwell, D. (1985). Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Currie, G. (1995). Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidson, D. (1984). Inquiries into truth and interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walton, K. (2001). Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts.: Harvard University Press.
Related items: Expectations
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