We used two different body design features relating to a virtual beaver. The virtual beaver was designed with an artificial body (virtual robot animal) and a natural body (virtual animal) design. The four experimental conditions were: (11) artificial body with expressiveness (i.e., virtual robot animal with emotional facial expressions), (12) artificial body with non-expressiveness (i.e., virtual robot animal without emotional facial expressions, (21) Natural body with expressiveness (i.e., virtual animal with emotional facial expressions), (22) natural body with non-expressiveness (i.e., virtual animal without emotional facial expressions). The control condition: (33) an amorphous figure as a virtual character.

The main questions: (1) Can the design appearance of the virtual animal affect the emotional facial expressions of the participants? (2) Which emotional facial expressions are displayed during each condition? (3) Which emotions are reported by the participant and by software during a distress event? (4) What is the relationship between empathy, immersion and emotional facial expressions elicited by the software?

FaceReader, 8

Additional documentation and metadata can be found in the file "Data Report Study II.pdf". Method: The description of the procedure and other materials can be consulted in this previous article outlining this second study (Sierra et al., 2020). Subsequently, this methodology is sharpened to focus on the analysis of the video dataset recorded for exploring subjects’ facial expression recognition. Universe: A total of 100 adult participants (50 female and 50 male) aged between 18 and 29 years (M=22.47, SD=2.91) participated in the experiment. Universe: A total of 100 adult participants (50 female and 50 male) aged between 18 and 29 years (M=22.47, SD=2.91) participated in the experiment. They received course credit for their participation. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five groups (see Stimulus section for details on the groups).