Previous studies showed that perceived animacy from object movement using simple figures (i.e., Heider & Simmel, 1944 American Journal of Psychology 57 243–259). Other studies using a single figure suggested that the complexity and animacy on the object movement operating change timing, change frequency, and acceleration increased the preference to the object (Matsuda et al., 2010 8th Congress of the Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology), showed that observers could estimate the common emotion from the simple object movement (Tomikawa & Oda, 2009 The Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers 33 1–4). The perception of emotion to the object movement might influence the increase of preference with perceiving animacy in Matsuda et al. (2010). This study examined the perception of the six basic emotions (Ekman & Freisen, 1975 Unmasking the Face) on object movement using the paradigm in Matsuda et al. (2010). As a result, evaluation scores for “happiness” and “surprise” increased in a high frequency condition, and scores for “sad” increased in a low frequency condition. This result seemed to affect the increase of preference to the object with complex movement in Matsuda et al. (2010). Evaluation scores for the emotion needed for the subject to feel it—such as “anger”, “disgust”, and “fear”—were low for each condition. Also, in comparison with other emotions, evaluation scores for “surprise” were similar to the scores for animacy in Matsuda et al. (2010). This result seems to show that the perception of “surprise” contributed to the perception of animacy on a single object movement.
