Results

I had a total number of 57 people participating in the questionnaire within a three-day period from May 10th to May 13th 2008. A number of 33 participants were male, 21 were female and three participants did not indicate their gender. The majority of participants (34) were between 21 and 30 years old. Eleven participants were between 11 and 20 years old and ten participants were between 31 and 30 years old. Two participants were between 61 and 70 years old.

The first emotion people had to guess was anger. A total number 0f 50 people got the emotion right when only seeing it displayed upon the head of the character. This number dropped to 48 with the inclusion of the body. Consequently the majority of participants (34) indicated that the inclusion of the body did not clarify the emotion.

The next emotion displayed upon the character was sadness. When only displayed upon the head, 31 participants guessed the emotion correctly. A significant number of 13 mistook it for disgust. With the inclusion of the body however, 47 people guessed the emotion sadness right and only two mistook it for disgust. Not surprisingly a number of 46 sad that the inclusion of the body clarified the emotion.

The thirst basic emotion portrayed was fear. When watching fear displayed upon the head, 23 people indicated it as fear. The majority of people (30) mistook it for surprise. When being portrayed upon the body however, 51 participants got the emotion right and only a tiny number of 2 mistook it for surprise. Accordingly, fifty people indicated that the inclusion of the body helped them to guess the emotion.

The fourth of the six basic emotions in this questionnaire was surprise. While 16 people mistook it for fear when seeing the emotion being displayed upon the head, 34 people guessed the emotion correctly. Once again, with the inclusion of the body the emotion portrayed was clarified (a number of 45 indicated that). With the inclusion of the body, only 4 people mistook the emotion for fear, while 49 indicated it was surprise.

For the fifth question the emotion disgust was portrayed. When seeing it only through facial expressions, a big majority of 50 people guessed the emotion correctly. However, with the inclusion of the body this number dropped to 36. A surprising number of 14 mistook the emotion for surprise when seeing the body as well. Consequently, a majority of 30 participants believed that the inclusion of the body was not beneficial.

The last emotion portrayed was happiness. The emotion was guessed correctly when being portrayed upon the head by almost everybody (54). But similarly to question number five this number dropped to 42 when seeing happiness being portrayed upon the body as well. People started mistaking the emotion for surprise. The majority (42) believed tat the inclusion of the body did not clarify the emotion.
When cross-referencing gender with the percentage of incorrect answers it becomes apparent that only 19% of all the answers of the male respondents were wrong, whereas 24% of the answers of the female respondents were not correct. A cross-reference of the indicator age with the percentage of incorrect answers cannot give scientifically insightful answers due to the small number of the sample in each age bracket.