Facial expressions play a crucial role in modulating the emotional responses in the viewers. Touch is an important factor in shaping human emotions and social communication. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of viewing and touching a virtual emotional face on the emotional responses of a viewer/toucher. In the case of touching the model, the effects of physical properties, namely stiffness and texture, are examined. Emotional facial expressions for neutrality, anger, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise, and sadness are developed and experimentally validated for the visual stimuli whereas four combinations of stiffness/texture properties are examined for the physical properties (low/high stiffness and smooth/rough texture). 25 participants viewed and touched the virtual emotional face and reported their respective emotional responses. The results showed that watching angry, happy, surprised, and sad faces significantly increased their anger, happiness, surprise, and sadness levels, respectively (p < 0.05). Watching a scared or a sad face significantly modulated the participants’ surprise levels (p < 0.05). On the other hand, viewing and touching an angry face significantly reduced the surprise level in the toucher (p < 0.05). As for differences based on physical properties, our results suggested that viewing and touching the disgusted face significantly modulated sadness. In particular, high stiffness/rough texture condition resulted in a significant increase in sadness while viewing and touching the disgusted face, compared to the high stiffness/smooth texture condition (p < 0.01). These conclusions suggest that viewing and touching an emotional face in a virtual environment modulates the emotional responses in the viewer/toucher. Findings of this study help the field of virtual reality to expand to a greater understanding of building emotionally compelling interpersonal interactions in the virtual environments.

面部表情在调节观众的情绪反应中起着至关重要的作用。触摸是塑造人类情感和社交交流的重要因素。这项研究的目的是调查观看和触摸虚拟情感面孔对观看者/触摸者情感反应的影响。在触摸模型的情况下，将检查物理属性（即刚度和纹理）的影响。针对中性，愤怒，恐惧，恐惧，厌恶，幸福，惊奇和悲伤的情感面部表情得到开发，并通过视觉验证了视觉刺激，同时对刚度/质地特性的四种组合进行了物理特性检查（低/高刚度和平滑/粗糙）质地）。25位参与者查看并触摸了虚拟的情感面孔，并报告了各自的情感反应。结果表明，看着生气，高兴，惊讶和悲伤的面孔分别显着增加了他们的生气，幸福，惊奇和悲伤的程度（p  ＜0.05）。看着害怕或悲伤的脸显着调节了参与者的惊奇程度（p  <0.05）。另一方面，查看和触摸生气的脸会大大降低触摸屏中的惊奇程度（p  <0.05）。至于基于物理特性的差异，我们的结果表明，观看和触摸恶心的脸部可以显着调节悲伤。尤其是，与高刚度/光滑纹理状态相比，高刚度/粗糙纹理状态导致在查看和触摸厌恶的脸部时，悲伤感显着增加（p <0.01）。这些结论表明，在虚拟环境中查看和触摸情感表情会调节查看者/触摸者的情感反应。这项研究的发现有助于虚拟现实领域扩展到对在虚拟环境中建立令人信服的人际互动的更深入的了解。