ATHOS: a dATabase of 48 3D Human virtual characters with non-emOtional facial expreSsion for virtual reality

An increasing number of studies in the Human and Social Sciences and Information and Communication Technologies and Sciences are conducted in virtual reality. Many of them use 3D human-like computer-generated characters in order to study social interactions in healthy participants, or the effect mental illness or neurological disorder on social cognition. However, free access to virtual characters is still not straightforward with often a lack of psychological evaluation of available characters. We present here the ATHOS database composed of 48 Caucasian male and female virtual characters with non-emotional facial expression available in the FBX file format. For each of them, we provide an evaluation in terms of valence, reliability, sympathy and sociability. Concerning these evaluations, inter-rater reliability analysis revealed a good degree of agreement among raters (between 0.85 and 0.98) and a cluster analysis highlighted a division of the virtual characters into three groups (low, medium and high evaluation scores). The ATHOS database of virtual characters, available in open access, can be used for many different purposes including the development of social immersive virtual environments, cognitive assessments or even rehabilitation programs in the health domain.