![\"Image](\"https:\/\/res.cloudinary.com\/jerrick\/image\/upload\/c_fit,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_auto,w_1100\/wv9zgmvj9rpbtqi2a8l0\")
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Do you often find yourself talking to things that can\u2019t respond? \u00a0What about not wanting to throw things away because you\u2019ll hurt their feelings? \u00a0Do you give inanimate objects personalities? \u00a0If you answered yes to any of these questions, you anthropomorphize! \u00a0Also, your amygdala is probably fine and you probably aren\u2019t autistic.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anthropomorphism is when people attribute human-like features, physical and mental, to non-human agents. \u00a0Most definitions include religious deities in non-human things, but I\u2019m not going there right now, so let\u2019s focus on non-human animals, and non-animal objects instead.<\/span><\/p>\n I know I personally think everything has a personality. \u00a0I think all numbers have distinct characteristics as well as relationships with other numbers. \u00a0I hardly ever use the word it, because I assume the gender of practically everything, alive or not, that I encounter on a daily basis. \u00a0I have been told that most people don\u2019t really take their anthropomorphic tendencies this far, but I figure most people can benefit from some general information on the topic. \u00a0Namely, what happens in our brains when we anthropomorphize, what the difference is between anthropomorphizing and recognizing faces, and what it means to anthropomorphize in today\u2019s society. \u00a0Buckle up, folks.<\/span><\/p>\n Image<\/a> of Carlie Day of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” looking like he’s trying to explain Theory of the Mind<\/p><\/div>\n Psychologists spend a good deal of time lookin\u2019 around in people\u2019s brains to find out what does what. \u00a0When researchers first started looking at brain structure and anthropomorphism, they found that there was a lot of overlap between the parts of the brain that were activated during anthropomorphism and the parts of the brain that were already known to account for the Theory of Mind (Cullen, et al., 2013). \u00a0Theory of Mind is the ability to think from the perspective of another or understand someone else’s motives.\u00a0 For example, when your friend says something kind of mean to you out of the blue you might be a little upset, but you also know that she just recently got some bad news and is probably in a bad mood. \u00a0This is you understanding the feelings of someone else and then applying them to that person’s actions. \u00a0In addition to seeing that there was overlap between what parts of the brain were involved in Theory of Mind and anthropomorphism, researchers found that people with damage to the amygdala (another part of the brain involved with Theory of Mind) actually had deficits in anthropomorphism (Waytz, et al,. 2014). This finding started to demonstrate that brain structure wasn’t just coincidentally linked to anthropomorphic tendency, but could actually impact how well a person could anthropomorphize. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The red in this image<\/a> indicates the location of the amygdala<\/p>\n Researchers wanted to see if they could prove this causation to a larger extent so they conducted a study where they compared brain structure to anthropomorphic ability. \u00a0What they found was that people with an increased volume of grey matter in the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) were better able to anthropomorphize (Cullen, et al., 2014). \u00a0These findings make sense because previous studies correlate volume of grey matter with Theory of Mind work as well. \u00a0These findings are important because they demonstrate that anthropomorphism can be tied directly back to brain structure (Cullen, et al., 2014). In other words, when people tell you to stop treating everything like it has feelings, you can say, \u201cI can\u2019t help it! \u00a0I have a lot of grey matter!\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Okay so, we know what anthropomorphizing is and where in the brain it takes place, but how do we know the difference between applying personality traits to things that don’t have personalities and applying past memories or understandings to a certain image. \u00a0Well, a study by Kuhn and colleagues honed in on what\u2019s going on when people look at cars, and it helps answer that question. \u00a0You totally know what I mean when I say, that car is a pretty girl, that one is a strict dad, etcetera. \u00a0If you think I\u2019m wrong, go watch the movie Cars. \u00a0But the study questioned if people were really accessing their Theory of Mind areas when they made these attributions. \u00a0What the results showed was a strong indication that they weren\u2019t. \u00a0Instead, people are actually using the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) (Kuhn, et al., 2014), \u00a0which is a part of the brain that basically functions to find faces, even when they aren\u2019t faces. \u00a0People are so good at recognising these face patterns that the phenomenon has its own name: pareidolia. \u00a0You can read more about that here<\/a>. \u00a0But basically, pattern recognition in the car-face-situation is that you see a car, your FFA acts up and bam you have an association. \u00a0So, in other words, people are matching a pattern found on the car to a stereotype of a person (Kuhn, et al., 2014), but they ARE NOT USING THEORY OF MIND OR ANTHROPOMORPHISM! \u00a0What would be anthropomorphic behavior is when your car won’t start and you think she is doing it on purpose because she knows you’re already late and she heard you bad mouth her. \u00a0In fact, to further prove that seeing faces in things IS NOT ANTHROPOMORPHISM other studies (Chaminade, et al., 2014) argued that appearance doesn’t even really matter in anthropomorphism. \u00a0What matters more has to do with things like movement and actions. \u00a0Movement and actions light up Theory of Mind areas, faces, real or imagined, light up the FFA. \u00a0An example of this is the association people have with thunderstorms. \u00a0Dark clouds seem imposing and threatening, almost as if they are coming to get you, but that’s because they move in a creepy way, not because they have an ominous face. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So why does this matter? \u00a0Well, information about anthropomorphism is actually pretty useful. \u00a0In an evaluation sense, it can be helpful to assess how children are at mentalizing, or understanding others, and an anthropomorphic deficit can be an indicator of autism (Chaminade, et al., 2014). \u00a0Think also of marketing strategies; many rely on anthropomorphism to sell their product. \u00a0Think of all of the commercials for insurance. \u00a0Often these commercials make things like fire or floods seemingly actively trying to hurt homeowners. \u00a0Obviously, these are natural disasters, but giving them scary or threatening personalities makes them a villain and makes the insurance company a hero for saving you from that villain. \u00a0The consequences of anthropomorphism also tie into legal activities, including but not limited to animal rights laws. \u00a0For example, even though some companies rely on animal testing\u00a0because people anthropomorphize animals so strongly and are so worried about their feelings and safety, laws are put in place to protect them (Chaminade, et al., 2014).<\/span><\/p>\n For many of us, anthropomorphizing is a major part of everyday life. \u00a0Maybe you think everything in the room has feelings like I do, or maybe you just think the printer is super slow on purpose because it wants to make you late to class. \u00a0Either way, now you have a name for what\u2019s going on\u00a0and know a little more about it. \u00a0Enjoy the fun new info. \u00a0Tell your friends!<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Image](\"http:\/\/25.media.tumblr.com\/tumblr_lqcwarmhBs1qkhk6do1_500.png\")
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![The more you know<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\nReferences:<\/p>\nChaminade, T., Rosset, D., Da Fonseca, D., Hodgins, J.K., & Deruelle, C. (2015). Anthropomorphic Bias Found in Typically Developing Children Is Not Found in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Autism,<\/i> 19.2, 248-51.<\/p>\nCullen, H., Kanai, R., Bahrami, B., & Rees, G. (2014). Individual differences in anthropomorphic attributions and human brain structure. <\/span>Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci,<\/span><\/i>\u00a09, 1276-1280.<\/span><\/p>\nK\u00fchn, S., Brick, T.R., M\u00fcller, B.C.N., & Gallinat, J. (2014). Is This Car Looking at You? How Anthropomorphism Predicts Fusiform Face Area Activation when Seeing Cars. PLoS ONE,<\/em> 9(12).<\/span><\/p>\nWaytz, A., Cacioppo, J., & Epley, N. (2014). Who Sees Human? The Stability and Importance of Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism. Perspectives on Psychological Science\u202f: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science<\/i>, 5<\/i>(3), 219\u2013232<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do you often find yourself talking to things that can\u2019t respond? \u00a0What about not wanting to throw things away because you\u2019ll hurt their feelings? \u00a0Do you give inanimate objects personalities? \u00a0If you answered yes to any of these questions, you anthropomorphize! \u00a0Also, your amygdala is probably fine and you probably aren\u2019t autistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80219,266316,80218],"tags":[266352,130381,266383],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3078"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3788,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions\/3788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/GD6qtc2_AQA\/maxresdefault.jpg\"){kind=link}