Anthropomorphism: Human Traits in Objects

Anthropomorphism means the attribution of the behaviour or character of a human to an object, animal, or a god (Kim and McGill, 2011). This essay is going to analyse whether anthropomorphism is good or bad from a psychological perspective.

According to Kim and McGill (2011), it is more likely that people who usually feel powerful can beat diseases like cancer. Kim and McGill (2011) conducted research on anthropomorphism and the tendency of people to attribute the characteristics of humans, their behaviours or intentions to objects which are non-human. They found a downstream consequence of the anthropomorphism concept which extends past simple liking of objects or products especially those with physical features that are humanlike. These researchers pointed out that previous studies have shown that most consumers often like objects which they view to have human characteristics. Kim and McGill (2011) further investigated the impact that anthropomorphism had on the risk perception.

They analysed people’s assessment of the associated risks of a machine used for gambling and illness and how the risk perception may differ depending on anthropomorphising. These researchers discovered that participants in the study who recently remembered an incident when they felt strong or powerful perceived a smaller risk toward the gambling machine and were likely to play the game when this machine had humanlike features. In contrast, those who felt weak or powerless said they felt a higher risk in playing the game and were not willing to take part in the game especially when the machine had humanlike features.

Further, Kim and McGill (2011) discovered that individuals who felt stronger or powerful said that they felt they could control cancer better when the illness was attributed to evil intention humanlike characteristics intending to hurt people. On the contrary, individuals who said they felt powerless believed that they were not able to control the disease when it was given humanlike attributes. After reversing the situations in another experiment to attempt and find if risk perceptions would have an impact on human likeliness of anthropomorphizing which depend on these individuals feeling of being strong or powerful, they found that participants who had low power anthropomorphised after losing the gambling game while those who felt stronger or powerful anthropomorphised after winning the gambling game.

Stephanie-Pappas (2010) examined why people dress their pets. They started with examples of dressing Chihuahuas with sweaters and giving hurricanes names, referring to the economy as sick. According to Stephanie-Pappas (2010), humans properly understand what a person is made off from a biological perspective. However, from the standpoint of psychology, humans are all mixed up. In this regard, Stephanie-Pappas (2010) say that individuals do not give human characteristics to objects because they act or look like a human. They do it to feel like they are connected or are in control of their environment.

Stephanie-Pappas (2010) note that researchers have studied anthropomorphism concerning attributing human traits to objects that are non-humans as an accuracy issue. Stephanie-Pappas (2010) look at the work of Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) who looked into things that make people anthropomorphize, right or wrong. Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) found that most of the reasons why humans anthropomorphized were selfish as it makes them feel as if they are control of their environment.

In their study, Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) asked people to construct an essay that describes various everyday items or objects like they had human attributes or were humanoid. One group described objects as they are, objects. The people who produced anthropomorphized essays said later that they had a better understanding of those objects as compared to individuals who produced straightforward pieces. Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) argue that when people are dealing with certain unpredictable things such as a bad economy, they often feel entirely disconnected. For this reason, one means used to make sense or feel in control of such unpredictable things is to treat them like they are familiar which most cases are a human form. Another instance of an anthropomorphism driver according to Eppley, Eyssel and Reich (2013) is loneliness.

These researchers claim that in one of their study, participant’s psychological examinations demonstrated a bleak social outlook for these people. The research showed a more significant possibility of describing God as a good friend and also gave their pet human qualities such as thoughtfulness. The researchers found the desire to affiliate and to belong particularly when humans are denied connection with other people. In these situations, they tend to form non-human connections through anthropomorphism. Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) say that it is unfortunate that the opposite of the circumstances mentioned above also occurs.

They say that individuals who often feel connected are at risk of dehumanizing other people. The participants in Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) and who had close friends rather than a stranger were likely to oppose the fact that other people had human characteristics such as feeling pain. Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) point out that their findings agree with a phrase that is common the real-world, ‘’the persecution of outsiders.’’

Stanton (1998) gave the example of the genocidal regimes like the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge which viewed their victims as pests or non-human vermin. Eppley, Waytz and Cacioppo (2007) say that whether people are concerned of the disadvantaged people treatment or the endangered species protection, anthropomorphism is significantly essential as it points out when they are fairly treated with compassion and dignity or when they are not given fair treatment.

In another research conducted by Derrida (2009), there is an abyssal variation between animals and humans. However, the notion of complete alterity does not address the scope of the scale of the present knowledge which is shared between different species. The knowledge explains the ultimate knowledge elusiveness thereby obscuring the essential distinction between the level and types of communication in interspecies. It is pointed out that while humans cannot share the experiences of another species, they can, to a considerable level share a portion of the experience through inductive inference which is an anthropomorphic process (Urquiza-Haas and Kotrschal, 2015). In this regard, some of the inference drawn is every-day and casual while some are specialised information produced through scientific research.

For instance, heterospecific research conducted on neural mechanisms and which under emotion have generated significant evidence on typical circuits which are shared by many mammalian species. Neurobiological research is an example of such studies that have produced evidence about survival operation or function mechanism also known as fear conditioning in mammals (Saxe et al., 2006). This mechanism not only allows mammals to manifest fear but also measures it. LeDoux (2012) also claim that combining a broad anthropomorphism spectrum of thinking is an induction process which starts with extremely accessible knowledge as the base of induction which is also subject to adjustment or correlation. Humans can thus learn by forming hypotheses as well as from their mistakes.

Park (2013) points out that all anthropomorphic induction is a process that is similar to all other human inquiry processes that need epistemic vigilance in all fields allowing humans to remove false conclusions or misinformation. Human anthropomorphic proclivities usually result in distortions and misinterpretations of the surrounding environment and while as humans we understand that a complete knowledge about the mind of an animal is not accessible or obtainable, the process which leads to animal mind knowledge can still be believed because it prevents us from becoming susceptible to adverse ethical and political implications (Park (2013).

Eric Kandel (2012) pointed out that making errors, predicting and inference is essential for creating a relationship with the environment including with animals. Eric Kandel (2012) say that what humans get wrong in anthropomorphism when thinking about their animals is important is important in research as it enables us to understand how the human brain controls the mind theory, that is, how mental state is attributed to the mind and has led to the isolation of a specific network structure in the brain which is interpersonal knowledge specific. This mechanism allows humans to attribute their mental states to objects, animals and other beings (Eric Kandel, 2012)

These arguments propose that the mind theory relies upon a hierarchical social information processing network in the brain. These networks consist of facial recognition, another person’s body representation, body motion analysis, simulation, and intentional action inference. Iacoboni (2005) discovered neural empathy mechanism in autistic children who could not attribute their feelings or mental states to different people and thus are not able to predict other’s behaviour.

He suggest that a human brain that is healthy has mechanisms which allow them to attribute their mental states to other beings and make predictions as a rational mental process. Eric and Kendel (2012) claim that currently there is a possibility that a considerable portion of what is understood concerning animals rely upon our brain processes which are automatic and unconscious. They further say that humans are involved in various unconscious mind-reading processes at all times. Eric and Kendel (2012) say that humans have social brains which have innate methods of acquiring social knowledge, which their evolutionary communication history with different creatures based on shared space, time and objects are possible.

Therefore, the argument that anthropomorphism is an essential part of the relationship between animals and man, and that it shows their proximity, was developed by John Berger (2009). Berger (2009) evaluated animal marginalisation in capitalism, their disappearance, and replacement by other signs. Berger (2009) also examined the manner in which animals and humans become alienated from one another. This individual argued that anthropomorphism leads to uneasiness as animals gradually disappeared causing the unease. Edith Wharton (1996) also demonstrated there are political and ethical consequences of establishing an unbridgeable abyss between animals and humans.

Derrida (2008) research was based on moral indignation. He claimed that producing, increasing or raising as well as complicating the animal and a man limit is a transgression act that results in the name limitrophy. In his work, Derrida (2008) found a continuity which is homogenous on the basis that seeing the existence of animals on the terms of humans is domination and appropriation. In this regard, there is an inherent and necessary relationship between emancipatory ethics and limitrophy. Further, Derrida (2008) claims that it is essential to distinguish heterogeneity from being accessible to heterogeneous.

Considering a broader context, the animal and human interaction, it is easy to articulate that difference has been outstanding in several political positions including naturalisation, justification and total appropriation of exploitation (Dervin, 2012). According to Dervin (2012), this is the ideological concept of otherness that is involved with dehumanising other humans, which is the opposite of an anthropomorphism process, and mainly the refusal to agree that there is a common ground that exists between ‘the other’ and ‘self.’ Dervin (2012) continues to say that limitrophy is also a discursive strategy just like othering both emerging from the point of knowledge disavowing of ‘other.’

However, othering assumes difference as the first point of the functionalist stereotyping and takes the lead in societies and groups which systematically appropriate, subordinate and exclude each other (Brons, 2015). History has shown that the world was at some point demonized, dominated and exploited by various group of individuals who often othered as brutes, primitives, savages but were also sometimes sentimentalised and glorified into an othered category that comprised of children, women, and animals. The unknown currency was used in othering in this category of animals, children, and women (Brons, 2015).

Ecofeminists say that the essential to the construction of the subjectivity of western male was the political and discursive practise of racial, cultural, unique as well as cultural hierarchization (Weedon, 2004). Weedon (2004) claim that unknowability in various specific settings can quickly become a tool of exploitation as it affects human practise and attitudes that function to exploit one group and benefit the one who belongs. Disavowing the ‘other’ knowledge often reify unknowability to an ideology which is solipsistic and which masquerades as thinking which is enlightened, but that leads to dehumanisation and appropriation (Jerryson, 2009).

For instance, Lindqvist (1996) wrote about ‘exterminate the brutes.’ Further, in Africa, human bodies were viewed by some colonizing European countries as indifferent or indistinguishable from animals or each other (Marlow and Coclanis, 1998). In Marlow and Coclanis (1998) words, to look at a worker on the carriage or ship was like edifying like viewing a dog in a breeches parody or a feather hat strolling on its hind legs (Marlow and Coclanis, 1998). Othering and stereotyping and not accepting the human’s common heritage made Marlow and Coclanis (1998) look at humans in Africa as a group of breathing, naked quivering bodies of bronze which are not very human (Marlow and Coclanis, 1998).

He even asserted that those people were not human. A person could also perceive the slave stories where the enslaved individuals recounted their experiences regarding objects or animals. For instance, Frederick Douglass (1895), a writer and an abolitionist started his autobiographies with the story of Colonel Lloyd, his master. In this autobiographies, it is pointed out that the colonel possessed 1000 slaves and among them was Frederick Douglass. From this example, an argument can emerge that othering dehumanizes human by changing difference into an ideological hierarchy which enables a group to diminish certain other species with whom life is shared.

Anthropomorphism gives non-human objects and animals human features with significant transformative implications. While ultimate unknowability is acknowledged, the inferring and reasoning process has profound ethical and political implications. In treating agents as nonhuman or human has a massive impact on if these agents are to receive treatment as moral agents. Peter Singer (1989) argued that mammals are all equal and that reinterpretation or extension of the primary equality principles need to be passed to all mammals of the equality idea.

Peter Singer (1989) says that the current biology era is experiencing a hard time in establishing a satisfactory defence for the notion that only humans own an intrinsic quality which separates them from the other mammals. The notion of othering people is often said by individuals who have become placed at the edge of incomprehension. Whether it be humans or animals, failing to acknowledge or recognize what it feels like to be a particular being is, like is put by Sotto (2015), a means of refusing to be identified or seen by the beings. However, having to become seen by the separate other, people can concentrate on ‘us-ness’ or anthropomorphise their seeing.

Zhou et al. (2005) says that in doing so, people remember how all humans have always co-existed or lived not just through clearing land, planting or fishing but applying the imaginative human sympathy or social brain which they are endowed. Stephanie Pappas (2010) says that humans cannot think their way through the existence of different beings and that they can never have sufficient knowledge about the animal’s mind does not entirely diminish the importance that what they do or can know about those animals. Stephanie points out that it is not necessary to confine value to complete or ultimate knowledge. The process is in itself essential because it can help humans differentiate between secure knowledge and illusionary belief as well as it eliminates the possibility of alienation.

Stephanie further says that what humans do not know or understand about animals or other beings and what they get wrong concerning others to have vital importance in their right as a separate thing from acquiring ultimate certainty, for extended scrutiny processes and investigation which is an ethical and political bridge in itself.

My conclusion is that anthropomorphism is bad. It has been demonstrated that it is more likely that people who usually feel powerful can beat diseases like cancer. Research on anthropomorphism and the tendency of people to attribute the characteristics of humans, their behaviours or intentions to objects which are non-human has found a downstream consequence of the anthropomorphism concept which extends past simple liking of objects or products especially those with physical features that are humanlike. Further, it has been shown that individuals who felt stronger or powerful also felt they could control cancer better when the illness was attributed to evil intentions humanlike characteristics intending to hurt people. This essay has analysed the perspective of different researchers concerning anthropomorphism. These researchers have demonstrated that anthropomorphism hides the abyss incomprehension between non-human animals and humans. This difference fails to address the scope or extent to which existing literature points towards complete epistemological certainty and delusion, obscuring the vital distinctions between the level and types of communication between interspecies. This paper has considered the basis which is usually overlooked in debates about anthropomorphism. It has come out apparently that while humans cannot share in another different species experiences, they can, to a level understand the animal through inductive inference processes known as anthropomorphism. Additionally, it is demonstrated that things that make people anthropomorphise, right or wrong, is because of selfish reasons. It is apparent that anthropomorphism makes them feel as if they are control of their environment. This paper has looked at the process of humanising non-humans and dehumanizing other people and how these processes are linked to animal ethics as well as the impacts it has on animal ethics. It has been argued that anthropomorphic reasoning can bridge or solve the challenges of dehumanisation. The problem of othering which emerges from anthropomorphism has also been analysed mainly the reasoning which leads to othering and causes alient procedure which informs political and discursive practises of cultural hierarchization and speciesistic. Finally, anthropomorphism representation, the otherness construction, and dehumanisation have been analysed. It has emerged through the discussion that once anthropomorphism is removed, an abyss incomprehension emerges between animals and humans. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that inferences which humans draw and which are casual are examples of how we anthropomorphise. Research has also demonstrated the relationship between neural mechanisms and emotions. It has also been shown that mammals across all species share some common neural circuits of emotion.

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