As humans, we love projecting our emotions on non-human things like animals, objects and weather events. I’m told the psychological term for this is anthropomorphism, which is difficult to say three ...

Clive Wynne misrepresented my published views in his Concepts essay “The perils of anthropomorphism” (Nature 428, 606; 2004). The concept of ‘critical anthropomorphism’ helps to establish ground rules ...

This post is in response to When Animals Wear Pants: Anthropomorphism and Learning By Boby Ho-Hong Ching Ph.D. I have learned that anthropomorphism is a deeply suspect word, used to defend cruelty to ...

After remaining closed for nearly two years, Houghton Library premiered its exhibition “Animals Are Us” — which explores the use of animal anthropomorphism in literature — to the public this semester.

People talk to their plants, pray to human-like gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as ...

People talk to their plants, pray to humanlike gods, name their cars, and even dress their pets up in clothing. We have a strong tendency to give nonhuman entities human characteristics (known as ...

It’s easier to relate to someone you have something in common with; that feeling of connection can turn strangers into friends. And if those strangers belong to an entirely different species, then ...

"For the longest time, science has depicted animals as stimulus-response machines while declaring their inner lives barren. This has helped us sustain our customary 'anthropodenial': the denial that ...

People like attributing human characteristics to non-human beings and things. We’ve been doing it since we first started depicting gods in our own image. In a new study, published in the journal ...