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Your Mind On Religion: Projecting Minds
A scientific exploration of anthropomorphism
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happens when we give human qualities, feelings, or actions to things that aren’t human, like animals, objects, or ideas.
For example, when we say a dog is “smiling,” talk about a car that’s “feeling tired” or picture the sun as being “happy” just because it’s shining bright.
It’s a way people relate to the world by seeing it through a human lens.
The better-safe-than-sorry strategy, playing it safe by assuming that a falling branch could be a predator, creates anthropomorphism as a product of natural selection.
Cognitive neuroscience suggests a scientific reason why we tend to attribute humanlike traits to things that aren’t human.
This tendency is linked to specific structures in our brains.
Our Social Brain
We treat much of the world around us as “like me” by default.
We often see the world in a way that makes it feel familiar, looking at it through our experiences. This is linked to certain brain parts, known as the social brain.
