Close
About
FAQ
Home
Collections
Login
USC Login
Register
0
Selected
Invert selection
Deselect all
Deselect all
Click here to refresh results
Click here to refresh results
USC
/
Digital Library
/
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
/
Anthropomorphic sociality theory: how connections to nonhumans connect us to humans
(USC Thesis Other)
Anthropomorphic sociality theory: how connections to nonhumans connect us to humans
PDF
Download
Share
Open document
Flip pages
Contact Us
Contact Us
Copy asset link
Request this asset
Transcript (if available)
Content
ANTHROPOMORPHIC SOCIALITY THEORY 1
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory:
How connections to nonhumans connect us to humans
Erica Marie Beall
A dissertation presented to
the Graduate School of the University of Southern California
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Social Psychology
December, 2015
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 2
Table of Contents
Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………… 4
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory: How connections to nohumans connect us to
humans ………………………………………………………………………………...
5
Anthropomorphism as a Social Phenomenon ……………………………………………... 6
Psychological Accounts of Anthropomorphism …………………………………………... 9
Psychological Motivations to Anthropomorphize …………………………………. 9
Effectance and compensatory control ………………………………………... 9
Sociality Motives ………………………………………………………………. 11
Beyond Motivations: The Anthropomorphic Experience ………………………………... 12
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory ………………………………………………………... 14
Predictions …………………………………………………………………………….. 15
The Present Research ………………………………………………………………… 15
Study 1: Anthropomorphic Social Presence ………………………………………………. 17
Study 1(a): Anthropomorphic Social Supervision …………………………………. 17
Participants and design ……………………………………………………….. 17
Anthropomorphism Manipulation …………………………………………… 18
Cheating Opportunity …………………………………………………………. 18
Supervision ……………………………………………………………………... 19
Resuts …………………………………………………………………………… 19
Study 1b: Human Social Supervision ……………………………………………….. 19
Participants and procedure …………………………………………………… 20
Results and discussion (Studies 1a and 1b) …………………………………………. 20
Study 2: Anthropomorphic Sociality Is Not Just Social Connection …………………….. 22
Method ………………………………………………………………………………… 23
Participants ……………………………………………………………………... 23
Procedure ……………………………………………………………………….. 24
Results ………………………………………………………………………………… 24
Discussion ……………………………………………………………………………... 25
Study 3: Anthropomorphic Thinking Increases Sociality ………………………………... 26
Method ………………………………………………………………………………… 27
Participants and Procedure …………………………………………………….. 27
Sociality Measure ………………………………………………………………... 28
Results and Discussion ………………………………………………………………... 28
Study 4: The 2
nd
Person Stapler ……………………………………………………………. 29
Method …………………………………………………………………………………. 30
Participants ……………………………………………………………………… 30
Procedure ………………………………………………………………………. 31
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 3
Results ………………………………………………………………………………… 32
Task Consistency ………………………………………………………………. 32
Positive/Negative Ratings ……………………………………………………... 32
Sociality ………………………………………………………………………… 33
Discussion ……………………………………………………………………………... 34
Study 5: Replication With Prosocial Behavior ……………………………………………. 35
Method ………………………………………………………………………………… 35
Participants ……………………………………………………………………... 35
Procedure ……………………………………………………………………….. 36
Results ………………………………………………………………………………… 36
Ruling out Confounds …………………………………………………………. 36
Sociality ………………………………………………………………………… 37
Helping …………………………………………………………………………. 37
Study 6: Meta-Analysis of Anthropomorphic Sociality Studies …………………………. 39
Method ………………………………………………………………………………… 39
Study Characteristics ………………………………………………………….. 39
Statistical Model ……………………………………………………………….. 40
Results and Discussion……………………………………………………………… 40
General Discussion ………………………………………………………………………….. 42
Religious Anthropomorphism ……………………………………………………….. 43
Applications …………………………………………………………………………... 45
Future Directions ……………………………………………………………………... 45
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………… 47
References …………………………………………………………………………………… 48
Appendix A: Dependent Measures ………………………………………………………… 54
Appendix B: Images Used in Studies 3-5 ………………………………………………….. 56
Appendix C: Meta-Analysis Study Characteristics ………………………………………. 57
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 4
Abstract
Research in cognitive and social psychology has characterized the ways in which
anthropomorphism – the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities - reflects basic
social cognitive mechanisms and motives (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007). At the same time,
little is known about the ways in which engaging in anthropomorphism may differ from typical
social cognition and interaction. I introduce and test Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory (AST),
which holds that engaging in anthropomorphism leads to an overall increase in subjective
feelings of social connection, and that this enhanced experience of sociality functionally
distinguishes anthropomorphism from typical social cognition and interaction with human
beings. First, I demonstrate that an anthropomorphized object can elicit a subjective experience
of social presence that is comparable to the presence of an actual human being. Study 2 then
explores trait level relationships between anthropomorphizing and sociality. In studies 3-5, I
offer experimental evidence that engaging in anthropomorphism heightens generalized feelings
of social connection beyond what is derived from typical social interaction. Last, Study 6
aggregates data from 16 experiments that tested the relationship between anthropomorphism and
sociality, and a meta-analysis of those data finds a significant summary effect of
anthropomorphism on sociality.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 5
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory
How connections to nonhumans connect us to humans
Consider for a moment the sorrowful song of the nightingale, the wisdom of the gnarled
old oak tree, the fiendish trickery of an uncooperative laptop, and the wrath of god. What does
this haphazard collection of images have in common? Each represents an instance of the
ubiquitous feature of human culture and cognition known as anthropomorphism.
In the simplest and most general terms, anthropomorphism is the imputation of human
characteristics – physical, mental, or emotional – to nonhuman entities. Targets of
anthropomorphism can include anything from cats to coffee mugs, provided that something
about them, or about the circumstances under which we encounter them, calls to mind our
preexisting cognitive templates for humanness.
That we so happily assimilate anthropomorphized Disney characters - crafted with all of
the trappings of sentient, intentional, expressive beings - into our schema of humanness is not too
surprising. However, even practically featureless entities such as moving geometric shapes can
trigger spontaneous imputation of higher-order human functions if put in a context that merely
hints at intentionality (Heider & Simmel, 1944). Given our strong affinity for applying a social
framework when we process our surroundings, it is no wonder that a tree branch automatically
seems to wave to us as its branches sway in the breeze. We may not explicitly believe that a
branch has a mind, or that the tree intends to offer a greeting; nonetheless, the movement
automatically activates our schema of human movement, just as a birdsong registers intuitively
as sounding cheerful or sorrowful – emotions that the bird likely does not actually feel.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 6
A rich literature has addressed situational determinants of anthropomorphism, as well as
its cultural and economic consequences. However, little is known about the immediate
psychological effects of actively engaging in anthropomorphism. The current studies explore one
particular consequence of anthropomorphism, namely the way that it affects people’s feelings of
social connection to other human beings. The central finding is that engaging in
anthropomorphism increases people’s subsequent expression of social connection to other human
beings, thus suggesting that one consequence of anthropomorphic experience is an enhancement
of generalized sociality. In order to describe and account for this sociality “spillover” effect, I
develop a new theory – Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory (AST). This new theory supplements
current psychological theories (e.g., the SEEK model discussed below) about the mechanisms
and motivational determinants of anthropomorphism by offering a theoretical account of the
unique psychological characteristics and consequences of anthropomorphic social engagement.
Anthropomorphism as a Social Phenomenon
Perhaps the most significant and pervasive form of anthropomorphism over the course of human
history is the attribution of human characteristics and faculties to deities and other supernatural
entities. For decades, religious scholars have cataloged instances of anthropomorphic religious
concepts and religious narratives involving cross-species transformations and other forms of
continuity between the human and nonhuman domains (Eliade, 1965). The major monotheistic
religions of the modern world tend more toward the abstract and the metaphysical than toward
explicit animism and shamanism. Even so, anthropomorphism plays an important role.
Morewedge & Clear (2008) found that the extent to which Christian participants endorsed
anthropomorphic god concepts predicted how much moral weight they assigned to violations of
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 7
religious tenets. Additionally, people’s own psychological needs and dominant personality
characteristics (e.g., loneliness, self-esteem, and attachment style) are often reflected in how they
conceptualize god (Benson and Spilka, 1973; deJong, 1993; Schwab & Peterson, 1990). One
account of anthropomorphism’s role in religion holds that attributing humanlike characteristics
to a deity makes the world seem to make more sense, especially in the face of events which are
difficult to cope with emotionally. For example, increased perceptions of government instability
strengthen beliefs in a God who acts with strong humanlike intentionality (Kay, Shepherd, Blatz,
Chua, & Galinsky, 2010). Consistent with this interpretation of religious anthropomorphism,
secular anthropomorphism can also satisfy a need for feelings of comprehension and control in
the presence of novel entities displaying complex behavior (Waytz, Morewedge, Epley,
Monteleone, Gao, & Cacioppo, 2010).
Recently, anthropomorphism has also commanded the attention of consumer behavior
researchers who have sought to understand the effects of anthropomorphic features on
consumers’ responses to products. Chandler and Schwartz (2010), for example, found that
imagining one’s possessions as humanlike makes it difficult to treat them in a way that feels
callous or unkind. Likewise, anthropomorphic characterizations of material possessions were
associated with unwillingness to discard or replace them, even when the objects’ functionality
and usefulness are reduced. Prospective evaluations of products, too, are affected by the positive
or negative anthropomorphic attributions they inspire (e.g., Agrwall & McGill 2012; Agrwall &
McGill, 2007).
Anthropomorphism also plays an important role in people’s attitudes toward and
understanding of the natural world. People who anthropomorphize nature express greater moral
concern for animals and for the environment in general, and those who spontaneously
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 8
anthropomorphize nature express stronger intentions to promote conservation behaviors
(Butterfield, Hill, & Lord, 2012; Tam, Li, & Chao, 2013), but children who are taught about
evolution using anthropomorphic language and narratives are less likely to achieve an accurate
understanding of evolutionary concepts (Legare, Lane & Evans, 2013). Even scientists
themselves, whose explicit intention is to remain objective, struggle to eradicate attributions of
humanlike motives from their accounts of animal behavior (Kummer, Dasser, & Hoyningen-
Huene, 1990).
Unsurprisingly, one of the most reliable elicitors of anthropomorphism is a desire for
social connection. Individuals who are chronically lonely are more likely to anthropomorphize
their pets, and display a greater tendency to attribute agency, emotion, and other humanlike
characteristics to nonhuman entities in general (Epley, Waytz, Akalis, & Cacioppo 2008; Epley,
Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008). Reaching out to nonhuman domains to repair broken social
bonds is not a tendency limited to the chronically lonely: feelings of social disconnection
induced in the lab also bring about attributions of human characteristics to animal and
supernatural entities (Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Caccioppo, 2008).
Taken in its entirety, the psychological literature on anthropomorphism includes
investigations of the many ways in which anthropomorphism shapes people’s interactions and
relationships with the entities that they anthropomorphize. What has not been investigated is the
overall subjective state brought about by an anthropomorphic interaction. This leaves us with the
question: does sociality directed toward nonhuman entities have implications for sociality
between human beings? In what follows, I review current functional accounts of
anthropomorphic cognition, map out the territory that has not been explored in previous
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 9
empirical work on anthropomorphism, and then outline a new theory that makes novel
predictions about psychological processes involved in anthropomorphic sociality
Psychological Accounts of Anthropomorphism
Social psychologists have conceptualized anthropomorphism as “a process of inductive
inference whereby people imbue the real or imagined behavior of other agents with humanlike
characteristics, motivations, intentions, or underlying mental states” (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo,
2007). This definition privileges the cognitive aspect of anthropomorphism, characterizing it as a
simple transfer of preexisting social schemas and psychological processes to nonhuman entities.
That transfer of schematic content may be automatically elicited by “agent knowledge” (i.e.,
morphological or contextual cues), or it can be motivated by some acute psychological need – for
example, the need to alleviate loneliness, or to cope with uncertainty and causal ambiguity.
Working from this social cognitive framework, Epley and colleagues (2007) have gathered these
three elements – Social motivation, Effectance motivation, and Elicited agent Knowledge
(SEEK) – into a single theoretical model of the situational determinants of anthropomorphism. A
review of the SEEK model and the empirical evidence that supports it follows below, along with
an account of where it falls short in terms of its ability to explain phenomena that fall outside of
anthropomorphism’s mechanisms and elicitors.
Psychological Motivations to Anthropomorphize
Effectance and compensatory control. Human beings are driven to feel that the world is
stable, orderly, and predictable. This motivation is so powerful that it can lead people to endorse
social systems and power structures that are manifestly harmful to them, rather than confront the
anxiety-inducing possibility of disorder and injustice (see Jost & Hunyady, 2003, for a review).
However, despite our best efforts to make sense and stability of it all, the universe often does not
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 10
cooperate, leaving us with an unsatisfied desire to comprehend the events in our lives, especially
ones that carry particular emotional weight.
What do such existential needs have to do with anthropomorphism? Research suggests
that when the events or conditions of our lives threaten us with a sense of randomness or
instability, we often turn to anthropomorphism. Increased perceptions of government instability,
for example, engender beliefs in a highly interventionist God who acts with strong humanlike
intentionality (Kay, Shepherd, Blatz, Chua, & Galinsky, 2010). This mechanism, known as
“compensatory control,” suggests that we can satisfy the need to perceive the world as orderly by
making causal attributions about entities that are believed to have minds that operate like our
own. Anthropomorphism in the face of a need to impose causal coherence on the world emerges
particularly starkly in the case of unexpected tragic events, as in the case of naming tropical
storms and hurricanes. Though seemingly a small, perhaps merely symbolic gesture at
anthropomorphism, the fact that they are also described as having human qualities such as rage
or viciousness suggests a motivation to reframe these chaotic forces as somehow partaking of the
more orderly realm of human intentionality.
Along with the basic human drive to perceive the world as making sense and being
predictable, we are also motivated to avoid feeling helpless in it, and to experience a sense of
personal control over our immediate environment (Deci & Moller, 2005; Harter, 1978; White,
1959). This “effectance motivation” represents another important connection between
anthropomorphism and existential needs, as anthropomorphism can increase people’s sense that
they can predict and thus effectively deal with agents in the surrounding environment. When
effectance motivation is heightened by experimentally induced feelings of uncertainty,
individuals are more likely to make anthropomorphic attributions. Correspondingly, erratic or
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 11
unpredictable behavior by a nonhuman agent also elicits anthropomorphic attributions, and such
attributions in turn have been shown to make nonhuman agents seem more understandable and
predictable (Waytz, Akalis, & Epley, 2010; Waytz et al., 2010).
Sociality motives. The social element of anthropomorphism in adults has generally been
characterized as a product of sociality motives derived from specific psychological needs.
Human beings possess an innate drive to avoid loneliness and feelings of disconnection from
others, so much so that there is evidence for neural and physiological overlaps between the
experience of social and physical pain (e.g., DeWall et al, 2010; Eisenberger, Lieberman, &
Williams, 2003). It is no wonder, then, that individuals who report higher levels of loneliness,
and are thus presumably suffering the pain of such disconnection, are more likely to
anthropomorphize their pets, and tend to score higher on measures of the general tendency to
attribute agency, emotion, and other humanlike characteristics to nonhuman entities (Epley,
Waytz, Akalis, & Cacioppo 2008; Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008). But reaching out to
nonhuman domains to repair broken social bonds is not a tendency limited to the chronically
lonely: situationally-induced feelings of disconnection in the lab also bring about attributions of
human characteristics to animal and supernatural entities (Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo,
2008).
Religious anthropomorphism in particular has been linked to the satisfaction of sociality
motives and emotional needs. For example, positive correlations between self-esteem and
endorsement of loving portrayals of god suggest that this particular anthropomorphic depiction
may be an effective means of satisfying individuals’ desire for acceptance (Benson & Spilka,
1973). At the same time, autistic individuals (who do not experience the typical drive for social
connection) are less likely to believe in an anthropomorphized god, preferring instead a kind of
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 12
indifferent metaphysical “prime mover,” or original cause of the universe whose existence is
supported by logical necessity (Bering, 2012).
Beyond Motivations: The Anthropomorphic Experience
Empirical investigations of anthropomorphism have demonstrated that human beings are
both motivated toward and cognitively adept at perceiving things as humanlike. But motivations
and mechanisms alone cannot offer a robust account of anthropomorphism as a general
phenomenon and feature of human life. Below is an account of why not.
For one thing, anthropologist Stewart Guthrie (1993) notes that often anthropomorphism
is accompanied by great anxiety, fear, and discomfort, and does not provide the kind of comfort
or stability toward which sociality and effectance motives are oriented. This observation suggests
that anthropomorphism cannot be explained purely in terms of motivated cognition, because at
times it manifestly does not serve these motives especially well. Moreover, anthropomorphism
appears to emerge both ontogenetically and phylogenetically prior to the full onset of such
motives and needs. For example, it is unlikely that children, who engage broadly in
anthropomorphism, are doing so primarily to quell existential fears. Nor does it seem likely that
members of early human societies saw animals as sentient primarily in order to alleviate
loneliness, given that the highly group-centered and interdependent conditions of their social
lives likely precluded the experience of sustained isolation, except in extraordinary
circumstances (Boehm, 1999; Douglas, 1990; Marlowe, 2005).
To the extent that it deals only with such elicitors (at both the situational and at the trait
levels), the SEEK model does not offer robust predictions regarding features of
anthropomorphism that are not directly related to those needs. By way of analogy, it is useful to
consider how we might understand human beings’ relationship to food. Just as
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 13
anthropomorphism can alleviate loneliness and activate processes of schema application and
assimilation, food satisfies hunger and engages digestive processes. But food also produces
gustatory responses, which in turn give rise to the experience of flavor. There are motivations
and mechanisms behind all of this, to be sure. But from a phenomenological perspective, no
matter how well the mechanisms of hunger and digestion are understood, we would never claim
to fully understand the phenomenon of food and eating without giving an account of flavor – that
is, how eating is experienced, how it affect us, and what it means to be creatures who not only
eat, but dine.
The SEEK model has provided fertile ground for investigating anthropomorphism as an
automated cognitive response to perceived humanlike features, and as a kind of food for the
suffering soul (e.g., Epley, Waytz, Akalis, & Cacioppo, 2008). But just as the role of food and
eating in human life is not fully captured by an understanding of hunger and digestion,
anthropomorphism cannot be understood purely in terms of how it compensates for what is
lacking, or helps us to avoid what is undesirable. We eat when we are hungry, but also when we
are not, and this has everything to do with the flavors we experience and the rituals and cultural
practices that enable us to share the experience of eating with others.
A phenomenological account of anthropomorphism would add to our psychological
understanding of anthropomorphism by asking not only what tends to cause anthropomorphism,
but also what anthropomorphizing is actually like, and how engaging in it shapes our experience,
perceptions, judgments, and behaviors. Put another way, a phenomenological account pursues
the broader psychological meaning of anthropomorphism as it relates to its mechanisms and
elicitors. Building on existing research on the cognitive underpinnings and situational
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 14
determinants of anthropomorphism, I propose a novel theory of anthropomorphic social
experience that can fill in some of the gaps in our current understanding.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory
In order to extend the psychological literature on anthropomorphism beyond the bounds
of its current emphasis on acute psychological needs, I present Anthropomorphic Sociality
Theory (AST). The theory arises out of the simple observation that some of the nonhuman
entities with which people interact anthropomorphically do not automatically cue a sense of
social presence. In such cases, the anthropomorphic orientation toward those entities is
contingent on a person deliberately taking a social stance – that is, purposefully making oneself
feel a sense of its “personness,” rather than simply responding by default to a sense of
personness that’s already there. Scientists have characterized this phenomenon of experiencing
another person as a social entity as “intersubjectivity.” Careful study of infants’ behavior in
relation to others (particularly their mothers) suggests that from the very beginning of life,
human beings are driven to experience (and be experienced by) other human beings, even before
developing a “theory” of other minds or an established schema for what a human being actually
is (Reddy, 2003; Seeman, 2011; Trevarthen, 2011). This primal experience of social connectivity
between self and other, independent of explicitly shared mental representations or higher-order
cognitive processes, suggests that sociality has underpinnings that cannot be captured purely in
terms of social cognition. The overarching aim of this research is to explore how the
intersubjective nature of human consciousness might play a role in the psychological processes
involved in anthropomorphism.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 15
Predictions
It is not known whether the deliberate sociality required by anthropomorphism is
functionally distinguishable from the social stance that is elicited automatically by (the majority
of )interactions with other human beings. The central claim made by AST is that the
psychological nature of deliberate sociality does in fact differentiate anthropomorphism in a
fundamental way from typical social cognition. Specifically, AST posits that deliberately putting
oneself in a social stance in order to anthropomorphize actually heightens one’s sense of social
connectedness in general, thus producing feelings of holistic sociality that extend beyond the
anthropomorphic social relation itself.
Here, we build on Epley and colleagues’ (2008) SEEK model of cognitive schema
activation to explore this functional difference between deliberate anthropomorphism and social
cognition. The studies below provide the first empirical evidence that there are generalized
sociality effects of effortful anthropomorphism that extend beyond the relationship between the
person who anthropomorphizes and the thing that is anthropomorphized. Though the evidence
presented below is by no means unequivocal, it suggests that effortful anthropomorphism
engenders feelings of social connection that are broadly distributed across social groups, and
may even promote positive social behaviors.
The Present Research
In Study 1, I demonstrate experimentally that after an object has been
anthropomorphized, it can continue to cause the person who anthropomorphized it to experience
a subjective sense of its social presence. To the extent that the SEEK model acknowledges
anthropomorphism as an effective substitute for human interaction in other contexts, its
predictions regarding this particular experiment overlap entirely with those of AST. Study 2 then
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 16
lays the groundwork for the following studies by establishing that a generalized sense of social
connection is indeed a measurable construct, and that it can be distinguished from the way in
which sociality has been construed in previous research on anthropomorphism (i.e., as the degree
to which one is directly involved with or isolated from others). Study 3 demonstrates that
anthropomorphizing a display of objects produces more feelings of sociality than thinking about
that same display simply as objects. Again, the enhancement of sociality by anthropomorphic
cognition is consistent with the SEEK model, however the two theories diverge in that the SEEK
model would have no reason to predict that sociality resulting from anthropomorphism would
generalize to other human beings. In Study 4, anthropomorphism not only elicits sociality, but as
AST predicts (and the SEEK model again does not), it does so over and above what results from
an identical social interaction with a human target. Building on those findings, Study 5 replicates
this finding, and points to the possibility that increased prosocial behavior can be derived from
anthropomorphic experience. Because the results with regard to prosocial behavior were mixed,
and because I conducted several preliminary studies before coming to the final version of our
novel anthropomorphism manipulations, in Study 6 I present a meta-analysis of all of the studies
I have conducted to test the relationship between anthropomorphic experience and feelings of
sociality.
Taken as a whole, this research illuminates the functional differences between
anthropomorphism and social cognition, thus offering a psychological account of
anthropomorphism that is fuller than our current understanding, and can offer avenues for
exploring anthropomorphism’s role in cultural phenomena like religion.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 17
Study 1: Anthropomorphic Social Presence
. The aim of Study 1 is to determine whether anthropomorphizing can generate a
subjective sense of social presence from which “spillover” sociality effects might be derived.
Previous research has shown that subtle cues to social presence – for example, stylized eye spots
placed unobtrusively in one’s field of view - can increase prosocial behaviors such as
cooperation and generosity (e.g., Burnham & Hare, 2007; Haley & Fessler, 2005; Ernest-Jones,
Nettle, & Bateson, 2011). This phenomenon, known as “social surveillance,” is reflective of a
basic human tendency to be intuitively sensitive to the presence of others to such an extent that
this presence need not be real, but merely implied by cues that may not even enter into conscious
awareness (see Powell, Roberts, & Nettle, 2012 for an overview of the “feeling watched”
phenomenon). AST holds that anthropomorphic experience as such (i.e., in the absence of
explicit morphological cues to humanness or watching) can produce a subjectively felt social
presence sufficient to affect behavior. The results of Study 1 support this prediction by showing
that anthropomorphizing an object reduces rates of cheating when that object is present.
Study 1a: Anthropomorphic Social Supervision
Participants and design. Fifty USC undergraduates received partial course credit in
return for their participation, and had the potential to earn up to $10 based on their performance
on a math task administered as part of the study. Participants were told that the study examined
relationships between verbal, visual, and quantitative reasoning. They were randomly assigned
either to an Anthropomorphism Condition in which they completed a structured task that
required anthropomorphizing an inanimate object, or to a Control Condition in which their
interaction with the object was focused on its objective physical characteristics. After completing
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 18
the initial task, subjects completed a math task that afforded them with an opportunity to be
dishonest in order to increase their study compensation.
Anthropomorphism manipulation. Subjects in the Anthropomorphism Condition (N
=21) were presented with an everyday object (a Bostitch stapler) and a sheet with the following
instructions: “This task is designed to get you to use both verbal and visual functions to interact
with an object. In order to complete the task, try to imagine this object as a human being. Look
for any humanlike physical features you might see in “him” or “her,” and try to imagine
thoughts, feelings, personality characteristics, etc. that you think he or she would have.” Subjects
in the Control Condition (N = 20) were asked to focus on the object’s function, and examine the
important mechanical and physical features of the object. Subjects in both conditions were asked
to draw the object in a way that reflected their assessment of its features (either human or
mechanical). Subjects were given 5 minutes to work on the task.
Cheating opportunity. After completing the drawing task, subjects had the opportunity
to be dishonest about their performance on a math task in order to receive more money.
Immediately upon completing the anthropomorphism manipulation, they were given a worksheet
with 20 matrices, each consisting of a set of 12 three-digit numbers (e.g., 4.78, Mazar et al.,
2008). Participants were instructed that they would have 5 minutes to find two numbers in each
matrix that added up to 10, and that in order to motivate them to be engaged with the task, they
would be given $.50 for each matrix they solved. Along with the matrix worksheet, they were
given a collection slip and were instructed that when the five minutes were up, they were to fill
out the information on the collection slip (age, gender, number of problems solved) and then
shred all of their study materials in an electric shredder provided to them in the experiment room,
thus ensuring that their actual performance could not be detected by the experimenter. The
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 19
rationale provided to subjects for this was that it in order to avoid experimenter bias, it was
important that the experimenter not inadvertently gain information about which specific
problems they had solved, or about what kinds of strategies they had employed to solve the
problems – only their overall performance was to be reported. Once their materials were safely
discarded, they were to return their completed collection slip to the experimenter in order to
receive their payment.
Supervision. While the participant completed the math task and filled out the collection
slip, the stapler remained situated on the small desk space at which the participant worked. Thus,
although the participants were given total privacy and anonymity with respect to the
experimenter, their decision as to whether or not to over-report their performance was made in
the presence of the object with which they had interacted in the anthropomorphism task.
Results. Subjects who had anthropomorphized the stapler reported having solved
significantly fewer questions (M = 8.2) than subjects who had not anthropomorphized it (M =
10.8; t(48) = 1.97; p = .05). Since there is no reason to expect that performance would actually
be enhanced (or decreased) by either of the two drawing tasks, and because this task is known to
elicit dishonesty from undergraduate participants, the discrepancy in self-reported performance
can be interpreted as reflecting dishonest exaggeration on the part of the participants (e.g., Gino,
Ayal, & Ariely, 2013).
Study 1b: Human Social Supervision
A second experiment assessed the extent to which the presence of an “actual” human being
would suppress over-reporting of math task performance. This served two purposes. First, it
provided a basis for qualitative comparison between an actual human presence versus an
anthropomorphic presence as a deterrent to dishonesty. Secondly, it confirmed that the
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 20
anthropomorphism task does not actually affect performance on the math task, so that the
difference between the two conditions in Study 1a can be construed as reflecting subjects’ over-
reporting.
Participants and procedure. Subjects were USC undergraduates (N = 41) who
participated in return for partial course credit. The tasks used for Study 1b were identical to those
used in Study 1a. The only difference was that when their time was up for the math task, subjects
shredded their materials and then brought the stapler back to the experimenter in an adjacent
room where the experimenter provided them with the collection slip. Subjects then filled out the
collection slip – including reporting their performance on the math task – in the presence of both
the stapler and the experimenter.
Results and Discussion (Studies 1a and 1b)
In Study 1b (Fig. 1, right side), when there was an actual human social presence at the
time of the participant’s decision about whether to be honest about their performance, there was
no difference between the number of problems reported solved by subjects who had
anthropomorphized the stapler (M = 8.3) versus those who had not (M = 8.2).
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 21
Figure 1. Mean self-reported math task performance as a function of whether or not the object
was anthropomorphized. Error bars represent SE of the mean.
Taken alongside the results of Study 1a (Fig. 1, left side), the results of Study 1b suggest
two things. First, the absence of an effect between the anthropomorphism condition and the
control task in Study1b means that the task itself did not affect performance, and thus cannot be
used to explain the discrepancy between the anthropomorphized and non-anthropomorphized
object observed in Study 1a. Second, since the only condition in which subjects appear to have
over-reported their performance is the condition in which there was no social presence, either
from the experimenter or the object, it seems that the social presence of the anthropomorphized
stapler in Study 1a was an effective check on dishonest behavior.
The results of Studies 1a and 1b show that engaging in anthropomorphism elicits a
subjectively felt sense of social presence, and that this sense of social presence can affect
psychological processes (in this study, ethical decision making). The remaining studies explore
how generating an anthropomorphic social presence affects other psychological processes –
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Only Object Present Experimenter & Object Present
Number
of
Problems
Reported
Sovled
Anthropomorphized
Object
Control
Object
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 22
specifically, how establishing an anthropomorphic social presence produces feelings of
generalized social connection that extend beyond the anthropomorphized object itself.
Study 2: Anthropomorphic Sociality Is Not Just Social Connection
Study 1 substantiated one of the major underlying premises of AST, namely that
engaging in anthropomorphism involves a subjective experience of sociality. Before
experimentally testing the unique consequences of that experience, I explored trait-level
relationships between anthropomorphism and generalized sociality, as well as the relationship of
both constructs to loneliness. Previous research has established that individuals who report
chronic feelings of social disconnection are more likely to anthropomorphize their pets, and to
privilege anthropomorphic descriptions of animal behavior over non-anthropomorphic
descriptions (Epley, Akalis, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2008). Such findings suggest that
anthropomorphic social connection can to some extent function as an antidote to feelings of
social isolation, and they have been taken as evidence for the SEEK theory’s perspective that
anthropomorphism is functionally equivalent to social cognition.
But attachment to other individuals and groups through concrete social relationships is
not the only manifestation of human sociality. For example, the well-established psychological
construct “identification with all humanity” (IWAH; McFarland, Webb & Brown, 2012;
McFarland, Brown, & Webb, 2013) refers to holistic feelings of connection and concern for
humanity taken as a whole, generalized beyond specific social relationships and interactions. It is
important to note that feeling connected to human beings as a whole is in no way opposed to
more specific feelings of connection to subgroups and individuals. Identification with all
humanity simply transcends those boundaries and reflects a broader experience of oneself as a
social being, over and above the sum of one’s connections to specific groups or individuals.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 23
The relevance of this distinction for AST is that if sociality is not limited to gratification
of the acute need for interaction with other individuals, then anthropomorphism might do more
than merely act as a substitute when such interaction is lacking. It is worth emphasizing that the
AST prediction that anthropomorphism enhances the holistic form of sociality does not stand in
contradiction to the SEEK model’s established connection between anthropomorphism and
feelings of social disconnection. The SEEK model simply makes no predictions about unique
consequences of anthropomorphic experience.
The aim of this study was to test two hypotheses derived from the AST: H1) generalized
feelings of sociality will be orthogonal to, and functionally distinct from, acute feelings of social
isolation; H2) these two aspects of sociality will each be unique predictors of people’s trait-level
tendency to anthropomorphize. This is an essential first step because if dimensions of sociality
other than the social connection-isolation spectrum relate differently to anthropomorphism, then
there is reason to believe that anthropomorphism might be more than a social-cognitive
equivalent elicited by acute loneliness or in the absence of human contact. The aim of this study
is therefore to assess the relationships between trait anthropomorphism, an acute sense of social
isolation, and feelings of connection to humanity that transcend the boundaries of any particular
social context or situation.
Method
Participants. Participants were 386 visitors (40% female, mean age 38) to the
yourmorals.org website who completed scale measures of the three constructs of interest. Sample
size was determined a priori as the total number of online volunteers who had completed all three
measures described below.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 24
Procedure. The trait-level tendency to anthropomorphize in everyday life was assessed
using the Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism Questionnaire (IDAQ, Waytz, Cacioppo,
& Epley, 2010). Chronic feelings of social disconnection were measured using the short form of
the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Peplau & Cutrona, 1980), and feelings of generalized sociality were
measured using the Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAH; McFarland, Webb &
Brown, 2012). We chose the IWAH scale as our measure of generalized sociality because in
previous research, it contributed unique variance to concern for human rights and positively
predicted trait empathy (McFarland, Webb & Brown, 2012). These characteristics suggest that
the scale taps sociality at a level that transcends particular relationships and social connections.
Results
Reliability was high for all three measures (IWAH α = .91, 9 items; Loneliness α = .90, 3
items; IDAQ α = .91, 15 items). Correlations between the three measures revealed that the trait-
level tendency to anthropomorphize is positively related to both IWAH, r(385) = .17, p = .001,
and to loneliness, r (385) = .11, p = .03. Loneliness and IWAH were not correlated, (385) =
-.04, p = .4).
The distinction between the two dimensions of anthropomorphism (and thus between the
“territory” claimed by the two theories) is further underscored by the results of controlling for
IWAH in the correlation between anthropomorphism and loneliness, and vice versa. When
controlling for loneliness, the correlation between IWAH and anthropomorphism was unaffected
(r(383) = .18, p < .001; Fisher’s Z = .09, p > .9). Likewise, controlling for IWAH did not affect
the relationship between loneliness and anthropomorphism (r(383) = .12, p = .02; Fisher’s Z =
.14, p > .8).
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 25
Discussion
At the trait level, IWAH has a positive relationship to Anthropomorphism that is not
explained or significantly affected by variance in chronic loneliness. This suggests that IWAH
and loneliness tap into different dimensions of sociality, rather than reflecting opposite poles of a
single dimension.
The positive relationship between anthropomorphism and loneliness is consistent with
Epley and colleagues’ theory that loneliness engenders a need for social connection that both
heightens individuals’ perceptual sensitivity to humanlike characteristics, and motivates them to
see nonhumans as potential sources of social connection. It is worth emphasizing that AST’s
prediction that anthropomorphism should be positively related to IWAH does not conflict with
the SEEK model’s prediction regarding loneliness. Indeed, the purpose of this study is in part to
demonstrate that these two theories address fundamentally different aspects of the phenomenon,
the SEEK model being more concerned with the situational determinants of anthropomorphism,
while the AST deals with the subjective experience of anthropomorphism.
The results of this study affirm this territorial distinction between the two theories: no
significant relationship existed between IWAH and Loneliness, suggesting that IWAH was
indeed measuring a dimension of sociality that is not simply the opposite end of the spectrum
from feeling socially isolated. Put another way, identification with all humanity is orthogonal to
people’s level of social contact in their everyday lives, and its positive relationship to
anthropomorphism reflects a fundamentally different aspect of anthropomorphism than that
which was the focus of the SEEK model’s predictions.
To offer an illustration of the general psychological principle at stake here, these results
suggest that a hermit living in isolation without concrete ties to other individuals could
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 26
nonetheless score high on IWAH, which captures care for and affiliation with humanity
conceptualized more broadly. In fact, if that hermit was monastic we might expect him to score
well above average in his sense of general concern for and connection to humanity, because
IWAH is not simply the sum of one’s relationships to specific people and groups.
In short Study 2 demonstrates that sociality does not manifest itself exclusively in the
concrete details of one’s social life. Of course, as the loneliness-anthropomorphism correlation
suggests, both concrete social connection and generalized sociality are psychologically relevant
to anthropomorphism. But AST holds that, irrespective of loneliness and social needs, engaging
in anthropomorphism should enhance the broader dimension of sociality as a result of the effort
required to experience the concrete social presence of a nonhuman entity.
Study 3: Anthropomorphic Thinking Enhances Sociality
Study 2 supported one of the major premises of AST, which it shares with the theoretical
underpinnings of IWAH – namely, the idea that there are aspects of human sociality that are not
reducible to a person’s level of social interaction or feelings of concrete social connection vs.
isolation. Instead, there is a dimension of sociality that is more abstract (yet affectively
important) and pertains to one’s general feelings of affiliation with other human beings. Study 3
sought to demonstrate the relevance of that construct to anthropomorphism by comparing an
anthropomorphic experience to a typical objective experience of the same nonhuman entity.
SEEK and AST diverge in their predictions about what happens when individuals engage
in anthropomorphism. The SEEK model has no reason to predict that anthropomorphism should
produce feelings of social connection to anything other than the target of anthropomorphism
itself. But AST posits that anthropomorphism requires a general enhancement of sociality, and
thus predicts a sociality “spillover” effect that extends beyond a sense of social connection to the
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 27
anthropomorphized entity itself. Study 3 tested that prediction by showing experimentally that,
relative to non-anthropomorphic engagement with an object, anthropomorphizing increases
people’s expression of generalized sociality. In this study, we wanted to compare
anthropomorphism to non-social engagement with a nonhuman stimulus. In order to make a
strong test of our hypothesis, we wanted to minimize the extent to which individuals would
establish a strong feeling of social connection to the anthropomorphized entity itself (as is typical
in previous research on socially motivated anthropomorphism, e.g., Epley, Akalis, Waytz, &
Cacioppo, 2008). That way, the effects of the anthropomorphic stance itself would not be
obscured by the existence of a strong personal connection to what is being anthropomorphized,
and any enhancement in sociality would be a reflection purely of the anthropomorphic stance
itself . To that end, rather than having subjects interact with a single entity, we presented them
with a “scene” from a typical office that portrayed multiple objects arrayed on a desk.
Method
Participants and procedure. I recruited 103 Amazon mTurk workers who were
compensated $.50 for their participation. Previous research suggests that mTurk data are of
sufficient quality to justify their use for psychological experiments (see Paolacci & Chandler,
2014, for a review). Of the 103 people who completed the study, one subject in the control
condition spontaneously anthropomorphized the desk scene: “It seems all things point to the pink
eraser. It seems the eraser is surrounded! Is that eraser a girl? Is this a case of harassment?”
Dropping that subject left a total of 102 subjects (41% Female, mean age 36). Subjects were told
that they would be completing a task in which they would either “think about the visual features
of objects” (Control) or “think about objects as though they were human” (Anthropomorphism).
Subjects in both conditions were then presented with the desk scene image. In the
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 28
Anthropomorphism condition, they were instructed to think about the objects as though they
were people, and write a 5-sentence story about what was happening in the picture. In the
Control condition, subjects wrote 5-sentence descriptions of the image, focusing on “visual
details.”
Sociality measure. After completing the manipulation, subjects completed a brief
measure of sociality adapted from the IWAH scale. Like the original scale, this shortened version
assessed subjects’ feelings of social connection at three different levels of specificity: people in
your community, people in your country, and people all over the world. At each level, subjects
rated on a 5-point scale: 1) how much they identified with those people 2) how much care they
felt for them, and 3) how close they felt to them. Rating each dimension of sociality (care,
closeness, and identification) at each of the three levels of specificity (community, country,
people all over the world) yielded a total of 9 items.
Results and Discussion
Because IWAH is not intrinsically opposed to feelings of social connection to individuals
or subgroups, when sociality is situationally enhanced by an experimental manipulation we
would expect all levels of the scale to reflect that enhancement. We therefore predicted that in
this study, all three dimensions of the IWAH scale (people in your community, people in your
country, and all human beings) would be reliable as a single scale, and that subjects who
anthropomorphized would score higher on that scale than those in the control condition.
As expected, reliability was high (α = .85) for the nine items measuring sociality at the
levels of community, country, and all human beings, so we combined those items into a
composite measure of sociality. As predicted, subjects who anthropomorphized the desk scene
expressed stronger feelings of human connection (M
Anthrop
= 3.3, M
Control
= 3.1, t(100) = 1.9, p =
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 29
.06, d = .29; see Figure 2). Though only marginally significant, we interpreted the results as
offering initial support for AST’s prediction that anthropomorphic thinking can produce a
“spillover” effect that manifests as a feeling of generalized human connection.
Figure 2. Mean difference in overall ratings of Care, Identification, and Closeness at the levels
of Community, Country, and Whole World, Study 3. Error bars represent SE of the mean.
Study 4: The 2
nd
-Person Stapler
Study 2 substantiated one of the major premises of AST - that there are subjective aspects
of human sociality that are not reducible to a person’s level of social interaction, group
membership, or on the opposite end of that spectrum, to loneliness. Study 3 demonstrated that a
subjective sense of general social “connectedness” is indeed an important consequence of
anthropomorphic thinking. Further, it illustrated that this enhanced sense of sociality is not
circumscribed to feelings that are directed at the anthropomorphized entity itself. Instead, it
manifests in the form of generalized identification with other human beings.
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Anthropomorphzed Objects Neutral Object Control
Feelings of
Social
Connection
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 30
But AST makes an even stronger departure from the 3-factor social cognitive model
1
.
Specifically, AST posits that the sociality effects of anthropomorphism differentiate it not only
from non-anthropomorphic object cognition, but also from typical social cognition. The
reasoning behind the prediction is that, although social cognition involves intersubjectivity, it
does not require the same degree of intersubjective effort as an anthropomorphic social stance.
Because the SEEK model does not functionally distinguish anthropomorphic from human social
cognition, it has no grounds for making the prediction that anthropomorphism would elevate
feelings of social connection in a global way (as opposed to fostering a sense of connection only
to the anthropomorphized entity itself).
Study 4 explores this point of divergence between the two theories by directly pitting an
anthropomorphic social interaction against a human social interaction, and comparing their
effects on generalized feelings of social connection. In addition to transitioning from objective
thinking to social cognition, Study 4 also introduces a 2
nd
-person element to the
anthropomorphism manipulation. In this study, participants were asked not only to view an
object as human (as in Study 3), but to engage directly with it as though it was human,
addressing it as “you,” rather than observing it as “he” or “she.” The effect of this shift from a 3
rd
person stance to a direct 2
nd
person engagement should be to enhance participants’ sense of
social connection to the social target, thus producing a stronger manipulation of the
anthropomorphic experience that is central AST.
Method
Participants. The participants in this study were Amazon mTurk workers (N = 102, 69%
female, mean age 40) who were compensated $.50 for completing the study. A total of 106
1
It is again worth noting that this departure takes the form of a novel prediction, not a competing
prediction
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 31
workers started the study, of whom 2 did not complete it. Additionally, the data contained two
instances of a single IP address (indicating a single subject taking the study more than once).
These cases were removed from the analysis.
Procedure. To our knowledge, no previous research has manipulated anthropomorphism
in the 2
nd
person (e.g., having participants talk to the anthropomorphized object rather than just
talk about it). We therefore developed a novel task in which subjects are asked to imagine
conducting a structured interview in the 2
nd
person with either a human being or a nonhuman
entity.
First, participants were presented with an image of either a man (from the shoulders up)
or a stapler. In order to avoid possible effects of differences in the images’ vividness or intensity,
we aimed to keep the two images as neutral and aesthetically consistent as possible. We therefore
chose black-and-white portrait-style pencil drawings for both the man and the stapler (all images
can be found in Appendix B). Subjects were instructed to give a description of the personality
they imagined the man or the stapler would have, and what kind of person he would be. They
were required to spend a minimum of one minute on that 3
rd
-person portion of the task, and were
told that they would be able to continue when that time had elapsed. All participants in both
conditions spent more than the required amount of time on the task, and there was no difference
between conditions in the average task time (M
Anthro
= 194.9 s, M
Control
= 191.5 s, t(98) = .15, p =
.88)
Once they had established a social concept of the target, subjects were presented with a
series of four “getting to know you” interview questions stated in the second person (e.g., “Hi,
it’s nice to meet you, what’s your name?”). They were instructed to imagine asking the stapler or
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 32
man those questions and, keeping in mind the personality they had imagined he would have, to
write out the responses they thought he would give.
After completing the interview task, subjects were asked to complete the same short
version of IWAH that was used in Study 2. We assessed subjects’ overall positive or negative
reactions to the interviewees on a 7 point scale from Very Negative to Very Positive, and we
asked them to rate how difficult they found it to imagine interviewing the target on a 7 point
scale from Incredibly Easy – Impossible.
Results
Task consistency. Two subjects (both in the human social cognition condition) rated the
task as being impossible and were thus excluded from the analysis (leaving a total N = 100 in the
final analysis). As intended, there was no mean difference between conditions in the extent to
which subjects felt they were able to imagine interacting socially with the interviewee, and the
mean task difficulty rating for the entire sample was “Somewhat Easy” (M = 5.01, SD = 1.6).
This, coupled with the fact that there was no overall mean difference between conditions in the
amount of time subjects spent on the task, suggests that the tasks were well matched in terms of
structure and strenuousness.
Positive/Negative ratings. Measurement of subjects’ attitudes toward the interviewees
showed that we succeeded in achieving affect-neutrality and between-conditions consistency in
subjects’ feelings about the interviewees. In the sample as a whole, the mean attitude rating was
“Somewhat Positive” (M = 5.04, SD = 1.5). More importantly, there was no difference between
conditions in subjects’ overall positive or negative impressions of the social targets, and those
attitudes were not correlated with feelings of sociality following the manipulation. This ensures
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 33
that the results of the study were not simply a product of subjects’ positive or negative feelings
about the anthropomorphic versus the social interaction.
Sociality. Again, because we were directly manipulating anthropomorphism we expected
to see enhanced sociality reflected in the scale as a whole (α = .90, 9 items). This expectation
was borne out, as subjects who interviewed a stapler scored higher on the sociality measure (M =
3.4, S.D. = .89) than subjects who interviewed a person (M = 3.1, S.D. = .75), t(98) = 2.0, d = .37
p = .049 (Figure 3).
Notably, in the Anthropomorphism condition there was a strong correlation (r (45) =
.423, p = .003) between the amount of time subjects spent on the part of the task where they
established a social concept of the stapler, and their feelings of sociality following the task.
There was no correlation between task time and sociality in the Control Condition (r (51) = .02,
p = .88), and the difference in correlations by condition was significant (Fisher’s Z = 2.08, p =
.04). The fact that task time and sociality are positively related when subjects anthropomorphize,
and are not related when subjects engage in typical social cognition, offers further support for
AST’s claim that the increase in sociality derived from anthropomorphic experience functionally
distinguishes anthropomorphic experience from regular social cognition. AST would predict that
an increased amount of anthropomorphic experience (in this case, a longer period of time) should
be accompanied by an increase in feelings of sociality, whereas no comparable relationship
between task engagement and sociality should emerge in the human social interaction task.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 34
Figure 3. Mean difference in overall ratings of Care, Identification, and Connection at the levels
of Community, Country, and Whole World, Study 4. Error bars represent SE of the mean.
Discussion
The results of Study 4 support AST by showing that establishing a 2
nd
person stance
toward an object enhances feelings of generalized sociality beyond what is observed following
an equivalent stance toward another human being. Further, they demonstrate that the effect of
anthropomorphism on subsequent expressions of sociality do not depend on people making more
positive attributions about anthropomorphized entities. This supports the theory that it is the
psychological nature of anthropomorphic experience itself, and not its affective consequences,
that enhances sociality.
The positive relationship between task time and sociality in this study is also supportive
of AST. One of the theory’s major claims is that the psychologically effortful nature of
anthropomorphic engagement is what generates the spillover effect. It thus predicts a continuous,
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Anthropomorphic Interaction Social Cognition Control
Feelings of
Social
Connection
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 35
positive relationship between the amount of engagement in a 2
nd
-person anthropomorphic stance
and the degree to which sociality is enhanced. Since typical social cognition does not rely on the
same manner of deliberate, effortful sociality, there is no reason to expect any such relationship
for a 2
nd
-person stance toward an actual person. The results thus demonstrate that compared to
typical social cognition, the anthropomorphic stance can be functionally distinguished from
social cognition by its relationship to the amount of time during which a person engages in it.
Study 5: Replication With Prosocial Behavior
Study 5 was designed with two purposes in mind. The first was to address the issue of
statistical power. Post- hoc power analysis of the results of Study 4 showed that the sample had
offered only 60% power to detect the main effect that we found, a level of power that is well
below what is generally recommended for social psychological experiments. We therefore
wanted to replicate the finding from Study 4 in a larger sample that would increase the power of
the study, thus offering more conclusive support for our hypotheses. Second, having found
evidence for increased feelings of sociality arising out of 2
nd
-person anthropomorphic
experience, we wanted to address the natural next question: do these feelings translate directly
into increased prosocial behavior? In order to accomplish these aims, Study 5 directly replicated
Study 4, but with the addition of a dependent variable measuring prosocial behavior.
Method
Participants. Post-hoc power analysis on the results of Study 4 revealed that a sample
size of N=174 would be needed to achieve the recommended 80% power at the .05 level. With a
target N = 175 we recruited 169 mTurk workers. Of those, thirteen subjects were excluded from
analysis because they failed to complete some portion of the study, one subject because he rated
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 36
the task impossible, and one because a repeated IP address indicated that the subject had taken
the study twice. These exclusions left a total N = 154 in the sample.
Procedure. The manipulation in this study was the same, with the exception that the time
constraint was removed (i.e., subjects were free to stop working on the social concept phase of
the task whenever they wished to). This change did not seem to substantially affect how subjects
approached the task, as again there was no difference between conditions in how much time
participants spent on it (M
Anthrop
= 186 s, M
Control
= 196 s, t(152) = .44, p = .64).
Directly replicating Study 4, immediately after the anthropomorphism manipulation we
assessed sociality, task difficulty, and positive/negative attitudes about the “interviewee.” Then
at the end of this study we also assessed participants’ prosocial behavioral motivation by making
a request for help. On mTurk, time is literally money – workers are paid for each task they
complete, so any time spent on a task for which they are not getting paid represents an
opportunity cost suffered by not using that time to work on other paid tasks. Since earning
money is the primary motive for mTurk workers, assessing their willingness to donate time to an
unpaid cause represents a strong test of prosocial behavior.
Results
Ruling out confounds. As in Study 4, neither task was rated as being more difficult than
the other (M
Anthrop
= 4.8, M
Control
= 4.9, t(152) = .59, p = .56), and the overall mean rating was
“Somewhat Easy” (M = 4.8, S.D. = 1.6). This again suggests that it is not incidental
characteristics of the task that are affecting subjects’ subsequent feelings of social connection.
There was no difference in subjects’ overall positive or negative impressions of the man vs. the
stapler (M
Anthrop
= 4.6, M
Control
= 5.1, t(152) = 1.5, p = .13), and those impressions were not
correlated with feelings of sociality or with helping. The mean rating in the sample as a whole
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 37
was just below “Slightly Positive” (M = 4.8, S.D. = 1.7). These results are consistent with what
was observed in Study 3, and offer further evidence that the effects of the anthropomorphic
stance are not dependent on, or a function of, specific feelings toward the anthropomorphized
entity.
Sociality In this larger sample, we were able to replicate the main effect of
anthropomorphism on feelings of social connection (M
anth
= 3.8, SD
anth
= .95; M
control
= 3.2,
SD
control
= .78, p = .001) with nearly double the effect size (d = .69). However, we did not
observe the same difference in task time correlations that occurred in the previous study. This
suggests that the role of task time may have been affected somehow by the fact that in this study
we did not draw participants’ attention to the amount of time they were spending on the task (in
contrast to the previous study, where they were given an explicit time requirement). An
important future direction for the line of research investigating AST will be to directly
manipulate variables like task time and task difficulty that might operationalize subjects’ level of
involvement in the anthropomorphic stance.
Helping. Although subjects who anthropomorphized answered an average of 7 more
extra questions than subjects in the control condition (M
Anthrop
= 25, M
Control
= 18), the data were
highly positively skewed by the number of individuals in both conditions who chose not to
answer any questions at all, and the difference was not significant, t(152) = 1.02, p = .31. In
order to reduce the statistical effect of those subjects who answered 0 questions, we also
separately analyzed the data for subjects who did choose to help with the extra survey. Though
still not significant, this subsample (N = 67) displayed an even stronger trend in the same
direction: among subjects who chose to help, those in the anthropomorphism condition answered
an average of 13 more extra survey questions than subjects in the Control condition (M
Anthrop
=
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 38
56, M
Control
= 43, t(65) = 1.0, p = .31). The effect of anthropomorphism on sociality remained
significant in this subsample, t(65) = 2.0, p = .048, d = .49).
The overall rate of helping was relatively low in the sample as a whole (only 38% of
subjects chose to complete some portion of the extra survey), and so it is difficult to determine
whether this study constituted a strong enough test of our hypothesis that anthropomorphism
increases prosocial motivation. The fact that subjects in the Anthropomorphism condition did
answer more extra survey questions, both in the sample as a whole and even more so among only
those subjects who did choose to help, is encouraging, and suggests that a more effective request
for help might succeed in bringing the phenomenon to light at the level of statistical significance.
Figure 4. Mean number of extra questions answered in each condition by all subjects, including
those who opted not to work on the optional survey (left side), and mean number of questions
answered by only those subjects who volunteered to do some portion of the extra survey (right
side), Study 5. In both groups, subjects in the Anthropomorphism Condition answered more
questions, however neither difference was significant.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Total
Sample
Helpers
Only
Number
of
Extra
Ques7ons
Answered
Anthropomorphic
InteracFon
Social
CogniFon
Control
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 39
Study 6: Meta-Analysis of Anthropomorphic Sociality Studies
Because AST is completely new, no precedent exists for how to best test its predictions.
In developing this line of research, we piloted several different ways of manipulating
anthropomorphism and used several dependent variables to assess sociality, running a total of 16
experiments (including those reported here). Rather than discard the valuable data gained
through that process of piloting different manipulations and measures, we meta-analyzed all
sixteen of the studies to find out whether there is a true effect underlying our results. To our
knowledge, no other research has tested the relationship between anthropomorphism and
sociality, and so this meta-analysis represents an accurate assessment of the true size of the effect
in the existing population of studies.
Method
Study characteristics. Participants in all experiments were Amazon Mechanical Turk
(AMT) workers with the exception of Study 7, which was conducted with volunteers recruited in
person from the area around USC’s campus. Three of the studies manipulated
Anthropomorphism using the task used in Study 2 (anthropomorphizing a scene involving
multiple objects). The remaining studies used the interview task described in Study 3, with nine
of those studies using a stapler as the anthropomorphized “interviewee,” and 4 studies using an
animal. Nine of the studies measured sociality with the scale used in Studies 3-5 above. Five
studies measured sociality using Aron, Aron, & Smollan’s (1992) visual representation of
“inclusion of the other in the self,” and the remaining two studies used the Relational Self Scale
(Cross, Bacon, & Morris, 2000). A complete table of study characteristics as well as materials
for the dependent variables can be found in the Appendix.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 40
Statistical model. For each of the sixteen studies, we calculated d effect sizes for the
mean difference in Sociality between Anthropomorphism and Control conditions: (M
Anthro
-
M
Control
)/s
p
). Following Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein (2009), we also converted
those effect sizes to Hedge’s g using the correction factor for small sample bias [1 – (3/(4*df)-1].
However, sample sizes were large enough for all studies (all N’s > 75, Mean N = 130) that
unbiased Hedge’s g estimates of effect size were negligibly different from the standard d-
estimator, and the significance of the results was not affected by the use of the corrected Hedge’s
g estimator. Standardized d effect sizes were thus used for all calculations.
Since all 16 studies were conducted by the same investigators and, with one exception,
sampled from the same pool of participants (the mTurk workforce), a fixed effects model was
used to assess the summary effect of anthropomorphizing on sociality.
Results and discussion
The summary weighted effect size M for the 16 studies was M = .16, with SE
M
= .045
and 95% CI [.07 - .25]. A test of the null hypothesis that the true size of the effect is equal to
zero rejected that null hypothesis, which indicates that the effect observed in our experiments
does indeed reflect a real underlying relationship between anthropomorphism and sociality (Z =
3.31, p = .001).
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 41
Figure 5. Forest Plot and Meta–Analytic Summary Effect , Study 6 (X-Axis represents
standardized effect size, length of lines indicates 95% CI).
-‐1.50
-‐1.00
-‐0.50
0.00
0.50
1.00
1.50
Study
1
Study
2
Study
3
Study
4
Study
5
Study
6a
Study
6b
Study
7
Study
8
Study
9
Study
10
Study
11
Study
12
Study
13
Study
14
Study
15
Summary
Effect
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 42
General Discussion
Anthropomorphism has played a central role in the development of the modern mind over
the course of human beings’ evolutionary history (Guthrie, 1993; Mithen, 1996). Now, it
continues to be relevant to our lives in a broad array of domains, from public policy to
marketing. As the production of “smart robots” like self-driving cars increases, and the need to
protect environmental resources becomes more urgent, so too does the importance of
understanding anthropomorphism’s underlying psychological processes and mechanisms
(Waytz, Heafner, & Epley, 2014). Recent research has unearthed several of the individual
differences and situational factors that influence anthropomorphism, and has demonstrated its
efficacy as a way of satisfying various psychological needs. Building on these findings, the five
studies presented here ventured into previously unexplored aspects of anthropomorphic thinking,
testing for the first time whether anthropomorphism’s sociality effects extend beyond feelings
toward anthropomorphized entities themselves.
Working from the perspective of a new psychological theory (AST), I predicted that
experiencing anthropomorphism would enhance people’s overall feelings of sociality. Tests of
that prediction found evidence to support it, both within individual experiments as well as in a
meta-analysis of all sixteen of the studies I conducted that manipulated anthropomorphism and
measured self-expressed sociality. In Study 1, I began by establishing that engaging in
anthropomorphism generates a subjective experience of social presence. Study 2 then found that
generalized sociality (measured with the IWAH scale) is related at the trait level to the tendency
to anthropomorphize. By assessing the trait-level relationship between IWAH and loneliness, I
also determined that IWAH measures a psychological dimension of sociality that is distinct from
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 43
sociality as it has been conceptualized in previous research on anthropomorphism (e.g., Waytz,
Cacioppo, & Epley, 2010).
In Study 3, I investigated whether 3
rd
-person anthropomorphic cognition affects sociality
as compared to neutral object-cognition, and found that it does. Study 4 then demonstrated that
anthropomorphism undertaken in the 2
nd
-person stance (and thus involving a direct social
connection to the anthropomorphized entity) enhanced generalized sociality over and above
establishing an analogous 2
nd
-person social connection to a person. Study 5 replicated this
finding in a larger sample, and those data also revealed a trend that suggests anthropomorphism
may lead to increased prosocial behavior. Finally, Study 6 aggregated the data from all of our
experiments that manipulated anthropomorphism and measured sociality, and a meta-analysis of
that data found that the effect of anthropomorphic experience on sociality observed in my
research reflects a true underlying relationship between the two constructs.
Religious Anthropomorphism
Anyone who has seen images of the prehistoric drawings on the walls of the Chauvet
cave of animals walking upright knows that concepts that blur the boundary between the human
and nonhuman worlds are at least as old as art (Chauvet, Deschamps, & Hillaire, 1996). The
origins of religion, too, are steeped in anthropomorphism, from deity concepts to ritual
ceremonies which archaeological evidence suggests involved imbuing animals with social
significance (Coulson & Staurset, 2011; Robbins, Campbell, Brook, & Murphy, 2007). Indeed,
artifacts recently retrieved from the Tsodilo Hills of Botswana were likely used ritualistically,
and again the connection to anthropomorphism is present. A prominent rock outcropping at the
cave’s opening appears to have been carved into a large figure of a python, which suggests that
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 44
the cave itself may have had an anthropomorphic significance that pervaded the activities that
took place within it (Coulson & Staurset, 2011, p.50).
Given the huge impact of religion on modern day societies, it is of great importance to
scientists to understand exactly how religion became such an integral part of human life.
Researchers have sought empirical evidence for psychological phenomena that could explain
how belief in supernatural concepts might have made societies more socially cohesive, and thus
more likely to flourish (e.g., Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Norenzayan, 2013). Thus far, this
research has focused on the role of social supervision, or “moral outsourcing” as mechanisms
through which belief in anthropomorphized entities might have increased rates of prosocial
behavior within societies who held those beliefs. But AST offers another possible mechanism
through which anthropomorphism may have become a foundation for religious beliefs and
practices. Even independently of directly enforcing norms that dictate prosocial behavior, the
social experience involved in holding and expressing anthropomorphic concepts of nature may
have facilitated a sense of generalized social connection amongst individuals within the group,
which could in turn foster cohesion and cooperation, and promote the kinds of behaviors that
produce group-bonding collective effervescence.
Societies in which animistic and anthropomorphic worldviews flourished may therefore
have had stronger social bonds amongst their members as a result of extending the social realm
beyond its intuitive human boundaries. AST thus provides a psychological framework for
generating new hypotheses about the nature of religion that would be suitably pursued in
collaborations between psychologists, anthropologists, and cognitive archeologists.
For the sake of further exploring this possible connection between anthropomorphism
and the evolution of religion, an important future direction for research in AST will be to
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 45
investigate anthropomorphic sociality in the context of modern religious communities. Current
data from yourmorals.org (unpublished, available upon request) suggest that people’s tendency
to anthropomorphize varies with the strength of their religious affiliation, and with the specific
doctrinal content of that religion. This suggests that a fruitful area of research would be to
explore whether the extent to which religious communities endorse anthropomorphic deity
concepts is related to the interpersonal strength and cohesiveness of those communities.
Applications
AST also offers the possibility of real-world interventions. For example, in Study 2 we
chose to present subjects with a desk scene and office paraphernalia primarily because most
people’s daily “landscape” is their workplace. This brings in an element of concrete
applicability: if anthropomorphizing your daily environment or your stapler increases sociality,
this could have real implications for workplace social dynamics. In addition, Study 1 found that
the presence of an anthropomorphized object was as strong a cheating deterrent as the presence
of an actual human being. Given the deleterious effects of minor acts of dishonesty in the
workplace, this could serve as the basis for useful interventions against such behavior. A little bit
of anthropomorphism – even when disguised as a so-called “creative exercise” – can go a long
way toward producing a sense of social surveillance akin to what is derived from more heavy-
handed manipulations of social presence like eye-spots, and potentially politically or culturally
offensive ones like religious priming (e.g., Hayley & Fessler 2005; Sharif & Norenzayan, 2008).
Future Directions
As with any newly discovered main effect, an essential next step in the research process
will be to investigate potential situational and individual difference moderators of the
relationship between anthropomorphism and sociality. For example, in these studies we chose to
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 46
keep the social and anthropomorphic stimuli affectively neutral, and so future studies should
investigate the effect of more strongly negative and positive anthropomorphic experiences. Trait
empathy, and the ease with which people are able to make anthropomorphic connections should
also be explored as possible factors impacting the outcomes. In order to further explore the AST
hypothesis that it is the deliberateness of anthropomorphic sociality that leads to its spilling over,
manipulations of deliberateness – though perhaps difficult to control – would offer strong tests of
that conjecture.
Considering the behavioral trend in Study 4, and the fact that IWAH has been shown to
relate to prosocial behavior, perhaps the most important future direction for the line of research
investigating AST is to explore the effects of anthropomorphic sociality on concrete prosocial
motivation. Are people who make an anthropomorphic social connection more likely to come to
the aid of their fellow human beings? Relatedly, it has been suggested that anthropomorphism
may in some way be linked to its psychological inverse, dehumanization – the treatment of
human beings as animals or objects (e.g., Waytz et. al., 2010). Based on the results of this
research, it is conceivable that an anthropomorphic experience might cause people to intuitively
experience others as more human in situations where they would otherwise automatically tend to
dehumanize them, for example in the case of homeless people and members of extreme
outgroups (Harris & Fiske, 2006). Given the tragic consequences that dehumanization has had
throughout the course of human history, it would be important to know whether the generalized
sociality derived from anthropomorphic experience might in some way combat denial of the
humanity of other human beings. In short, the more we understand about the psychology of
anthropomorphic sociality, the closer we come to the possibility of harnessing its power for the
sake of the broader human community.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 47
Conclusion
The purpose of the current studies was to shed light on psychological characteristics of
anthropomorphism that differentiate it from typical social cognition and interaction. Specifically,
these studies focused on the impact of anthropomorphizing on subjective feelings of sociality,
laying a foundation for a new psychological account of anthropomorphism – Anthropomorphic
Sociality Theory. Study 1 did the preliminary work of establishing that an anthropomorphized
object constitutes a subjectively felt social presence. Study 2 then established that the kind of
generalized sociality that AST predicts will result from anthropomorphism is indeed a
measurable psychological construct that can be differentiated from more specific forms of social
connection (e.g., frequency of social interactions). With those two preliminary elements in place
(i.e., generation of an anthropomorphic social presence, and measurement of generalized
sociality), Studies 3-5 experimentally tested the central claim made by AST. In those three
studies, engaging in anthropomorphism produced a sense of social connection that extended
beyond the anthropomorphized entity itself, and most importantly, it enhanced sociality to a
greater degree than a comparable human social interaction. In Study 6, a summary effect size
was calculated for all sixteen studies conducted in this line of research, and was found to be
significant. Taken together, the current studies offer a fresh look at the psychological processes
involved in anthropomorphism, and open up new avenues for exploration of what it means to
take a social stance, and to experience oneself as a social being.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 48
References
Aggarwal, P., & McGill, A. L. (2007). Is that car smiling at me? Schema congruity as a basis for
evaluating anthropomorphized products. Journal of Consumer Research, 34(4), 468-479.
Aggarwal, P., & Mcgill, A. L. (2012). When brands seem human, do humans act like brands?
Automatic behavioral priming effects of brand anthropomorphism. Journal of Consumer
Research, 39(2), 307-323.
Aron, A., Aron, E., Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of
interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(4), 596-612.
Aydin, N., Krüger, J., Fischer, J., Hahn, D., Frey, D., Kastenmüller, A., et al. (2012). A man´s
best friend - how the presence of a dog decreases mental distress after social exclusion.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 446–449.
Benson, P., & Spilka, B. (1973). God image as a function of self-esteem and locus of control.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 297-310.
Bering, J. (2012). The belief instinct: The psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life.
WW Norton & Company.
Boehm, C. (2009). Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of egalitarian behavior. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Borenstein, M., Hedges, L., Higgins, J., & Rothstein, H. (2009). Introduction to Meta-Analysis.
West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.
Burnham, T. C., & Hare, B. (2007). Engineering human cooperation. Human Nature, 18(2), 88-
108.
Butterfield M. E., Hill S. E., Lord C. G. (2012). Mangy mutt or furry friend? Anthropomorphism
promotes animal welfare. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 48, 957–960
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 49
Chauvet, J., Deschamps, E.B., & Hillaire, C. (1996). Dawn of art: The Chauvet Cave: the oldest
known paintings in the world. New York, NY: H.N. Abrams.
Chandler, J., & Schwarz, N. (2010). Use does not wear ragged the fabric of friendship: Thinking
of objects as alive makes people less willing to replace them. Journal of Consumer
Psychology, 20(2), 138–145.
Coulson, S., & Staurset, S. (2011). Ritualized behavior in the middle stone age: Evidence from
Rhino Cave, Tsodilo Hills, Botswana, PaleoAnthropology, 2011, 18-61.
Cross, S. E., Bacon, P. L., & Morris, M. L. (2000). The relational-interdependent self-construal
and relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 791.
deJonge, J. J. (1993). Personality constructs and related God concepts. The Analyst, 2, 22–29.
Deci, E. L., & Moller, A. C. (2005). The Concept of Competence: A Starting Place for
Understanding Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determined Extrinsic Motivation. In A.J.
Elliot & C.S. Dweck (Eds) Handbook of Competence and Motivation. (579-597). New
York, NY: Guilford Publications.
DeWall, C. N., MacDonald, G., Webster, G. D., Masten, C. L., Baumeister, R. F., Powell, C.,
Combs D, Schurtz D.R., Stillman, T.F., Tice, D.M. & Eisenberger, N. I. (2010).
Acetaminophen reduces social pain: behavioral and neural evidence. Psychological
science, 21(7), 931-937.
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI
study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.
Eliade, Mircea (1965). Rites and Symbols of Initiation: the mysteries of birth and rebirth. Harper
& Row.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 50
Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008). Creating social connection through
inferential reproduction: Loneliness and perceived agency in gadgets, gods, and
greyhounds. Psychological Science, 19, 114-120.
Epley, N., Waytz, A., Akalis, S., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008). When We Need A Human:
Motivational Determinants of Anthropomorphism. Social Cognition, 26(2), 143–155.
Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). On seeing human: a three-factor theory of
anthropomorphism. Psychological review, 114(4), 864–86.
Ernest-Jones, M., Nettle, D., & Bateson, M. (2011). Effects of eye images on everyday
cooperative behavior: A field experiment. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32(3), 172-
178.
Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Like a camera in the sky? Thinking about God
increases public self-awareness and socially desirable responding. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 298-302.
Gino, F., Ayal, S., & Ariely, D. (2013). Self-serving altruism? The lure of unethical actions that
benefit others. Journal of economic behavior & organization.
Guthrie, S. (1993). Faces in the Clouds. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Haley, K. J., & Fessler, D. M. T. (2005). Nobody’s watching? Evolution and Human Behavior,
26(3), 245–256.
Harris, L. T., & Fiske, S. T. (2006). Dehumanizing the lowest of the low: neuroimaging
responses to extreme out-groups. Psychological science, 17(10), 847–53.
Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. American
Journal of Psychology, 57, 243–249.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 51
Jost, J., & Hunyady, O. (2003). The psychology of system justification and the palliative
function of ideology. European review of social psychology, 13(1), 111-153.
Kay, A. C., Shepherd, S., Blatz, C. W., Chua, S. N., & Galinsky, A. D. (2010). For god (or)
country: The hydraulic relation between government instability and belief in religious
sources of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 725–739.
Kummer, H., Dasser, V. & Hoyningen-Huene, P. (1990). Exploring primate social cognition:
some critical remarks. - Behaviour 112, p. 84-98.
Harter, S. (1978). Effectance motivation reconsidered: Toward a developmental model. Human
development, 21(1), 34-64.
Legare, C. H., Lane, J. D., & Evans, E. M. (2013). Anthropomorphizing science: how does it
affect the development of evolutionary concepts?. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 59(2), 168-
197.
Marlowe, F. W. (2005). Hunter-gatherers and human evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology:
Issues, News, and Reviews, 14(2), 54–67.
McFarland, S., Webb, M., & Brown, D. (2012). All humanity is my ingroup: A measure and
studies of identification with all humanity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
McFarland, S., Brown, D., & Webb, M. (2013). Identification with all humanity as a moral
concept and psychological construct. Current directions in psychological science, 22(3),
194-198.
Mitchell, R. W., & Hamm, M. (1997). The interpretation of animal psychology:
anthropomorphism or behavior reading?. Behaviour, 134(3), 173-204.
Mithen, S. (1996). The prehistory of the mind: A search for the origins of art, religion and
science. London: Thames and Hudson.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 52
Morewedge, C. K., & Clear, M. E. (2008). Anthropomorphic God concepts engender moral
judgment. Social Cognition, 26(2), 182-189.
Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton
University Press.
Paolacci, G., & Chandler, J. (2014). Inside the turk understanding mechanical turk as a
participant pool. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(3), 184-188.
Peplau, L. A., & Cutrona, C. E. (1980). The revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: Concurrent and
discriminant validity evidence. Journal of personality and social psychology, 39(3), 472-
480.
Powell, K. L., Roberts, G., & Nettle, D. (2012). Eye images increase charitable donations:
Evidence from an opportunistic field experiment in a supermarket. Ethology, 118(11),
1096-1101.
Reddy, V. (2003). On being the object of attention: implications for self–other consciousness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(9), 397–402.
Robbins, L.H., Campbell, A.C., Brook, G.A., and Murphy, M.L., 2007. World’s Oldest Ritual
Site? The “Python Cave” at Tsodilo Hills World Heritage Site, Botswana. Nyame Akuma
67: 2–6.
Schwab, R., & Petersen, K. U. (1990). Religiousness: Its relation to loneliness, neuroticism and
subjective well-being. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29(3).
Seemann, A. (2011). Joint Attention: Toward a Relational Account. In Seemann, A. (Ed.). Joint
Attention: New Developments in Psychology, Philosophy of Mind, and Social
Neuroscience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 53
Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you priming God concepts increases
prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game.Psychological science, 18(9), 803-
809.
Tam, K. P., Lee, S. L., & Chao, M. M. (2013). Saving Mr. Nature: Anthropomorphism enhances
connectedness to and protectiveness toward nature. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 49(3), 514-521.
Trevarthen, C. (2011). What is it like to be a person who knows nothing? Defining the active
intersubjective mind of a newborn human being. Infant and Child Development, 20(1),
119-135.
Waytz, A., Heafner, J., & Epley, N. (2014). The mind in the machine: Anthropomorphism
increases trust in an autonomous vehicle. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 52,
113-117.
Waytz, A., Cacioppo, J., & Epley, N. (2010). Who sees human? The stability and importance of
individual differences in anthropomorphism. Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 5(3), 219-232.
Waytz, A., Morewedge, C. K., Epley, N., Monteleone, G., Gao, J. H., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010).
Making sense by making sentient: effectance motivation increases
anthropomorphism. Journal of personality and social psychology, 99(3), 410.
White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence. Psychological
review, 66(5), 297.
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 54
Appendix A
Dependent Measures
9-Item Sociality Measure (Studies 3-5)
1. How close do you feel to people in the following groups?
a. People in my community (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
b. People in my country (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
c. People all over the world (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
2. How much do you identify with (that is, feel a part of, feel love toward, have concern for)
each of the following?
a. People in my community (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
b. People in my country (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
c. People all over the world (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
3. How much would you say you care (feel upset, want to help) when bad things happen to:
a. People in my community (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
b. People in my country (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
c. People all over the world (1-5, Not at all – Very Much)
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 55
Inclusion of the Other in the Self (IOS)
Single-Item Sociality Measure
Instructions to Participant:
“Sometimes people talk about feeling connected to all of humanity, or even feeling love for all of
humanity. Looking at the graph above, imagine that the blue circles represent you and the red
circles represent all of humanity. Which picture best represents how you feel about your
relationship with all of humanity? Select the picture you feel gives the best representation of how
connected you feel to all of humanity.”
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 56
Appendix B
Images Used in Studies 3-5
1. Desk scene image
2. Interview Task Images
Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory 57
Appendix C
Meta-Analysis Study Characteristics
Study IV DV N
Effect
Size (d)
95% CI
Lower
95% CI
Upper
Study 1
Stapler
Interview Sociality-9 103 0.38 -0.01 0.77
Study 2
Desk
Scene Sociality-9 102 0.29 -0.10 0.69
Study 3
Animal
Interview Sociality-9 99 0.03 -0.36 0.43
Study 4
Desk
Scene IOS 202 0.02 -0.26 0.30
Study 5
Desk
Scene
Relational
Self 204 0.16 -0.12 0.44
Study 6a
Animal
Interview Sociality-9 103 0.12 -0.27 0.50
Study 6b
Stapler
Interview Sociality-9 97 0.26 -0.14 0.66
Study 7
Stapler
Interview Sociaiity-9 154 0.69 0.36 1.01
Study 8
Stapler
Interview Sociality-9 103 -0.31 -0.70 0.08
Study 9
Stapler
Interview Sociality-9 100 -0.01 -0.40 0.38
Study 10
Stapler
Interview IOS 77 0.30 -0.16 0.74
Study 11
Stapler
Interview IOS 75 -0.33 -0.78 0.13
Study 12
Stapler
Interview
Relational
Self 105 0.09 -0.30 0.47
Study 13
Stapler
Interview Sociality-9 203 -0.07 -0.34 0.21
Study 14
Animal
Interview IOS 102 0.18 -0.21 0.57
Study 15
Animal
Interview IOS 203 0.11 -0.16 0.39
Note: After measuring sociality, Study 7 (reported as Study 5, above) also measured helping
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Research in cognitive and social psychology has characterized the ways in which anthropomorphism—the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities—reflects basic social cognitive mechanisms and motives (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007). At the same time, little is known about the ways in which engaging in anthropomorphism may differ from typical social cognition and interaction. I introduce and test Anthropomorphic Sociality Theory (AST), which holds that engaging in anthropomorphism leads to an overall increase in subjective feelings of social connection, and that this enhanced experience of sociality functionally distinguishes anthropomorphism from typical social cognition and interaction with human beings. First, I demonstrate that an anthropomorphized object can elicit a subjective experience of social presence that is comparable to the presence of an actual human being. Study 2 then explores trait level relationships between anthropomorphizing and sociality. In studies 3-5, I offer experimental evidence that engaging in anthropomorphism heightens generalized feelings of social connection beyond what is derived from typical social interaction. Last, Study 6 aggregates data from 16 experiments that tested the relationship between anthropomorphism and sociality, and a meta-analysis of those data finds a significant summary effect of anthropomorphism on sociality.
Linked assets
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
Conceptually similar
PDF
Powerful guts: how power limits the role of disgust in moral judgment
PDF
The interplay between social connection and substance use
PDF
Development of error monitoring in preschool to 12th-grade students and relations in late childhood and adolescence to social-affective processing and emotions about math
PDF
Selflessness takes time: altruistic (but not cooperative) prosocial behavior increases with decision time
PDF
Offline social functioning and online communication: how social competence translates to an online context
PDF
Expressing values and group identity through behavior and language
PDF
Technology, behavior tracking, and the future of work
PDF
On second thought, people choose to be prosocial
PDF
Perspective taking behavior and social outcomes in late adolescence
PDF
Object stories for social connectivity: a digital service that improves social interactions through object’s storytelling
PDF
Adolescent conduct problems and substance use: an examination of the risk pathway across the transition to high school
PDF
A neuropsychological exploration of low-SES adolescents’ life goals and their motives
PDF
Children's use of social and visual perspective-taking in reference resolution
PDF
Building blocks of action and goal comprehension in a newborn visual system
PDF
Social exclusion decreases risk-taking
PDF
How perceived moral congruence shapes propensities to engage in pro-group behaviors
PDF
Habits as friend and foe to self-control: the dual roles of routinized behavior
PDF
Using ecological momentary assessment to study the impact of social-cognitive factors on paretic hand use after stroke
PDF
Young children’s demand for reciprocal engagement: evidence from typically-developing and autistic preschoolers
PDF
The scope and limitations of young children’s belief understanding
Asset Metadata
Creator
Beall, Erica Marie
(author)
Core Title
Anthropomorphic sociality theory: how connections to nonhumans connect us to humans
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Psychology
Publication Date
10/31/2015
Defense Date
10/09/2015
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
anthropomorphism,OAI-PMH Harvest,prosocial behavior,Social Psychology
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Graham, Jesse (
committee chair
), Moll, Henrike (
committee member
), Monterosso, John (
committee member
), Wakslak, Cheryl (
committee member
)
Creator Email
erica.beall@gmail.com,erica.beall@sjc.edu
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-194375
Unique identifier
UC11278115
Identifier
etd-BeallErica-4007.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-194375 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-BeallErica-4007.pdf
Dmrecord
194375
Document Type
Dissertation
Format
application/pdf (imt)
Rights
Beall, Erica Marie
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
anthropomorphism
prosocial behavior