Why We Anthropomorphize Things?

Understanding the Cognitive Bias

Photo by SevenStorm JUHASZIMRUS from Pexels

“The language of a river inscribes
over eyes of moths and flies
the navel of the land is a lake.”― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Synecdoche

We have been anthropomorphizing for as long as we have been around—the tendency to think of things as humans.

Anthropomorphization is a cognitive bias that can be defined in many ways, but it usually involves attributing human characteristics to non-human objects or animals. For example, we might believe that an animal who understands our thoughts must be intelligent because intelligence is associated with humans. We also tend to empathize more towards particular objects because they look like us or have other human-like features.

There are two main reasons why we do this:

First, we anthropomorphize to understand better what is happening in the world. If something looks like it understands you, you will treat it better than if it looks like an animal without any emotional expressions.

Second, anthropomorphizing makes…