Giving animals human attributes is cute. It’s utterly adorable. I mean, have you ever seen a picture of a dog wearing sunglasses? That’s absolutely killer. When it comes to taking care of animals, many people tend to speak to their dog or cat as if they were another participant in the conversation and not just a mute bystander who’s waiting for you to drop crumbs. This concept is called anthropomorphism.
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People have different viewpoints of anthropomorphism. An article by Rick Nauert, PhD on psychcentral.com refers to our tendency to assign human characteristics to nonhuman things as a source of error. Many argue that projecting certain traits onto an animal will compel us to treat the animal like the object or train it to act as such, even if we don’t intend to.
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Others, however, are of the opinion that treating animals like humans is all in jest. It’s just a little fun thing we do sometimes, and it even gives people a reality check about their own lives, comparing their behavior to that of another living thing. “If anthropomorphizing animals helps a human connect with the animal and value it’s life and possibly get them to help protect it and it’s environment then I think it is a win-win,” writes one Quora user.
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But some people take it a bit farther than playing dress up with their felines. Some people like to plan elaborate scenarios or events around their pet, which is funny because the animal doesn’t know the significance of the event.
