Why we treat our pets and possessions like human beings

Many of us treat our pet dogs or cats with the same love and attention that with give to our human babies, some of us give our cars or other prized possessions human names and may even, at times, talk to them. This is known as anthropomorphism – the tendency within many of us to assign human qualities to non-human animals and even inanimate objects.

In this episode, we’re joined by Dr Justin Gregg to talk about his latest book, Human-ish – How Anthropomorphism Makes Us Smart, Weird and Delusional.

He tells us how we’ve bred our pets to look and behave in more and more human-like ways, the benefits we can all gain from attributing human-like qualities to inanimate objects such as cars or musicalminstruments, and how AI chatbots are expanding the phenomenon of anthropomorphism further than ever before.

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