Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to imbue the real or imagined behavior of nonhuman agents with humanlike characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions. Although surprisingly common, anthropomorphism is not invariant. This article describes a theory to explain when people are likely to anthropomorphize and when they are not, focused on three psychological determinants--the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation). This theory predicts that people are more likely to anthropomorphize when anthropocentric knowledge is accessible and applicable, when motivated to be effective social agents, and when lacking a sense of social connection to other humans. These factors help to explain why anthropomorphism is so variable; organize diverse research; and offer testable predictions about dispositional, situational, developmental, and cultural influences on anthropomorphism. Discussion addresses extensions of this theory into the specific psychological processes underlying anthropomorphism, applications of this theory into robotics and human-computer interaction, and the insights offered by this theory into the inverse process of dehumanization.

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On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism.

The development of prosocial and reparative bebaviors was investigated by examining children's responses to distresses they caused and those they witnessed in others during the 2nd year of life. Prosocial behaviors (help, sharing, provision of comfort) emerged between the ages of 1 and 2, increasing in frequency and variety over this time period. These behaviors were linked to expressions of concern as well as efforts to understand and experience the other's plight. Children's reparative behaviors after they had caused distress also increased with age. Age changes in these early signs of moral development were accompanied by social-cognitive changes in self-recognition. In assessments at age 2, children were most responsive to distress in their mothers but also showed some sensitivity toward unfamiliar persons

Development of concern for others.

This article contains the argument that the human ability to travel mentally in time constitutes a discontinuity between ourselves and other animals. Mental time travel comprises the mental reconstruction of personal events from the past (episodic memory) and the mental construction of possible events in the future. It is not an isolated module, but depends on the sophistication of other cognitive capacities, including self-awareness, meta-representation, mental attribution, understanding the perception-knowledge relationship, and the ability to dissociate imagined mental states from one's present mental state. These capacities are also important aspects of so-called theory of mind, and they appear to mature in children at around age 4. Furthermore, mental time travel is generative, involving the combination and recombination of familiar elements, and in this respect may have been a precursor to language. Current evidence, although indirect or based on anecdote rather than on systematic study, suggests that nonhuman animals, including the great apes, are confined to a "present" that is limited by their current drive states. In contrast, mental time travel by humans is relatively unconstrained and allows a more rapid and flexible adaptation to complex, changing environments than is afforded by instincts or conventional learning. Past and future events loom large in much of human thinking, giving rise to cultural, religious, and scientific concepts about origins, destiny, and time itself.

Mental time travel and the evolution of the human mind.

The ability to recognize oneself in a mirror is an exceedingly rare capacity in the animal kingdom To date, only humans and great apes have shown convincing evidence of mirror self-recognition Two dolphins were exposed to reflective surfaces, and both demonstrated responses consistent with the use of the mirror to investigate marked parts of the body This ability to use a mirror to inspect parts of the body is a striking example of evolutionary convergence with great apes and humans

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/98/10/5937.full.pdf

Mirror Self-Recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin: A Case of Cognitive Convergence

DAMON, WILLIAM, and HART, DANIEL. The Development of Self-Understanding from Infancy through Adolescence. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 841-864. This review focuses on selfunderstanding, the cognitive basis for self-conception. Its purpose is to construct from the psychological literature a descriptive account of self-understanding development between infancy and adolescence. The paper begins by distinguishing self-understanding from other aspects of self-concept, in particular self-esteem. It is argued that a developmental model of self-understanding is a necessary step in the assessment and study of children's self-esteem. Next, the review presents a justification for studying self-understanding separately from other social cognitive achievements (such as understanding other people). With reference to William James's theory, the self as a cognitive concept is analyzed into its diverse components. Empirical studies of self-understanding in infants, children, and adolescents are then summarized and placed within the theoretical framework of this conceptual analysis. The review identifies the developmental trends consistently uncovered by empirical studies and presents a chronological account based on these trends. Finally, the review proposes a developmental model that outlines genetic and conceptual relations among different aspects of self-understanding. This model is extrapolated from the available literature, which is still in a germinal phase; therefore, the model is considered speculative at this point. It is hoped that the model will be subject to further empirical testing in time and will provide a theoretical basis for more precise definition of developmental patterns in self-understanding between infancy and adolescence.

The development of self-understanding from infancy through adolescence.

The behavior of 88 children between 3 and 24 months was observed before a mirror, using an objective technique to examine the child's awareness of the image as his own The results indicate the following age-related sequence of behavior before the mirror: the first prolonged and repeated reaction of an infant to his mirror image is that of a sociable “playmate” from about 6 through 12 months of age In the second year of life wariness and withdrawal appeared; self-admiring and embarrassed behavior accompanied those avoidance behaviors starting at 14 months, and was shown by 75% of the subjects after 20 months of age During the last part of the second year of life, from 20 to 24 months of age, 65% of the subjects demonstrated recognition of their mirror images

Beulah Amsterdam

Papers

Mirror self‐image reactions before age two