The DOI matches its Crossref record; 9 of the 9 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Social Cognition Unbound: Insights Into Anthropomorphism and Dehumanization
Abstract
People conceive of wrathful gods, fickle computers, and selfish genes, attributing human characteristics to a variety of supernatural, technological, and biological agents. This tendency to anthropomorphize nonhuman agents figures prominently in domains ranging from religion to marketing to computer science. Perceiving an agent to be humanlike has important implications for whether the agent is capable of social influence, accountable for its actions, and worthy of moral care and consideration. Three primary factors—elicited agent knowledge, sociality motivation, and effectance motivation—appear to account for a significant amount of variability in anthropomorphism. Identifying these factors that lead people to see nonhuman agents as humanlike also sheds light on the inverse process of dehumanization, whereby people treat human agents as animals or objects. Understanding anthropomorphism can contribute to a more expansive view of social cognition that applies social psychological theory to a wide variety of both human and nonhuman agents.
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“Perceived anthropomorphism (PA) was measured with six adapted items concerning human-like appearance, language, understanding, and emotional responsiveness (Bartneck et al., 2009; Waytz et al., 2010).”
From When loneliness amplifies the risk of problematic emotional dependence: perceived anthropomorphism and basic psychological need satisfaction in AI companion use (2026) · cites this paper as Waytz et al., 2010
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Cites
On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism
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Epley, N., Akalis, S., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2008) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02056.x · Cited by 632
Self-citationMaking sense by making sentient: Effectance motivation increases anthropomorphism.
Waytz, A., Morewedge, C. K., Epley, N., Monteleone, G., Gao, J.-H., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0020240 · Cited by 587
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Who Sees Human?: The Stability and Importance of Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism
Waytz, A., Cacioppo, J., & Epley, N. (2010) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691610369336 · Cited by 1,228
Self-citationBos, P. A., Panksepp, J., Bluthé, R.-M., & Honk, J. V. (2012) · Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology · doi:10.1016/j.yfrne.2011.01.002 · Cited by 429
Someone out there? A study on the social presence of anthropomorphized chatbots
Konya-Baumbach, E., Biller, M., & von Janda, S. (2023) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2022.107513 · Cited by 283
Political Polarization and Political Violence
Piazza, J. A. (2023) · Security Studies · doi:10.1080/09636412.2023.2225780 · Cited by 85
Predicting the moral consideration of artificial intelligences
Pauketat, J. V. T., & Anthis, J. R. (2022) · Computers in Human Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.chb.2022.107372 · Cited by 60
Beyond perspective-taking: Mind-reading motivation
Carpenter, J. M., Green, M. C., & Vacharkulksemsuk, T. (2016) · Motivation and Emotion · doi:10.1007/s11031-016-9544-z · Cited by 45
Genie in the Bottle: Anthropomorphized Perceptions of Conversational Agents
Kuzminykh, A., Sun, J., Govindaraju, N., Avery, J., & Lank, E. (2020) · Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3313831.3376665 · Cited by 41
Dippold, D. (2023) · Journal of Pragmatics · doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2022.12.004 · Cited by 37
Beyond Behaviorist Representational Harms: A Plan for Measurement and Mitigation
Chien, J., & Danks, D. (2024) · The 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness Accountability and Transparency · doi:10.1145/3630106.3658946 · Cited by 22
Liu, T., Shih, R.-M., Luo, T., & Jin, S. (2026) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1900817
Metadata
- Authors
- Waytz, A., Epley, N., & Cacioppo, J. T.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University
- University of Chicago
- Venue
- Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-02
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 58-62
- ISSN
- 0963-7214
- 1467-8721
- PMC
- PMC4020342
- Cited by
- 273
- References
- 9
- Language
- en
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