As humans, we love projecting our emotions on non-human things like animals, objects and weather events. I’m told the psychological term for this is anthropomorphism, which is difficult to say three ...

At the start of Elizabeth Hobson’s career as an ecologist, she knew to stick to one rule: Never anthropomorphize the animals you study. For plenty of people, assigning human characteristics to another ...

Take a class in animal behavior and you’ll probably receive a warning: Beware of anthropomorphism. Explaining animals in terms of human motivations, emotions, or mental characteristics invites ...

Have you ever assigned personalities to your pets and explained their behaviors in terms of human motivations, such as imagining that a cat is being stubborn? The attribution of human characteristics, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Sahar Hashmi, M.D., Ph.D., is a Boston-based, award-winning AI expert. Feb 28, 2026, 11:53pm EST ...