A Mind like Mine: The Exceptionally Ordinary Underpinnings of Anthropomorphism

From computers to cars to cell phones, consumers interact with inanimate objects on a daily basis. Despite being mindless machines, consumers nevertheless routinely attribute humanlike mental capacities of intentions, beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge to them. This process of anthropomorphism has historically been treated as an exceptional belief, explained away as simply an inevitable outcome of human nature or as an occasional product of human...