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Living psychology: animal minds
Living psychology: animal minds

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2 Human ideas about other animals’ minds

The tendency to ascribe human cognitive and emotional states to animals is known as anthropomorphising. For example, pet owners may infer that their dog is ‘excited’ about going to the park, ‘upset’ at being left home alone all day or ‘confused’ by a new toy.

Anthropomorphising can go beyond other animals and be applied to inanimate objects, as you may have experienced when your car ‘refuses’ to start, or your computer ‘deliberately’ crashes just when you need it to work. But this course concentrates on animals – organisms with brains.

Next, you will explore how brains have evolved over time. But first take a moment to complete Activity 2, which asks you to think about how you view the mental abilities of humans and other species.

Activity 2 Thinking about another’s thinking: Lily and the biscuits

Timing: Allow 10 minutes for this activity

Think about the following scenario (adapted from Rasmussen et al., 1993). The scene is a typical household kitchen. On the kitchen counter is a plate of biscuits. Lily is in the kitchen. Lily is hungry and can see the biscuits.

Which of these assumptions, if any, do you think are reasonable to make:

  • Lily likes eating biscuits
  • Lily would be happy if she ate the biscuits
  • Lily would be unhappy if she could not eat the biscuits
  • Lily would feel guilty if she ate the biscuits without permission
  • Lily would be able to remember eating the biscuits the next day.

Discussion

Would your answers change if you were told that Lily is (a) a 6-year-old girl, (b) a pet dog, (c) a pet cat, (d) a pet bird, or (e) a pet fish?

In the study that this activity was adapted from, Jeffrey Rasmussen and colleagues found that people tended to rate all of these assumptions as being highly reasonable of the young child (using a 7-point rating scale, where 1 indicated ‘unreasonable’ and 7 indicated ‘reasonable’), although the item about remembering eating the biscuits the next day was considered the least reasonable assumption. However, the assumptions were also rated as fairly reasonable for the dog, cat, bird and fish, with the average reasonableness ratings decreasing in that order.

There were also differences to do with the type of assumed thinking, with ‘simple’ thinking (e.g. liking biscuits, being happy about eating biscuits) being rated as more similar between the human child and the non-human animals; whereas more ‘complex’ thinking (e.g. feeling guilty, remembering the next day) was rated as less similar between the human child and the non-human animals.

Does this reflect your own thoughts, according to who or what ‘Lily’ is?

Studies such as this one by Rasmussen et al. (1993) highlight an interesting tension: on the one hand, it is common for people to see ‘humans’ and ‘animals’ as fundamentally different, sometimes even to the extent of thinking that the rules of nature that apply to other species do not necessarily apply to humans. In fact, before the work of Charles Darwin, the idea of humans and animals being entirely separate was the mainstream view (Wynne, 2007). Finlay and Workman (2013) argue that this idea of humans being somehow ‘more than’ animals can even be found in some modern scientific work, not just in laypersons’ ideas about human uniqueness.

On the other hand, there is evidence that people tend to ascribe human qualities, such as understanding and experiencing emotions, to animals. This tendency to anthropomorphise may not be universal, but it is nonetheless widespread (Waytz et al., 2010).

The question of why (and when) people anthropomorphise animals is an interesting one in its own right. But the main purpose of this course is to explore the similarities and differences between human and non-human minds.

The first thing to consider is the organic structure within which the ‘mind’ resides: the brain. And the next section of this course looks at how the evolution of brains has formed the basis of the evolution of minds.