Such studies indicate that, when we’re able to form some sort of connection with technology (or more specifically, project a connection onto it), we tend to view them as more humanlike - which may, in turn, make us more likely to give them a human name. A separate 2016 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, co-authored by Epley, showed that people were more likely to believe that computer-generated text read to them by a human voice came from a human mind than they were when they read that same text themselves. This can sometimes be an appearance, how it behaves or acts, or any other cues or similarities that lead us to treat nonhuman agents as humanlike.”įor instance, one May 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that participants ended up trusting a vehicle more as it acquired more anthropomorphic features (such as self-driving steering and a voice). “Some of them have to do with just how similar some inanimate object or animal seems to a person. “We think there are multiple reasons why this happens,” says psychologist Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. So what determines which things make the cut? Why do we bestow nicknames upon some objects, but not others? The answer, as it turns out, is a complicated mix of several different quirks of human psychology.īecause you’re attributing a humanlike mind to that object.
Not many people, for example, have taken it upon themselves to name their toilet. There are outliers (one Reddit user even named her breast pump), but generally speaking, some objects tend to get names much more often than others. Think about it, though - run through the real-life examples you know, and you’ll probably find that the phenomenon tends to follow a particular pattern. Granted, the survey isn’t exactly scientific, but while the statistic may not be a perfect reflection of reality, it does align with something you may have already seen in the wild: Plenty of people like to name the appliances in their lives - cars, laptops, bikes. According to a 2013 poll from the insurance company Nationwide, around 25 percent of car owners have named their ride.
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