Linguistic Antecedents of Anthropomorphism

In consumer research, humanlike form has been regarded as the prerequisite for anthropomorphism (Hur, Koo, and Hofmann, 2015; Kim, Peng Chen, and Zhang, 2016). Given that activation of knowledge structures about humans and nonhumans and their application to a nonhuman target determines the extent to which humanlike qualities are attributed to the target (Epley, Waytz, and Cacioppo 2007), we argue that humanlike form is not essential for consumers to anthropomorphize nonhuman agents, because even in the absence of humanlike characteristics, people may continue to anthropomorphize, as some languages make their speakers focus on the similarities, rather than the differences, between humans and nonhumans. Recent empirical evidence also shows that whether the language of a given country has gendered pronouns or not is a strong predictor of gender equality in that country (Prewitt-Freilino, Caswell, and Laakso 2012). In English, not only are there different pronouns for male (he) and female (she), but English also separates humans (he and she) from non-humans (it). Although most languages distinguish grammatically between humans and nonhumans, some languages (e.g., French, Turkish), do not make these distinctions. Given that language shapes thought (Whorf 1952), we propose that (1) native speakers of these languages are more likely to attribute human qualities to nonhuman agents (i.e., anthropomorphize) than those whose native language separates humans from nonhumans, and that (2) native speakers of languages lacking differential treatment implicitly consider linguistic cues as characteristics of the anthropomorphized entity.