On seeing human: A three-factor theory of anthropomorphism.

“…This is the expected result and supports the work of previous authors who have discussed anthropomorphism as being a subconscious bias (Kennedy, 1992; Kim and Sundar, 2012) that relies on easily accessible human knowledge rather than deep thought (Epley et al , 2007). Indeed, this is in keeping with the proposed evolutionary basis of anthropomorphism, specifically that it was a “hunch” that could save your life (Guthrie, 1995), not a conscious decision.…”

“…Given that this tendency has only recently been found to vary on an individual basis, this tendency is understudied, and not much is yet known about how it presents in any given population. This result, along with a standard deviation of 1.21, supports the work of previous researchers in that anthropomorphic tendency is not a universal tendency that would show evenly amongst a population (Epley et al , 2007; Waytz et al , 2010a): instead, while the sample population generally has a low mean for this tendency, individuals in this study have been seen to vary significantly.…”

“…This pattern of trait attributions, combined with the positive association between mentalizing and karma belief, indicates either that believers think of karma as something agentic (like God) or that they are willing to apply mental state reasoning to make sense of karma in the face of uncertainty about what karma is truly like. This is consistent with previous evidence that mental state reasoning allows perceivers to make sense of otherwise ambiguous and unpredictable experiences (Epley et al, 2007; Kay et al, 2010; Laurin & Kay, 2017; Waytz et al, 2010). Neither agentic nor non‐agentic views of karma are incompatible with belief, or incompatible with one another.…”

“…Our study also suggests a relationship between an individual's propensity to anthropomorphize and changes in the degree of mind perception toward AI. Consistent with previous research (Epley et al, 2007;Watz et al, 2010a), we found that IDAQ scores, a measure of individual propensity to anthropomorphize, were associated with changes in mind perception ratings after exposure and were related specifically to attributions of experience (the ability to feel). This suggests that individuals that are more likely to anthropomorphize are more likely to increase their perception that ChatGPT can feel, even after just a brief exposure.…”