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Abstract:
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Recent research has revealed that some adults tend to anthropomorphize more than others and that such people reason differently about nonhuman entities . Specifically , individuals who tend to anthropomorphize show greater concern for nonhuman entities and are more likely to be concerned for the environment . The proposed study extended this line of work to children , examining developmental patterns in anthropomorphism and behavior toward nonhuman entities . In one task children were asked whether or not different kinds of nonhuman entities (dogs , trees , robots , dolls ) were capable of a range of psychological states (e .g . , thinking , feeling ) . In a separate task with vignettes children were asked to judge the morality of actions that led to a negative consequence for a nonhuman target . The main prediction was that children who attributed more psychological properties to nonhuman entities would be more likely to exhibit concern for nonhuman targets in the moral stories . Overall , the results failed to capture a general relation between psychological attributions and moral judgments , perhaps owing to methodological shortcomings but perhaps also because children in our sample did not appear to exhibit general tendencies to anthropomorphize as adults have in previous research . |