Consequences of distinguishing anthropomorphism from animism in experimental manipulations

Abstract Animism (perceiving an object as alive) and anthropomorphism (perceiving an object as a person) are two distinct cognitive processes, but they have often been conflated in marketing research. For example, the popular method of manipulating anthropomorphism with a cognitive task (i.e., instructing participants to imagine and describe a product as alive and human) pertains to both animism and anthropomorphism. No research has examined how distinguishing anthropomorphism from animism can be harmful/beneficial for marketing research, and what consequences one might expect from this distinction in experiments. Through three studies, I demonstrate that animism and anthropomorphism are separate processes, with anthropomorphism yielding less elaborate product-related descriptions than animism, which deflates persuasive outcomes in the experiments. These findings can assist researchers in refining their experimental manipulations and enable the discovery of marketing effects that might otherwise go unnoticed.