The naturalness of anthropomorphism:a theoretical discussion based on video-recorded human-humanoid interactions

Anthropomorphism is attributing human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. People have routinely, throughout history, attributed human emotions and behavioural characteristics to animals. Rather than being inherently problematic, anthropomorphism has consistently helped humans relate meaningfully to gods, animals, nature, and machines. Psychological theories argue it to be a natural mode of thinking. Rather than a pathology, it is an extension of our theory of mind (Guthrie, 1997). Anthropomorphism has gained new attention in the wake of social robots and humanoids in particular. Instead of trying to demarcate what is “real”, what is a “real” agent and what is a “real” relation, we seek in this presentation to explore the natural fluidity of producing realness and agency through occasioned, situated processes of sociomaterial engagement. Instead of discussing anthropomorphism from a cognitive, historical or psychological point of view as either a good or bad thing, we depart in this presentation from videorecorded data of human-humanoid interactions in social environments as the baseline for arguing the relevance and realness of local ontologies (Holbraad &amp; Pedersen, 2017). We will, based on ethnomethodological conversation analytical methods with an openness towards distributed agency (Due, 2024), show the temporal shifts and sociomaterial practices of forming different kinds of human-humanoid assemblages in which the robot is moment-by-moment naturally anthropomorphised or treated as dead material.<br/><br/>Due, B. L. (2024). Situated socio-material assemblages: Assemmethodology in the making. Human<br/>Communication Research, 50(1), 123–142. https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqad031<br/>Guthrie, S. E. (1997). Anthropomorphism: A Definition and a Theory. I R. W. Mitchell, N. S. Thompson,<br/>&amp; H. L. Miles (Red.), Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes, and Animals (s. 50–58). SUNY Press.<br/>Holbraad, M., &amp; Pedersen, M. A. (2017). The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition.<br/>Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316218907