Justified anthropomorphism

(by Joe)

This is interesting, particularly in the context of our recent posts about Franz de Waal. As I've mentioned previously, de Waal is open about his tendency to treat chimpanzee psychology as being very similar to human psychology, and this research would seem to vindicate that approach. The paper discussed in the BBC article (Weiss et al, 2012) uses new data analysis techniques to compensate for any unjustified anthropomorphication in our attributions of personality traits to chimpanzees and orang-utans. They found that even after making these adjustments, the personality traits were consistent with judgments made by human observers. They conclude that "personality similarities between humans and great apes are best explained by genetic and phylogenetic affinity and not by anthropomorphic artefacts". In lay terms, when we look at chimpanzees and orang-utans and ascribe them human personalities, it's not just wishful thinking. Personality has a shared ancestry, going back at least as far as the point at which humans, orang-utan, and chimpanzee evolution diverged.

I haven't read the entire paper yet, so I may expand this post with a few more thoughts in a couple of days. Also, two of the authors are based at my department here at Edinburgh - maybe I should try and pay a little bit more attention to what's going on around me?


Weiss, A., Inoue-Murayama, M., King, J., Adams, M. & Matsuzawa, T. 2012. "All too human? Chimpanzee and orang-utan personalities are not anthropomorphic projections." Animal Behaviour (in press, available online)