Anthropomorphism impedes our understanding of animal behavior

This fascinating study had 4 and 5 year old children read one of two versions of a story about animals - one with anthropomorphism, and one that used factual language. Results suggested that children who read the story where animals were depicted with human-like traits were more likely to assign human psychological, but not physical, traits to animals later.  The Thoughtful Animal at Scientific American tells us more about it here.

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