The attribution of human mental states, motivations, or characteristics to non-human animals.

Some level of anthropomorphism is probably unavoidable and may even be useful in generating hypotheses about animal experience. Humans have not evolved separate cognitive machinery for thinking about animal minds, so we draw on our understanding of our own minds when trying to understand what other animals are experiencing. Used carefully, this can be a useful starting point for inquiry.

Uncritical anthropomorphism, however, produces misinterpretation. Common examples include reading horse resistance as “naughtiness” (when it more often reflects pain, confusion, or fear); reading dog excitement around food as “happiness” without further evidence (when it may reflect anxiety or learned behaviour); reading slow movement as “stubbornness” (rather than as discomfort or confusion); reading the absence of behaviour as “respect” (rather than as learned helplessness or shutdown).

The risks of anthropomorphism are particularly acute when human emotional framings are mapped onto animal behaviour in ways that justify training or management practices. The horse who is “trying to win” is often a horse who is trying to communicate something the handler is not reading. The dog who is being “dominant” is often a dog who is anxious or has learned that particular behaviours produce particular outcomes.

Modern welfare science attempts to take animal experience seriously while avoiding the imposition of specifically human framings. This means being open to the possibility that animals have rich subjective experiences (which the evidence increasingly supports) while being careful about claiming specific human-like emotional states without supporting evidence. The middle ground is sometimes called critical anthropomorphism or “informed anthropomorphism”: using human experience as a starting point while testing those interpretations against species-specific evidence.

The opposite error, sometimes called anthropodenial (a term coined by primatologist Frans de Waal), is also a concern. Denying that animals have any mental states or affective experiences, in the face of substantial evidence that they do, is its own form of misinterpretation and can lead to welfare-negative practices. The goal is accurate understanding rather than either uncritical projection or blanket denial.