Nudge Wiki

Concept

Anthropomorphism

branding perception emotion

Founding guest appearance, predating this page's existing Episode 294 citation (Episode 115). Aaron Ahuvia frames anthropomorphism as the brain sorting everything into "people" and "everything else" via distinct neural mechanisms — sometimes literally different brain regions — triggered by appearance, sound (e.g. Siri), or behavior (e.g. a "cooperative" or "stubborn" computer). Two further studies from this founding episode: a slot-machine design study linking anthropomorphized machines to gamblers' social-dominance beliefs (see Slot-Machine Social-Dominance Anthropomorphism Study), and studies finding humanized bottle arrangements and humanized ad language both increased brand preference and engagement (see Agarwal McGill Product-Family Bottle Study, Anthropomorphic iPhone Ad-Language Study).

People instinctively attribute human-like characteristics, emotions, and intentions to non-human things — animals, objects, brands, even weather ("moody weather," "a stubborn computer") — as a way of making sense of the world. Aaron Ahuvia notes this can be triggered by appearance (a face), by sound (a voice, like Siri), or by behaviour (something that seems to "cooperate" or resist).

Real behavioural consequences, not just a figure of speech. A 2007 University of Canterbury study by Christoph Bartneck had participants interact with a talking robotic cat, then instructed them to switch it off; when the "cat" pleaded not to be turned off, many participants hesitated, negotiated with it, or reasoned with it as though it were a person, and some never completed the shutdown at all despite explicit researcher instruction (see Bartneck Robot Switch-Off Anthropomorphism Study). A related follow-up study found people ate more cookies decorated to look like a human face than identical cookies with purely decorative, non-face icing — several participants later explained "the cookie wanted me to eat it" (see Anthropomorphic Cookie-Face Eating Study).

Brands exploit this for likability, and pay for it in anger when things go wrong. Ahuvia argues humanized brand characters (Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders, Tony the Tiger, the Energizer Bunny, and logos with faces like Wendy's or M&M's) benefit from a general positivity bias people hold toward other people — an object unconsciously classified as "a person" tends to be liked more. But the same humanization means a malfunctioning anthropomorphized product (e.g. an uncooperative computer) provokes a stronger, more personal negative reaction than an equally broken purely mechanical object would.

Applied directly to a logo redesign (Octopus Energy). Pete Miller describes deliberately "dialing down the alienness" and "dialing up the friendliness" of Octopus Energy's octopus mascot — enlarging the eyes and shrinking the tentacles across many design iterations — after early brand guidelines actually discouraged using a real octopus image at all, on the theory that real octopuses read as alien and off-putting. Eye-tracking data from digital billboard advertising showed viewer attention consistently jumping straight to the mascot's face once the friendlier, big-eyed design was introduced (see Octopus Energy Constantine Logo-Mascot Case).

Discussed in

  • Episode 115 — Could you fall in love with AI
  • Episode 294 — 294-what-makes-a-good-logo

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