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"Compared to Yucatec Maya communities in Mexico, however, Western urban children appear to be developmentally delayed in this regard. Children who grow up const
by sukuriant 14y ago
"Compared to Yucatec Maya communities in Mexico, however, Western urban children appear to be developmentally delayed in this regard. Children who grow up constantly interacting with the natural world are much less likely to anthropomorphize other living things into late childhood."
I didn't find the word "anthropomorphize" in the other document; and the section I found in the original document didn't seem to go into what was said in the associated article. It's a rather long article, and I'll need to read it when I get home; however, the above section doesn't connect with me.
What does "anthropomorphize" mean in this context? I understand the term to mean "to give perceptually human characteristics to". There are only two routes I can follow with this:
1) they mean a human thinking that a smiling animal is a happy animal. And that animals laugh, and grin; and have all the same facial expressions as humans, like one would see in Disney movies.
2) they're suggesting that people in the United States believe that animals continue to have emotions that they can express and other sentient thought, have a sense of desire for certain outcomes to be had, and for genuine fear and happiness.
The second possibility isn't something that only people from the US do, at all. Long before the United States was the apparent urban environment with lost connection with nature (alluded to in the article in some places), Native Americans ascribed many emotions and intentions and ideas to the animals around them, even calling coyotes tricksters; and in Biblical times, calling someone a "fox" had a particular meaning.
In short, where is this article getting the idea that humans don't anthropomorphize animals at all stages of life? That word is VERY confusing to me in this sentence; and to claim that they're using a very limited definition of anthropomorphize, where it's just human facial expressions is to be unfair to the word itself.
- _delirium 14y agoIn the original article, it's discussed in section 2.3, starting on page 13: http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_final02.pdf http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Weird_People_BBS_fina... The claim seems to be, more or less, that western urban kids interpret animals by projection or analogization of human traits rather than forming categories for the animals, more than kids in (some) other societies do. I have no idea how true that is myself (have not read anything on the subject beyond this article).
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoI haven't read the paper, but this seems blatantly obvious to me. Outside of most western cities, people interact with animals as food. Western children are much more likely to interact with animals as pets or, at most, "those things at the zoo". When you aren't confronted with the regular death of animals as food, you are able to form more of an emotional bond with the concept of "animal".
- Dove 14y agoMy thought as well. My exposure to animals as a kid was almost exclusively through cartoons, and very occasionally through zoos or other people's pets. I had no strong opinion on vegetarianism in jr. high, though some of my friends did. But I immediately developed a strong opinion on the day I actually met a chicken and a cow. Even as an adult, I find that real animals look strange to me. I've seen so many cartoon images of skunks and giraffes and elephants in my life, and even though I know they're cartoons, when I do a google image search and photographs dominate the results, I usually find them quite alien. Some subconscious part of my brain is totally convinced that a giraffe looks like this . . . http://www.moho.biz/oskar-the-giraffe/ http://www.moho.biz/oskar-the-giraffe/ . . . and doesn't immediately recognize this . . . http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xRmReWpJeJE/T2QxTEZ95_I/AAAAAAAABwI/jjyqUXwrErU/s640/giraffe+21.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xRmReWpJeJE/T2QxTEZ95_I/AAAAAAAABw... . . . as the same animal.
- sukuriant 14y agothe Egyptian Anubis statues look about as much like jackals as the fox in Pinocchio looks like a real fox
- Dove 14y agoI know! Art from other cultures can be so confusing! I grew up in the pacific northwest, surrounded by a lot of examples of Inuit art. The captions always said something like, "This one is an orca," and I always thought, "If you say so!" But I think Mickey is even more distorted! I can easily imagine someone from another culture reacting that way to the claim that he was a mouse. I don't have a problem recognizing real mice because I've interacted with them a lot. But animals for which my only frame of reference is cartoons, well . . . my expectations of the real animals can be downright embarrassing. I'd imagine my mental models of them would fare better if I weren't surrounded by miles and miles of endless civilization.