Talking to the plants

We all anthropomorphize from time to time. I’ve speculated about whether we sometimes do this because we feel an irrepressible urge to attribute a mind like our own to anything we deal with (e.g., when the guy on the radio says the CD player evidently doesn’t want to play the CD he just promised us, so he’ll have to play something else). Dogs, cats, plants, CD players, cars (how many of you have given your car a name?), furnaces or other balky or temperamental appliances: We speak of them as if they were people, and sometimes talk to them.

A recent study indicates that one reason we do this might be to combat loneliness. Participants in the study were more likely to treat pets or gadgets as humans, or to express a belief in the supernatural, when they were feeling lonely. When there’s no real live person there to talk to, in other words, people may start treating things around them as if they were people. I would guess, although the press release doesn’t mention it, that this might be especially likely to happen with things like personal computers, which can become in some sense an extension of one’s own brain and particularly one’s memory. At any rate, maybe all those people who say plants grow better if you talk to them just like talking to plants when they can’t find anyone else to talk to. I shouldn’t be dismissive about this, though, because while I don’t care for cats or dogs, I have struck up a friendship in the last year and a half with a newt, which is probably one of the least expressive pets you can have. I know the reason he comes to the front of his tank when I’m around is that he’s hoping I’ll feed him, but still, I say hello to him when he does.