For over a decade now the headlines have blared “People who talk to their pets are smarter.” Animal-lovers everywhere were pleased to hear that all of those conversations they’ve had with animals who couldn’t talk back were an indication of something good.

Of course, it’s not that simple.

The headlines are based on a 2007 paper from behavioral psychologist Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago and a follow up by Epley and researchers from nearby Northwestern University. The team wanted to determine what led people to anthropomorphize non-human creatures. In other words, what makes us give things like animals human characteristics (like the ability to understand our conversations)? Why do we ascribe human motivations, emotions, and intentions to animals (or even robots, cars, or plants)?

The researchers proposed three hypotheses and found them all to be true to some extent in the population they studied.

The idea that we do this somehow because we’re “smarter” is largely a misinterpretation of the evidence and the desire to get quoted in the press.

The truth is that humans are the only ones who do this and we consider ourselves the most intelligent creatures on Earth. The idea that that makes us smarter is pretty convoluted reasoning, don’t you think?

Of course, there are some psychologically interesting things going on when we anthropomorphize non-human things.

Let’s take talking to our pets as an example. There are three main reasons we do it, according to Epley: 1) because we tend to see everything the way we see ourselves, 2) because pretending that non-human creatures have human characteristics makes them seem more predictable and relatable (and that makes us more comfortable), and 3) because we get lonely and experience genuine affection towards non-human things.

Or, as Epley says in his paper:

“… [1] the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric knowledge (elicited agent knowledge), [2] the motivation to explain and understand the behavior of other agents (effectance motivation), and [3] the desire for social contact and affiliation (sociality motivation).”

It makes total sense that we talk to our pets – it just doesn’t make us “smarter” in any meaningful way. In fact, if Epley’s theories are true, it probably indicates that people who talk to pets are more needy and lonely. But the thing is, nearly everyone does it! And there’s nothing wrong with that (unless we expect animals to act like humans and are somehow cruel when they don’t deliver).

The idea that we come to see our pets as “human” in some way also does all sorts of good things for us health-wise. It does, in fact, reduce loneliness – it also releases feel-good chemicals in our brains, helps reduce anxiety, and is correlated with lower blood pressure. That’s why animal therapy is so popular for so many conditions.

If we should be giving credit to anyone here, it’s the animals. They’re the ones who are expected to stare back at us or act affectionately when we babble at them. They’re the ones who might not get a treat, for example, when they walk away while we’re talking to them. And all because we assume we know what they’re thinking and feeling.

How silly is it that we get disappointed when non-human creatures don’t have the brain capacity to be just like us?

So, sorry to burst your bubble, but talking to your dog doesn’t make you a genius, it just makes you normal (and hey, that’s a win for some of us!).

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Source: The Atlantic, PubMed, Northwestern University, Quartz