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Science: Talking to Your Dog Means You’re Smart, Not Crazy
As I write this, I am sitting next to my little shelter dog, Phoebe. Before I started typing, we had a chat about how she’s getting stinky and needs a bath. We decided, however, to wait for the weather to warm up a bit. Am I crazy to be having conversations about hygiene (or anything else, really) with my pet?
Happily for me and the many, many pet owners out there who regularly hold one-sided conversations with their furry family members, the answer according to science is no. In fact, experts suggest talking to pets — or plants or gadgets — is a sign of intelligence.
Time to rethink those “crazy cat lady” stereotypes
Science might have good things to say about my chats with Phoebe, but casual observers on the street would probably disagree. Despite the fact that so many of us have chatted with our pets, berated a malfunctioning computer, or named a car, we also tend to think of people who talk to nonhumans as, well, kind of crazy.
“For centuries, our willingness to recognize minds in nonhumans has been seen as a kind of stupidity, a childlike tendency toward anthropomorphism and superstition that educated and clear-thinking adults have outgrown,” Nicholas Epley, an author, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago…
