“The flip side of all of this: Epley notes that just as we’re more likely to anthropomorphize and name certain objects, there are also certain conditions that make us more inclined to dehumanize something. In Epley’s 2016 study on voice and anthropomorphizing, his team also found that when we strip a voice from a situation, like if reading a block of text versus listening to it being read by a human voice, people are more likely to view the text as machine-generated rather than human-generated. In terms of real-life consequences, Epley says, the study does raise one important point: 'When you understand when people think of other agents as mindful,' he notes, 'you can both try to explain why people treat nonhumans as humans, but also sometimes why people treat humans as objects.'”