Jesse Bering - Theory Of Mind Misfires

[O]ur evolved brains have become hyper-social filters, such that our theory of mind is applied not only to the mental innards of other people and animals, but also, in error, to categories that haven't any mental innards at all, such as ebullient skins of elastic stretched by inert gas...

...As a direct consequence of the evolution of the human social brain, and owing to the weight of selective importance placed on our theory-of-mind skills, we sometimes can't help but see intentions, desires, and beliefs in things that haven't even a smidgeon of a neural system there to generate the psychological states we perceive. In particular, when inanimate objects do unexpected things, we sometimes reason about them just as we do for oddly behaving--or misbehaving--people. More than a few of us have kicked our broken-down, "untrustworthy" vehicles in the sides and have verbally abused our "incompetent" computers.

Bering, Jesse (2011) "The Belief Instinct" [pp.35--36]