Using the movie Pinocchio, researchers at Ghent University in Belgium (PLOS ONE, 23 March 2015) have uncovered a stunning quirk of human perception. Their study shows that, with the right belief and priming, people grant the same perceptual “aliveness” to inanimate, humanlike objects that they usually reserve for living things.

From a perceptual standpoint, this is intriguing for many reasons. Humans tend to perceive living agents as nearer in space to themselves and inanimate, non-humanlike objects as farther away—a process called “Near space extension.” Likewise, once we perceive something as alive, we imbue it with the comparable agency and movement capabilities that we ourselves possess. As the study authors put it, “We perceive space as a function of our action potentialities.” It’s this perceptual flexibility that allows us to “see through another’s eyes” as a reference frame (RF) and imagine, from their perspective, what actions and perceptions they are capable of.

Said differently, the more we believe in the intent and “aliveness” of people and objects outside of our subjective perception, the more we believe they are capable of interacting with their immediate environment. The more “real” something or someone appears to us, the closer we perceive them. This capability helps us orient ourselves in space relative to other living and non-living things. We make judgements about their own perceptual abilities and possible actions, or, if we feel they are non-living, what they can’t do.

This study throws yet another wrench into our perceptual system’s powers, showing that non-living observers can be given the same perceptual “life” as living observers, if conditions of belief are met.

The study went as follows: 66 participants read about and watched a video clip of Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. They then filled out a questionnaire, answering questions about the “agency and intentionality” of the characters (non-living Pinocchio, living Geppetto). Next, they took a series of perceptual tests on a computer, rating how near or far a non-human object appeared to them from the vantage point of either a realistic human “avatar” or an inanimate, wooden human figure. These functioned as the subjects’ RFs. The target object, an umbrella, changed position via the “limit method,” appearing at 27 different distances (some near, some far) from the figure on-screen.

Surprisingly, participants who most identified with Pinocchio’s “aliveness” in the film eventually reported the same “Near space extension” as non-identifiers did with their realistic human avatars. The more credence subjects gave to their “living” or “non-living” RF affected how close other objects appeared to them. “This suggests,” write the study authors, “that when participants identified more with a wooden agent in a story (Pinocchio), the difference between the avatar and the wooden dummy seems to disappear.”

While this may sound unbelievable, human perception is rich with weird truths. Researchers have known for a while that each person’s perception of space and distance is totally subjective and based on his or her own physiology and actions (aka “embodied perception”). People perceive a point in space as farther away if they carry heavy objects, for instance, and elderly people with limited motor capabilities overestimate distances. Our bodies dictate how we see the world, judge “nearness” and “farness,” and let us superimpose these powers onto other living things, especially the people around us. Now we can add “perceptual enlivening” to the ever-growing list.

Chiara Fini and colleagues at Ghent University cannot definitively say what perceptual processes are at the heart of this discovery. They speculate that anthropomorphizing the humanlike figure shifted perceptive function, temporarily inhibiting the subjects’ ability to distinguish living observers as “real.” Strong impression formation with the story and its characters or social categorization of Pinocchio as alive may also be at work. Further research is needed to expand on this enticing perceptual discovery.