We have conducted a research in the field of environmental psychology and the reviewer has suggested to revise our work in order to avoid the statements expressing anthropomorphism. I am unable to understand the context behind this word. Please guide and suggest an alternative approach.
Just read the following wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviors to nonhuman subjects, e.g., organisms or phenomena. It does seem out of place for someone to raise anthropomorphism as an issue in a study of human psychology, which clearly is solely related to human characteristics and behavior. It is also possible that the reviewer misunderstands or misapplies the term anthropomorphism. That is, the reviewer may have meant that your work includes statements that appear to allocate characteristics or behaviors to subjects that are not the actual source or cannot actually present those behaviors or characteristics. For example, since your work was in the field of environmental psychology it is possible that it includes statements that appear to allocate human characteristics or behavior to the environment that actually belong to the human subjects. Anthropomorphism is often cited inappropriately in critiques of scientific papers when the reviewer cannot see another more convenient way to explain why observations/causes/effects seem inappropriately interpreted/assigned by the authors of the work.
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