Our Brains Say That Corporations Are People, Too

The Wall Street Journal:

I remember the day I decided that I liked Pepsi. I don’t mean “like” concerning its taste—I can’t really distinguish between Pepsi and Coke. And I don’t mean the adolescent “like” as in, “Do you like her, or do you like-like her?” I mean “like” in that I wanted to give Pepsi a warm, appreciative handshake.

I was in grad school in New York and had spent an afternoon at a great sculpture garden, open to the public, on the grounds of Pepsi’s corporate headquarters just outside the city. Afterward, I realized that I liked Pepsi, the corporation. And I have similar feelings about Apple, Quaker Oats and whoever makes duct tape—I imagine it as a corporation that wears flannel shirts and hiking shoes.

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Does this finding support or weaken the corporate personhood concept in general? Neither, the authors wisely state. But it constitutes further evidence of the ambiguity as to who and what qualifies for personhood. At least one European legislature has granted personhood to other apes. The first legal challenges regarding personhood for robots could be just around the corner. At the same time, as psychologist Susan Fiske of Princeton has shown, we don’t necessarily activate that mentalizing network as much when contemplating people who are “Others” to us, such as the homeless.

Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal