https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02590/full

As long as it is defined as the (decontextualized) attribution of human qualities to animals, anthropomorphism can be empirically studied through questionnaires asking people to attribute more or less complex cognitive and emotional states to animals. The first empirical studies of anthropomorphism (Eddy et al., 1993 ; Gallup et al., 1997 ; Herzog and Galvin, 1997 ) used this method and asked subjects to rate different animal species according to their supposed cognitive and emotional abilities.