The number of devices you can talk to is multiplying—first it was your phone, then your car, and now you can tell your kitchen appliance what to do. But even without gadgets that understand our spoken commands, research suggests that, as bizarre as it sounds, under certain circumstances, people regularly ascribe human traits to everyday objects.
Sometimes we see things as human because we are lonely. In one experiment, people who reported feeling isolated were more likely than others to attribute consciousness to various gadgets. In turn, feeling close to objects can alleviate loneliness. When college students were reminded of a time they had been excluded in a social setting they compensated by exaggerating their number of friends—unless they were first given tasks that caused them to interact with their phone as if it had human qualities. The phone apparently stood in for real friends.
At other times, we personify products in an effort to understand them. One study found that three in four respondents yelled at their computer. Further, the more their computer gave them problems, the more likely the respondents were to report that it had its own "beliefs and desires".
So how do people assign traits to an object? In part, we rely on looks. On humans, wide faces are associated with dominance. Similarly, people rated cars, clocks and watches with wide faces as more dominant-looking than narrow-faced ones, and preferred them—especially in competitive situations. An analysis of car sales in Germany found that cars with grilles(护栅) that were upturned like smiles sold best. The purchasers saw this feature as increasing a car's friendliness.