[layer8]

Object personification is if you would feel that the knife itself is sad, is hurting, etc., and you’d feel for it. If, on the other hand, you’re just sad yourself that the knife is dull, because that’s not how a knife is supposed to be, then that’s not personifying the knife, it’s more an aesthetic judgement about a state of affairs. Similarly for the room example. You feel emotional about the state of affairs that other people haven’t respected it, but you don’t think the room itself is emotional about it.

Another example is if one is sad that a favorite software or service has become enshittified. One doesn’t attribute emotion to the software or service itself, rather one feels emotional about the state the software or service is in.

Those are completely neurotypical emotional reactions.

[sctb]

It's hard to convey precisely what I mean, of course, but to try to clarify further I would say the emotion is experienced on behalf of the object itself in a direct way that does not involve my personal sense of self. I do not mind a dull knife at all, I feel no personal emotion in that sense. Either I sharpen it because it's mine or not. That's neutral.

So it's much closer to object personification because it's the same mechanism by which I empathize with other people, animals, etc. In my description I've tried to generalize because to me it's not accurate to say that I feel the knife is sad, but the experience is almost as if that were the case.