When we know a lot about somebody, we have a lot of affection for them. And so there is kind of a high jacking of your normal relationship responses. There was this research that nick epley, who at university chicago, is a psychologist,. He has worked on this kind of anthropomorphism when we attribute human characteristics to inanimate objects. A vending machine is one intevews a baby's pacifier. It becomes pretty led pretty quickly, cause the voice says, just imagine you're putting me in your mouth and rolling your tongue around my contours. But i remember when princess diana died, and there was such an outpouring of grief around the world.