There is one biscuit left in the packet, lying on its side in the plastic tray where the others used to be. You eat it, partly because you want it and partly because leaving it in there on its own feels unkind. Later, wiping down the kitchen, you catch a chair with your hip and say sorry to it before you have thought about it. Nobody saw. You feel a little foolish, and a little glad you said it anyway.
Object personification is the habit of giving inanimate objects feelings, personalities, genders or intentions, and then feeling for them as if they could be lonely, hurt or left out. It is noticeably more common in autistic adults. In a survey of 350 adults, 56% of autistic respondents described personifying objects, compared with 33% of non-autistic respondents, and the autistic group was more likely to keep doing it into adulthood. Object empathy is the felt side of it: guilt about the last biscuit, sadness for the toy nobody picked, an apology to the furniture. It usually travels with feeling a great deal for people too, and it can be a comfort, a cost, or both at once.
What the research shows
- In a survey of 87 autistic and 263 non-autistic adults, 56% of autistic respondents personified objects compared with 33% of non-autistic respondents, and 45% of autistic respondents said objects had feelings, against 31%. White and Remington (2019)1
- In a study of 164 autistic adults, 18.9% had synaesthesia, almost three times the rate in the control group (7.2%), a link the object personification researchers suggest may help explain why the habit is common for us. Baron-Cohen et al. (2013)2
- A review of the evidence breaks empathy into four steps, noticing a feeling, interpreting it, feeling it with someone and responding, and finds no sign that the feeling step itself differs in autism. Fletcher-Watson and Bird (2020)3
- In in-depth interviews with ten autistic adults, keeping objects was linked to three needs: emotional comfort and security, difficulty letting things go, and collecting around special interests. Goldfarb et al. (2021)4
What object personification looks like in an ordinary week
It rarely announces itself. It lives in small decisions you make without explaining them to anyone. You pick the dented tin at the supermarket because the others will get bought and that one will not. You take the last carrot out of the bag so it is not left behind in the dark at the back of the fridge. You choose the chair nobody sits in, because it has been waiting. You rotate your mugs so none of them goes too long unused, and you feel a small pang for the pen at the bottom of the pot.
Some of us name things. The car has a name and a mood, the laptop is having a bad day, the kettle is clearly female and slightly put upon. Some of us feel it most sharply for things that are alone: one shoe on the side of the road, a single glove on a fence post, a soft toy face down in a gutter. That last one can ruin a morning. You know perfectly well it is fabric and stuffing. The feeling arrives regardless, quick and physical, before the knowing has a chance to argue.
If you have spent years assuming you were the only adult who did this, you were in good company the whole time. When researchers first went looking, they found autistic adults describing it on forums at length, often with a mix of fondness and worry about whether it meant something was wrong with them.1
Why it is common for us
The first study to measure object personification in autistic adults was a short report with a title that does its own personifying: This paper will be very sad if you don’t read it. Rebekah White and Anna Remington surveyed 350 adults and found that 56% of the autistic group were personifiers, compared with 33% of the non-autistic group. Autistic respondents were also more likely to say objects had human-like attributes and feelings.1
One detail stands out. When people were asked about childhood, the two groups looked much the same. The gap opened in adulthood. Plenty of non-autistic children apologise to their teddies too. They tend to stop. You, more often, carried it with you.1
Nobody has pinned down why. The study measured how common the habit was and did not test causes. The authors floated one possibility: synaesthesia, the crossing of senses or concepts that gives some people coloured letters or tasted words, has a form in which numbers, letters or objects come with personalities attached. Synaesthesia is around three times as common in autistic adults, with one study finding it in 18.9% of autistic participants against 7.2% of controls.2 If that link holds, some of what you feel for the last biscuit may be wired in at the level of perception, as automatic as seeing a colour.
The research has its critics among us, and one of them makes a fair point. Writing at Autside, an autistic writer argued that the study approached personification through a deficit lens, treated it as surprising given autistic social difficulty, and floated it as a possible coping mechanism while saying little about the sadness people described. The study counted the habit carefully. It said much less about what it is like to carry it, or what it costs.
The empathy myth, and feeling too much
You grew up hearing that autistic people lack empathy. Then you went home and felt guilty about a stuffed rabbit you had not played with in a week. Those two facts never sat well together, and the research has slowly caught up with what you already knew.
Sue Fletcher-Watson and Geoffrey Bird split empathy into four steps: noticing what someone feels, working out what it is, feeling it with them, and deciding how to respond. The first two can be harder for us, particularly when the other person is non-autistic and their signals are hard to read. The third step, the actual feeling, shows no sign of being reduced. Their review also notes autistic accounts of empathy so intense it floods in and becomes overwhelming.3 Damian Milton’s double empathy problem adds the other half: when autistic and non-autistic people misread each other, the misreading runs both ways, and only one side has historically been blamed for it.5
Seen that way, object empathy makes a kind of sense. You were never short of feeling. You had so much of it that some spilled over onto the furniture. A chair does not send confusing social signals. A leftover potato does not smile while meaning something else. Your empathy can land on it directly, with nothing in the way. If you have ever been told you are too sensitive, the last biscuit was where some of that sensitivity went when nobody wanted it.
The toy nobody picked deserves its own mention. You chose it because you knew the shelf. You knew how long an afternoon is when nobody reaches for you, and you could not stand to watch it happen to something else, even something made of plastic. That same pull sits close to justice sensitivity, the jolt you feel when something is left out unfairly, whoever or whatever it happens to. Autism and empathy goes further into how that feeling gets misread from the outside.
When it is comfort
For a lot of us, objects are some of the steadiest relationships we have. They stay where you put them. They do not change their minds about you. A favourite mug, a jumper worn soft, a stone from a beach you once felt calm on: each one holds a little of the feeling you had when you got it, and you can go back to that feeling by picking it up.
When researchers interviewed autistic adults about the things they keep, emotional security came up again and again. Participants described objects as holding memories, energy, even part of themselves.4 One put the appeal plainly.
“…they are altogether more predictable than people, you can know how they will react”
— Participant, Goldfarb et al. (2021)
Giving a beloved object a name and a personality turns that steadiness into company. The soft toy on the bed, the plant you talk to, the car you thank for getting you home in the rain: these are small, private relationships that ask for nothing and give back a sense of being accompanied. If they help you regulate, they are doing real work. Collections built around a special interest often carry the same warmth, each item a small companion as well as a piece of the set.
When it costs you
The same feeling that makes a mug a comfort can make a bin bag feel like a betrayal. You stand over the broken colander, or the birthday card from someone you no longer speak to, or the jar you might use one day, and something in you refuses. Throwing it away feels like abandoning it. So it stays, and the next thing stays, and slowly the cupboard, the spare room and the bottom of the wardrobe fill with things you are keeping safe out of something close to loyalty.
In the interview study, difficulty letting things go sat right alongside emotional comfort. Participants talked about not knowing whether they might need something again, convincing themselves before they could part with anything, and sometimes needing another person to help them give things away.4 If that sounds familiar, there is nothing shameful in it. It is a heavy feeling to carry, and you have been carrying it mostly alone.
The cost shows up in other places too. Guilt over food you could not finish. A low ache when a friend throws something out casually in front of you. The exhaustion of a room where every object seems to want something from you, which can tip into autistic overwhelm on a bad day. Keeping and collecting sit within the wider family of repetitive behaviours and interests, and they tend to grow when life feels less predictable and shrink when it steadies.
If the keeping has reached the point where you cannot use rooms, cannot find what you need, or feel unsafe at home, that is worth bringing to someone who understands autism. A good clinician will start from why the objects matter to you, and will help you find ways to keep the comfort while letting some of the volume go.
The child who tucked every toy in
Ask a room full of us about object empathy and the childhood memories come quickly. Lining up every soft toy on the bed each night so none would feel left out. Rotating which one got to sleep closest. Crying when a balloon floated off, out of worry for the balloon, alone up there. Refusing to choose a favourite crayon in case the others noticed. Feeling a sharp grief when a parent threw away a broken toy, and not being able to explain that the toy had been yours, and you had been its.
At the time, those memories probably got filed under “odd” or “sweet” or “too sensitive”, depending on who was watching. You may have learned to hide them by the end of primary school. After a late diagnosis, they tend to come back with a different light on them. The child who tucked every toy in was paying attention to fairness and loneliness with a seriousness the adults around them did not have words for. They knew perfectly well what was alive. They were practising care on whatever was nearest, because care was already pouring out of them.
Meeting that child again can be tender and strange. You might feel protective of them, or embarrassed, or sad that they had to stop. Meeting your inner child as an autistic adult goes into that reunion more fully. For now, it is enough to notice that the adult apologising to the chair and the child arranging the teddies are the same person, still doing the same quiet, careful thing.
If the child who tucked every toy in looks different to you now that you know you are autistic, The Unmasking Years has a chapter on meeting yourself for the first time, including meeting the autistic child you were and finding out what you actually like underneath years of hiding it.
What to do with object empathy
Start by sorting the comfort from the cost. The names, the apologies, the favourite mug and the soft toy on the bed are doing you no harm, and plenty of them are quietly helping. Nothing needs fixing there. The parts worth working on are the ones that leave you guilty, stuck or short of space.
For those, a few things tend to help:
- Give things a goodbye. Thank an object before it goes. Tell it where it is going. It can feel silly, and it often lets the guilt settle because the feeling has been acknowledged instead of overruled.
- Send things on rather than away. A charity shop, a neighbour or a friend who will use something turns letting go into passing it to a new shelf, a new owner, a new job.
- Keep the memory without the object. Photograph it, write a line about where it came from, then let it leave. The photo can hold what the object held.
- Choose a container. One box for keepsakes, one shelf for the collection. When it is full, something has to move on before something new comes in, and the decision is made by the box.
- Bring in a helper. Some of us can choose what goes but cannot carry it out. Asking someone you trust to take the bag to the car can make the difference.
- Tell the people you live with. A housemate or partner who knows why you flinch when they throw things out can do it out of your sight, or check with you first.
And the last biscuit? Eat it or leave it. Either way, the small tug you feel when you look at it tells you something true about yourself: you notice who and what gets left behind, and it matters to you. That is a good thing to know about a person, including when the person is you.
Key points
- Object personification means giving objects feelings, personalities or genders and feeling for them as if they could be lonely or hurt.
- In the first study to measure it, 56% of autistic respondents personified objects compared with 33% of non-autistic respondents, and the gap appeared in adulthood.
- Synaesthesia, which is around three times as common in autistic adults, may explain some of it, though the cause has not been tested.
- Object empathy fits with feeling a great deal, since the evidence shows no reduction in the feeling part of empathy for us.
- Objects can be a real source of comfort and security because they are predictable and hold memories.
- The same feeling can make throwing things away painful, and difficulty letting go deserves understanding before strategy.
- Goodbye rituals, passing things on, photographs, containers and a trusted helper can ease the guilt without asking you to stop caring.
Questions about object personification and autism
Is it normal for autistic adults to feel sorry for objects?
Yes, and it is common. In the first study to look at it directly, more than half of autistic respondents described giving objects feelings or personalities, compared with about a third of non-autistic adults. Feeling sorry for the last biscuit, the toy nobody chose or the chair nobody sits in is one of the most familiar forms. You may have kept it quiet for years because it seemed childish, and plenty of us did the same. The feeling tends to be quick, automatic and physical, which is why knowing an object cannot feel anything rarely makes the pang go away.
What is object personification?
Object personification is attributing human qualities to inanimate things: feelings, moods, genders, personalities or intentions. It covers naming your car, deciding the kettle is grumpy in the mornings, or feeling that a single sock is lonely without its pair. Object empathy is the emotional response that follows, the guilt, sadness or tenderness you feel on the object’s behalf. Researchers sometimes group it with anthropomorphism, the wider habit of seeing human traits in animals, objects or events. For us it often shows up as care, and a sense of fairness about which objects get used, chosen or left behind.
Is object personification a sign of autism?
It is more common in autistic adults, but it is not a diagnostic sign and it does not appear in any assessment criteria. About a third of non-autistic adults personify objects too. What the research suggests is that the habit is more likely to stay with you into adulthood if you are autistic, and more likely to include feelings. If you recognise yourself strongly here, alongside other autistic traits, it may be one piece of a bigger picture worth exploring. On its own, apologising to furniture tells you that you feel a lot, and very little else.
Does feeling empathy for objects mean I lack empathy for people?
No. Feeling for objects tends to sit alongside strong feelings for people. Research that breaks empathy into steps finds the feeling step is not reduced in autism. What can be harder is reading another person’s signals and responding in the way non-autistic people expect. Objects skip those hard parts. There is no face to decode and no social script to follow, so your empathy can land directly. Many of us describe feeling other people’s distress so intensely it becomes overwhelming. Caring about a chair is one more place that care goes.
Is object personification linked to synaesthesia?
Possibly. One form of synaesthesia gives letters, numbers or objects automatic personalities, genders or moods, and synaesthesia is around three times as common in autistic adults. The researchers who first measured object personification in autism suggested synaesthesia might explain part of the pattern. That link has not yet been tested directly, so treat it as a promising idea. If your sense of an object’s personality feels immediate and consistent, as fixed as the number seven always being a certain colour, a synaesthetic element is worth reading about.
Why do I feel guilty throwing things away?
If you feel for objects, throwing one away can register as abandoning it, and that feeling arrives before any reasoning can catch up. Objects also hold memories and comfort for many of us, so letting one go can feel like losing a piece of the moment it belonged to. Interviews with autistic adults found difficulty letting things go sitting right beside emotional security as reasons for keeping things. Goodbye rituals, passing things to someone who will use them, or photographing an item before it leaves can help the guilt settle.
Is object empathy the same as hoarding?
No, though they can overlap. Object empathy is the feeling. Keeping lots of things is one thing that feeling can lead to, alongside comfort, memory and collecting around special interests. Plenty of us feel deeply for objects and live in tidy homes. For others, the feeling makes letting go so hard that belongings start to fill rooms. If that is happening and it is affecting your space, safety or wellbeing, an autism-informed clinician can help you work with the reasons the objects matter, without dismissing them.
Why did I feel sorry for toys as a child?
Children of all kinds give toys feelings, and in the research both autistic and non-autistic adults remembered doing it. The difference is in what happened next: non-autistic children were more likely to grow out of it. As an autistic child, you may have taken it seriously, rotating toys so none felt left out or grieving when one was thrown away. Looking back after a diagnosis, those memories often read as early signs of a strong sense of fairness and a great deal of feeling with few places to put it.
How do I stop feeling guilty about objects?
The feeling can stay. What helps is keeping it from running your decisions. Start by deciding which parts are comfort and leave those alone. For the parts that cost you, small rituals help: thanking an object, telling it where it is going, giving it to someone who will use it, or keeping a photo instead. A set container for keepsakes makes the decision for you when it is full. If guilt is constant or keeping things is affecting your home, talking it through with someone who understands autism can lighten the load.
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