[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.