As human beings we seem to have a tendency to ascribe human characteristics to inanimate objects or to imaginary beings. Ancient civilisations were well aware of this strange quirk of human psychology. Xenophanes, the Greek philosopher, invented the word anthropomorphism 2,600 years ago. He noticed that people worshipped gods that resembled themselves - Greeks had white-skinned gods, while the Ethiopians preferred theirs a bit darker. From this observation, he predicted that if horses and donkeys believed in gods, theirs would trot on four legs. He may well have been right. According to the New Scientist the other day, Primatologists have documented a type of behaviour in chimpanzees, called the "rain dance" - when a thunderstorm starts, they sometimes climb trees, tear off branches, and brandish them while screaming at the clouds - as if confronting a rival male. Those primates may well be "chimpomorphising" the storm - shaking their sticks at the Alpha male hurling lightning bolts from the great treetop in the sky.

Anthropomorphism, however, is a very strange psychological mechanism to have developed. After all, by definition, the decision to invest the inanimate with human feelings is wrong. But as human beings, we look for explanations of how the world works. Our curiosity is for our own benefit, our survival as a species. We need to predict when nasty and good things are likely of occur. We need to predict the nasty things in order to avoid them and the nice things in order to take full advantage of them. Now it is not obvious that coming up with such a duff explanation as anthropomorphism is a good idea, but it seems that we find that uncertainty is not easy to live with. It is unsettling. Even scientists find it difficult to live in the pure state of uncertainty demanded by the scientific method. Instead, they formulate ‘laws' which, in reality, are at best provisional descriptions of how the world works. They are then often reluctant to accept data showing that the world does not abide by their laws. We ordinary folk seem to have an even greater need to come to a conclusion about why things happen. Experiments have shown that the attribution of intention to inanimate or imaginary objects gives us some consolation. It could be, for instance, that the god of the mountain is unhappy with our conduct and so has rained lava upon us. It may be that the stars were not in the right alignment for our love life. To ‘know' why something has happened gives us that hope in an otherwise incomprehensible world which uncertainty would fail to provide.

It can also give us an excuse. Why else do people shout at their cars or computers when they go wrong? When the computer crashes, according to some studies our brains react as if the computer were in some way acting malevolently towards us. Computers are things we rely on, that we have a sort of relationship with. By crashing, my computer has failed in its duty towards me. I suppose that I prefer to think that the loss of my data is the computer's fault rather than blaming myself for having failed to make back-ups.

But anthropomorphism is apparently particularly marked in people who are socially isolated. Hence the image we have of old ladies treating their cats as little children. Anthropomorphism gives us a friend when we have no other. And it is well-established that such self-delusion can prolong life by making us happier. I suppose that the modern equivalent of the old lady's cat is the avatar, an entirely artificial virtual life in which we can play the part of the person we'd like to be and interact at an emotional level with other avatars. And the impression we have is that those most involved with Avatars are indeed otherwise socially isolated. Is the extra happiness created by Second Life for this group of people perhaps the reason why our average life-expectancy is increasing?

But this leads us onto the very strange phenomenon of fiction. Story-telling. When you think about it, it is a very odd idea. Why do we knowingly read stories or watch dramas made up by others and knowingly suspend our disbelief? The mark of good fiction is that we feel the emotions which a real encounter with the story and the characters would produce. We are temporally convinced of the reality of the characters which we create in our minds in collaboration with the author. And so we are engaging in a form of anthropomorphism. Is there any point to it other than the relief of some sort of loneliness? One can argue that romances enable us to spend at least an hour or two in a state of emotional fulfilment, although many years ago the idea of Mills and Boon type stories would have been regarded as likely to produce an enfeebled mind. And were they wrong? Adventure stories in contrast may encourage us, by the example of the hero, to do things we would not otherwise think ourselves capable of. And then there are horror stories. In what way do we benefit from frightening ourselves? Is it perhaps that the vanquishing of the unknown horror stirs our primitive memory of the frightening night-time noises of the forest when wild animals roamed and may be at your throat without any warning? Perhaps it ultimately gives us a feeling that we are in control of even the most menacing and inexplicable dangers which our world can throw at us.

Me, I'm not so sure.