My Helpful Laptop and its Bossy Calendar: Ego State-Based Personalities of Objects in Product-Person Interactions

Ghazaleh Sepahpour, Alethea Blackler, Marianella Chamorro-Koc

This research applied Transactional Analysis to investigate the attribution of personality to products. Grounded in the theory of Transactional Analysis, which posits that human personality comprises ego states, this paper examines how individuals attribute ego state-based personalities to products throughout product-person interactions. Through fifteen co-discovery sessions, pairs of participants attributed personality to everyday objects and shared their experiences of these objects while viewing the concept prompts. Findings indicate that individuals attribute diverse personalities to the same product based on their interactions and experiences. Unlike existing literature that predominantly focuses on aesthetics, this study, using the concept prompts with no picture, highlights attributions of ego state-based personalities to products’ function. Products representing Nurturing Parent, Adult, and Free Child personalities are associated with perceived satisfactory functional performance and elicit positive emotions. These insights offer actionable strategies to develop products with personality attributes that enhance emotional experiences throughout product-person interactions in individuals’ daily lives.