I've heard this referred to as the `mannequin effect', so named because it would appear to be useful to have a mannequin on a trolley that one could simply get up, go fetch, and talk to about the problem (as opposed to bothering a presumably busy human about it).

Update: Of course, the mention was right here on PerlMonks (not Advogato as I'd previously thought). See this node, by lemming.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Tricking Our Egos by Nooks
in thread Tricking Our Egos by dws

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