I was discussing a particular unknown term with someone in trying to figure out said term.
The description that I will give to aid in finding this term(official or slang) is as follows:
Observing people in everyday life and giving them a fictional background or story that might hold some basis given the context clues of how they hold themselves, their facial expressions when they talk, their facial expressions when they do not talk, how they act around other people, the way they dress or "do themselves up". In other words, having a one-sided connection with a stranger and creating a character through that connection.
I hope that does not sound as creepy as it looks.
Thank you
Greetings MacCycling. and welcome to the forum.
Psychologists have an official term for that practice: projection. Although in that sense, it's usually negative attributes we "project" into strangers.
Not "creepy" at all ... I'm pretty sure we all do that. Beyond projection I might suggest empathy, attribution (also from psychology), reading (the psychic type), or maybe even character creation or fantasy. Not sure if this answers your question, but it's a start. Hopefully more forum members will jump into this thread.
Thank you for the response and the welcome.
I found this helpful. So, I sent it to my friend and they were not quite satisfied; though, they said it helped.
So, I asked them for their description and they gave me this:
The wonder you have for complete strangers. You watch them and observe them as they go about their lives and understand that even though you are not really playing a part in their life, yet you are there. You are a part of their "story" because you are simply present and you wonder what their story is. . .
Not sure if that flipped my first post upside down or if it just made it more confusing. Â
I am not sure there is one term, but a combination of voyeurism and conjecture should be close to what you seek. Looking up synonyms of those might help.
Here is a great New York Times article on related topics. They call it "window watching." While this term isn't fully explanatory, it is sufficiently evocative of what you are describing. The article focuses on actual windows, but doesn't limit the term to transfenestral observations.
I like "consequential stranger" to describe the object of the musings. I also suspect the book mentioned, Together Alone: Personal Relationships in Public Places (Morrill) will have some more clinical terms and distinctions for you. It sounds just interesting enough for me to pick up a copy, too.