you've latched on to just one sense of personification; there are two:

1a - Attribution of personal form, nature, or characteristics; the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person: esp. as a rhetorical figure or species of metaphor. b - An imaginary or ideal person conceived as representing a thing or abstraction.

2. The embodiment of a quality, idea, or other abstraction, in a real person (or, by extension, in a concrete thing); usually applied to the actual person (or thing) as embodying the quality, etc., or exemplifying it in a striking manner or degree; an impersonation, ‘incarnation’ (of something). [from OED]

anthropomorphism fits 1a.