17 February,2011 12:59 PM IST | | Agencies
Cell phones and specifically texting has drilled so deep into our minds that when we simply type numbers that correspond to the letters in a word like 'love', we can activate the meaning of that word in our minds, so says a psychological scientist in Germany.
Sascha Topolinski at the University of Wurzburg in Germany tested this theory along with his students.
For one experiment, Topolinski used a set of number sequences that correspond to positive words, like 54323 ('liebe' -- love) and a set for negative words, like 7245346 ('schleim' -- slime).
Volunteers were handed a cell phone with stickers over the buttons so they could only see the numbers, not the corresponding letters, and were told to type the number sequences.
Results revealed that most volunteers preferred dialling numbers that related to positive words over those related to negative words.
Merely dialling the numbers that corresponded to those letters was enough to activate the concepts in their minds.
In another study, participants were also able to dial phone numbers and then identify words on a computer screen immediately afterwards.
Topolinski relates these findings to a psychology concept called 'embodiment' -- the idea that certain body movements can make you think about related ideas.
The work has practical implications, too.
For example, "if you are a lawyer, try to get a phone number which implies the word 'justice,' or if you have a donation hotline, include the sequence 4483 for 'give'," he said.
The results are published in Psychological Science.
