SNARC compatibility triggers positive affect

ABSTRACT

Previous research on the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) has demonstrated that SNARC-compatible digit arrangements are processed faster and more accurately than SNARC-incompatible arrangements. Concurrently, processing speed and accuracy have been conceptualised as indicating processing fluency – the ease of information processing – which has been shown to entail affective downstream consequences. Bridging these two research lines for the first time, we investigated whether digit arrangements that are compatible to this association are affectively preferred to association-incompatible digit arrangements. In a line of four experiments (total N = 786), German participants were asked to indicate how much they like the overall appearance of two digits that appear at the right and at the left side of the screen. Results from three of the four experiments suggest that digit arrangements that are compatible with this spatial-numerical association indeed trigger positive feelings. These preference patterns were not moderated by the horizontal distance between the two digits, pointing towards a stable phenomenon that is insensitive to contextual spatial cues.

KEYWORDS:

• SNARC
• spatial-numerical association
• numerical cognition
• fluency

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Unit FOR 2150: Relativity in Social Cognition: Antecedents and Consequences of Comparative Thinking under Grant 246329797.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

Materials and data have been made publicly available at the Open Science Framework and can be assessed via https://osf.io/avqu6/?view_only=07aab2d6bd2e4758a59b5c0cf194a113.

Notes

1 For a 13.3-inch screen, this corresponds to the centimeters specified in Experiment 1.

2 While Experiment 2 yielded a same-digit presentation frequency of 11.01%, the same-digit presentation frequency observed in Experiment 1 was only 1.31% and thus substantially lower. This strong difference in same-digit presentation frequencies results from different random drawing algorithms in the two experiments due to technicalities of the respective experimental running softwares (DirectRT for Experiments 1 and 3, Inquisit for Experiment 2). Specifically, Experiment 2 was programmed in a way that each digit was randomly drawn from a separate list containing the digits between 1 and 9 (i.e., list 1 for digit 1 vs. list 2 for digit 2), making a drawing probability of 11.11% for each digit. As both digits were drawn independently from separate lists, the overall same-digit drawing probability was, in consequence, also 11.11%. The current Experiment 1, however, was programmed in a way that both digits were drawn from the same list without replacement, and it was only after all digits had been presented once (i.e., after nine draws) that they were “put back into the pool”. Because there were always two digits presented per trial, this replacement hence took place every fifth trial – this is: in every fifth trial, the random drawing iteration started anew (i.e., the first digit presented is the last remaining digit of iteration 1, and the second digit presented is the first digit of iteration 2). Whereas the drawing probability for each single digit was still 11.11%, the probability of drawing the same digits within one trial thus results from the compound probability of these single digits’ drawing probabilities, which is 11.11% × 11.11% = 1.23%.

3 In more detail, we also observed a significant main effect of trial half, F(1,236) = 6.32, p = .013, ${\eta }_p^2$= .03, with higher liking ratings for first half trials (M_{first_half}= 5.30, SE_{first_half}= 0.09) than for second half trials (M_{second_half}= 5.15, SE_{second_half}= 0.09), which is, however, conceptually irrelevant. The main effect of compatibility did not reach significance, F(1,236) = 0.63, p = .428.

4 We thank Dr. Nachshon Meiran for suggesting this.

5 In more detail, we found a significant main effect of SNA compatibility, F(1,358) = 16.53, p < .001, ${\eta }_p^2$ = .04, no significant main effect of experiment, F(1,358) = 0.34, p = .559, and also no significant interaction between the two factors, F(1,358) = 1.64, p = .20. Follow-up comparisons for the main effect of SNA compatibility indicated higher liking ratings for compatible arrangements (M_compatible= 5.53, SE_compatible= 0.08) than for incompatible arrangements (M_incompatible = 5.27, SE_incompatible = 0.08), t(359) = 3.87, p < .001, d_z= 0.20 95% CI_difference= [0.13, 0.39], BF₁₀= 84.99. Of course, the potential of triggering personal associations is not restricted to total numbers up to 31 but theoretically comprises the whole numerical range (see, e.g., birth years or house numbers). However, as we did not record participant information on these respective values, we consider the numerical range of dates of a month as a plausible starting point.

6 We thank Dr. Krzysztof Cipora for inspiring our thoughts on this.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Unit FOR 2150: Relativity in Social Cognition: Antecedents and Consequences of Comparative Thinking under Grant 246329797.