ARE you sitting comfortably? It could affect your impression of this story. So say researchers who have shown that tactile sensations can influence the judgements we make in everyday situations.
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues ran six tests on people in the street, to see whether the objects they were touching could influence judgements and decision-making.
In one test, passers-by were asked to judge a job candidate by looking at their r茅sum茅. Half were given the r茅sum茅 on a heavy clipboard, the rest were handed it on a light clipboard. When asked to rate the seriousness of the candidate on a scale of 1 to 9, those with the heavy clipboard judged the candidate as more serious than those with the light (Science, ).
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In another task, volunteers who sat on a hard seat were less willing to change their price in a hypothetical car purchase than those sitting in a soft seat.
The authors suggest that our use of tactile concepts in metaphors that relate to behaviour, such as having a 鈥渞ough鈥� day or being 鈥渟olid鈥� as a rock, might influence our judgement: touching similar textures reminds us of their linguistic links to behaviour.
