The adult pacifier

Rob Hampson / Unsplash

Just like you’re not you when you are hungry…you’re not you when you are on your phone. (Or maybe you are.)

Research led by Shiri Melumad at Wharton, and published in the Journal of Marketing, compared the language in reviews and tweets posted by people on their phones  versus the language used by people making those posts on their computers. 

The results suggest people are more honest when they use their phones.  They use “I” and “We” more often and are more likely to mention family and friends. The filter comes off in other ways, too – they also tend to use less polite language when posting from a phone.

Other research led by Dr. Melumad in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests phones also serve as a form of psychological comfort during stressful moments – sort of like how children soothe themselves with pacifiers.  It’s kind of a modern-day cigarette for stressed-out adults.

Her overarching conclusion is that phones are very personal objects, so they have the power to reassure us and provide unconscious permission to unleash our true selves, for better or worse. 

This also contains implication for sentiment analysis conducted online. When scraping for content, there is an argument to be made for focusing on comments and posts made by people on their phones rather than their computers.