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August 12, 2016
Q. It's been called the “quirky effect” but more formally termed the “QWERTY” effect.” You've probably been affected by this one many times yourself. Do you know what it is?
A. It may be hard to believe, but studies have found that people “have more positive emotional associations with words that have a higher ratio of letters from the right side of the QWERTY keyboard — those from “y,” “h” and “n” onward,” says Chris Baraniuk in New Scientist magazine. Not only did English, Dutch and Spanish speakers rate more positively those words with a higher right-side letter ratio — even made-up words like “ploke” or “pleek” — but baby names with a similar ratio also were more popular after QWERTY keyboards became common in the 1960s.
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