SNARC compatibility triggers positive affect

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.

Automated summary

Research shows that digit arrangements compatible with the spatial-numerical association trigger positive emotions, regardless of the horizontal distance between the digits.