Phantom Vibrations

Have you ever felt your phone vibrate, but the sensation wasn’t real? Researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne call it “phantom vibration.” The Atlantic‘s Robinson Meyer summarized their study in eleven points:

1. Many, many people experience phantom vibrations. 89 percent of the undergrad participants in this current study had felt phantom vibrations. In the two other studies on this in the literature — a 2007 doctoral thesis, which surveyed the general population, and a 2010 survey of staff at a Massachusetts hospital — majorities of participants experienced phantom vibrations.
2. They happen pretty often. The survey of undergrads and medical professionals agree: about ten percent experience phantom vibrations every day. 88 percent of the doctors, specifically, felt vibrations between a weekly and monthly basis.
3. If you use your phone more, you’re more likely to feel phantom vibrations. The 2007 graduate study found that people who heard phantom rings roughly used twice as many minutes and sent five times as many texts as those who didn’t.

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