To Our Brains, Two Is Bigger Than Three

Our brains, we’ve long known, aren’t that great with numbers. We’re superstitious about them. We have trouble comparing them. We struggle to remember even relatively short strings of them. We’re terrible with probabilities. We prefer bigger ones, even when that’s really stupid.

So, a forthcoming article on how “two” seems bigger than “three” to our brains makes a certain kind of sense. Here’s a writeup from the Times:

Researchers have known for 80 years about a symbolic connection between speech and size: back-of-the-mouth vowels like the “o” in “two” make people think of large sizes, whereas people associate front-of-the-mouth vowels like “ee” with diminutiveness. Marketers can use this effect to make consumers think a discount is bigger or smaller than it truly is, according to a study soon to be published in The Journal of Consumer Research by Keith Coulter of Clark University and Robin Coulter of the University of Connecticut.

In one experiment, researchers told consumers the regular and sale prices of a product, asked them to repeat the sale price to themselves, and then, a few minutes later, told them to estimate the size of the discount in percentage terms. Products with “small-sounding” sale prices (like $2.33) seemed like better deals than products with “big-sounding” sales prices (like $2.22).

In another experiment, the researchers used a pair of sale prices — $7.88, which sounds “big” in English, and $7.01, which sounds “small” — but are the other way around in Chinese. Chinese and English speakers had opposite perceptions of the products’ relative value.

One more reason to really take a step back and a deep breath when dealing with numbers. Your brain really wants to push you in the wrong direction.