The letters I use for my username change my behaviour

[Riverman]

How wierd is that? I've noticed it over the years, I can predict how I will post and how I 'feel' posting by the letters I use in my username but particularly the first letter.

I think it's because over the years I've come to associate the first letter of someones user name, or their whole name with the kind of person they are.

So oddly, I seem to feel whatever emotion I feel toward them whenever I read the letter.

It's not that strong now, it used to be real srtong when I spent a lot of time on the net during my undergrad days.

Anyone else experience this?

 

[ttcycle]

Possibly a form of synaesthesia - It's usually a way for the brain to link colours with letters etc.

I link emotions with words/names and occasionally letters and sometime tastes and music sounds with letters too - visibly sometimes see colour flash when a word is mentioned.

Not as strong as it used to be thankfully used to be very disruptive at times -I was written about as a psychological case study in some psychology academic journal on emotions and perceptions etc that made it into the broadsheet papers

the artist Kandinsky was a synaesthete

 

[ttcycle]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

http://www.synesthete.org/index.php
the above is a good test for synaesthesia

 

[Riverman]

Bang on the money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_linguistic_personification

That's exactly what it is.

 

[Steve Austin]

Fascinating book about synaesthesia if you want to read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Tasted_Shapes

 

[Kirstie]

Is that the same thing as associating colours with particular food tastes? ie 'this thing tastes yellow'

I do that...

 

[ttcycle]

Yep Kirstie that's right

synaesthesia's apparently quite common