Sometimes when Caroline Kim’s Razr cell phone rings, she doesn’t stop to answer. Too often, she said, it’s all in her head.
Kim will sometimes even miss real calls because she assumes it’s another false alarm.
“When you’re moving around, your phone moves, too, and you think it’s ringing,” said Kim, a freshman letters and sciences major. “It usually happens when I’m expecting a call so I keep on checking it unconsciously.”
Kim’s experience is part of a phenomenon occurring more often as cell phones become ever more integrated into peoples’ daily lives. Little research has been done in the this area, but many students said their cell phones play tricks on them.
Kent Norman, a professor in the psychology department who studies technology, said that, while he is not familiar with the phenomenon, it might be explained by “signal detection theory.”
The theory holds that humans develop responses to different levels of noise and set conditions to which they will respond to the noise or other trigger. “The problem is that people can set the criterion too low, and this will lead to too many ‘false alarms,'” he said.
Norman explained that this phenomenon is common and not limited to cell phones. “Parents might think they hear the baby crying, someone waiting for a date will hear the doorbell ring, etc.”
Most students seem to think the trigger for false cell tones is simply the expectation of getting a call.
Junior fire protection engineering major Jonathan Worden says it happens to him at least once a day.
“I’ll be sitting in class next to someone, and I’ll think it’s my phone, but it’s not,” Worden said. “Then I think it’s their phone, but it’s not, and then we look at each other, and it’s neither of our phones.”
Worden said he thinks it happens most of the time because he’d rather be on the phone anyway. “It’s kind of a bailout of the moment I’m in,” he said.
The phenomenon isn’t limited to cell phone vibrations. Users can also imagine hearing their specific ringtones.
Mike Mensa, a junior government and politics major, said he also sometimes hears his ringtone when he is expecting a call. “I’ll hear a ring and grab it automatically,” he said. “It’s probably all in my head.”
Scott Roberts, a psychology professor, said the phenomenon is a mystery.
“For example, losing a limb and feeling it is a different thing because the neurons are still firing,” he said, referring to the phenomenon known as phantom limb syndrome. But in the case of cell phone calls, “nothing has been removed.”
A cell phone may not be a limb, but for many staying connected has become no less a part of them.
“We are dependent on technology as a society,” sophomore business major Jill Francis said. “We can be very paranoid about keeping in touch with people.”
carriew@umd.edu
