M201 - Vibranxiety

Have you ever had the experience of feeling your handphone vibrating in your pocket/bag, but when you take it out, you realise that there is actually no message or call? No, you have not gone bonkers. In fact this is so common among handphone users that there is even a special name given to such phenomenon - Phantom Vibration Syndrome. Wow, it sounds kind of mysterious and scary.

Sometimes this bizarre effect will happen even when there is no handphone in your pocket/bag, or when it is switched off at that moment. You knew the phone couldn't possibly have vibrated on its own but why can you still feel it?

Even when the phone is present or switched on, cellphone manufacturers clarified that a phone will never vibrate or ring spontaneously without any incoming signal. So the fault does not lie with the mechanisms of the phone, instead it's all in our mind.

Yes, we are often tricked by our brain via our sensory organs, just like optical illusions and the 'cold-hot-water' effect. Thanks to our unreliable brain cells, we tend to become susceptible to incorrect judgment when subjected to repetitive sensations. Put it another way, we become more sensitive to the particular sensory signal as we get used to seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting or smelling something.

For example, we are so used to people calling our names. Occasionally, we might hear our names being uttered within a crowd, even though no one is specifically mentioning it. This is because our brains tend to anticipate and gather even the smallest signals such as to match the sound of our names. For instance, if your name is Peter, the combination of utterances "...peanut has..." and "...water is..." can result in "Peter" being formed somehow. Other friends, despite knowing your name, would not capture such similar sound though. Simply because it is not their name. Who else will hear your name spoken more often than yourself?

Back to the Phantom Vibration Syndrome, experts explained that this is due to our brain trying to match other non-vibratory sensations to what we recognise often, which is our handphone vibration. This is how the false alarm is created - by piecing together miscellaneous signals into something related to our habits. As we experience more of our handphone vibrations, our brains will become more wired to it, thus giving rise to the possibility of such false alarms.

This may be good or bad in certain ways. Habit forming and increasing sensitivity can be useful for jobs that rely on senses to make judgment, like artists and chefs. However the possibility of false sensation alarms can make things seem what it is actually not, as well as develop an inertia to change. Such phenomenon indeed shows us how easily our brains process and develop habits.

So the next time you feel your handphone vibrating when it's actually not, don't be disappointed. The phantom has sent you a message.