@sei.come.sei: In a 2017 study, 520 students took memory and reasoning tests with their phones on silent. Some put the phone face down on the desk, some kept it in a pocket or bag, and some left it in another room. The desk group scored lowest and the other-room group scored highest. In a second experiment, switching the phone completely off made no difference. A pre-registered replication in 2022 did not find the effect. The paper is Ward, Duke, Gneezy and Bos, 2017, in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. Clip: @drsaharyousef on @figuringout.co. Her full Genius Talk is live.

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Saturday 14 November 2026 16:55:37 GMT