Open ads for watches of any brand or type “buy watches” in the image search. In all images, the dial hands will point to 10:10. This position has been an advertising norm since the 1950s. Where did she come from?
Brand and Rumors
A simple explanation for the phenomenon is that in this position, the watch hands do not overlap the brand name, which is usually located at the top of the dial. However, it looks too boring, so there are still many versions of “10:10”.
According to one of them, it was at this time that Abraham Lincoln was killed. This is simply not true: John Wilkes Booth fired his gun at 22:15 pm, and the President of the United States died around 7:20 am the next morning. According to another version, it was at 10:10 am that American pilots dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is also not true: the nuclear strikes happened at 8:15 and 11:02 respectively.
Smile Theory Test
According to another, more plausible version, the hands at 10:10 look a bit like a smile, which causes joyful emotions in buyers, respectively, the brand begins to be associated with a good mood. The theory was decided to be tested by an international group of scientists in 2017. The results of the experiment were published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Frontiers in Psychology.
The researchers hired 46 people to look at 60 photographs of different clocks set at 10:10, 11:30, and 8:20. In parallel, the participants in the experiment rated their emotional response to each photo and the likelihood that they would purchase the item depicted.
After analyzing the responses, the researchers concluded that dials with hands at 10:10 were rated better than others by the volunteers. They also marked them as the most likely to buy. However, the researchers noted that not only the similarity of 10:10 with a smile may play a role, but also that “lines and shapes that point upwards are generally perceived more positively than downwards (an example is the thumb)” .
Smile and sadness
In the second trial, 20 new participants had to study 12 new photo clocks. The hands were again set to 10:10, 11:30 and 8:20. Now the volunteers had to record in which photographs they see something that looks like a smile. Dials from 10:10 won by a margin, and 8:20 most of all resembled a sad expression. Thus, the theory was confirmed experimentally.