OLP is observable in 1% of the adult population, in which personal traits, such as gender, age, and social roles are assigned to ordinal sequences, including numbers, letters, days, and months (Simner and Hubbard, 2006;Simner and Holenstein, 2007;Smilek et al., 2007;Amin et al., 2011;Sobczak-Edmans and Sagiv, 2013; …

OLP is an advanced form of synesthesia, which is when you automatically experience one sense as a result of being introduced to a certain stimulus. For example, people may automatically experience colors, aromas, sounds, tastes, or shapes in conjunction with stimuli like letters, numbers, colors, or music.

Bodenhausen, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, and Wilkie, an assistant professor at Notre Dame, discovered that we subconsciously assign genders to numbers. Even numbers are feminine; odd numbers are masculine. Odd numbers were considered male and even numbers were considered female.”

People with synaesthesia not only have – by definition – unusual experiences (e.g., numbers triggering colour), they also have a different cognitive profile (e.g., in terms of their memory and perceptual abilities) and a bias towards certain interests and activities (e.g., towards the arts).

NO ONE DOUBTS that the words we write or speak are an expression of our inner thoughts and personalities. It is how an author expresses his or her thoughts that reveals character, asserts social psychologist James W. Pennebaker of the University of Texas at Austin.

Numbers might seem cold and devoid of emotion. But, since humans first started using numbers as part of an organized society, we have associated feelings and symbols with numbers. The Sumerians (current day Iraq) were the first civilization to add layers of emotion to numbers.

This phenomenon is called ordinal-linguistic personification. (It has a name!) And a definition: it is the automatic process of assigning personalities to sequential linguistic units–including letters, numbers, months, days and more. Someone with synesthesia might “taste” colors or see bright hues in letters.

Ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP, or personification for short) is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, days, months and letters are associated with personalities and/or genders (Simner & Hubbard 2006).

In a condition called synesthesia, there are extra connections among parts of the brain related to individual senses. The actual experience varies, but some say that numbers, letters, sounds or even faces appear to have colors associated with them that most people don’t see.

In poetry, synesthesia refers specifically to figurative language that includes a mixing of senses. For example, saying “He wore a loud yellow shirt” is an example of synesthesia, as it mixes a visual imagery (yellow) with auditory imagery (loud).

There are at least 80 known types of synesthesia, but some are more common than others: Chromesthesia: In this common form of synesthesia, sounds and colors are associated with each other.

Overview. Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which information meant to stimulate one of your senses stimulates several of your senses. People who have synesthesia are called synesthetes. The word “synesthesia” comes from the Greek words: “synth” (which means “together”) and “ethesia” (which means “perception).