  The QWERTY effect postulates that the keyboard layout influences word
meanings by linking positivity to the use of the right hand and negativity to
the use of the left hand. For example, previous research has established that
words with more right hand letters are rated more positively than words with
more left hand letters by human subjects in small scale experiments. In this
paper, we perform large scale investigations of the QWERTY effect on the web.
Using data from eleven web platforms related to products, movies, books, and
videos, we conduct observational tests whether a hand-meaning relationship can
be found in decoding text on the web. Furthermore, we investigate whether
encoding text on the web exhibits the QWERTY effect as well, by analyzing the
relationship between the text of online reviews and their star ratings in four
additional datasets. Overall, we find robust evidence for the QWERTY effect
both at the point of text interpretation (decoding) and at the point of text
creation (encoding). We also find under which conditions the effect might not
hold. Our findings have implications for any algorithmic method aiming to
evaluate the meaning of words on the web, including for example semantic or
sentiment analysis, and show the existence of "dactilar onomatopoeias" that
shape the dynamics of word-meaning associations. To the best of our knowledge,
this is the first work to reveal the extent to which the QWERTY effect exists
in large scale human-computer interaction on the web.
