Not without my smartphone . Mobile phones have an increasingly omnipresent value in our lives, but what makes some people feel more dependent on their use than others? The truth is that little research has been done so far on the association between our technology consumption habits and our individual differences.
According to the latest study carried out by scientists at Temple University in Philadelphia (USA), personality traits such as impulsivity, neuroticism or lack of self-control are responsible for addiction.
For them, the researchers had the participation of a hundred people. All of them were offered a reward that would increase the longer they took to request it (up to a maximum of $ 1,000). They also carried out a test to measure their self-control and impulses. The result of the data revealed that the volunteers in the experiment who were more hooked on mobiles were also those who accepted the immediate reward despite being smaller – more impulsive – and showed a lack of control over their impulses.
The experts showed that a greater investment of time on mobile devices was thus associated with a tendency towards impulsive behavior as well as obtaining immediate gratifications or, in other words, the inability to adequately assess the delay of a reward. This would explain why young people tend to be the sector of society most affected by this addiction to mobile phones , since they are at a stage in which the personality is still being forged and the lack of self-control and impulsivity are usually a common factor.
The study has been published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
