Neuroscience
If you can barely put your phone down for a minute, and you get all panicky when your juice runs out, past psychology research might describe you as being somehow addicted, dependent or that you have a new condition "nomophobia", literally no mobile phone phobia.
But writing this week in Computers in Human Behaviour, a team of researchers from Hungary say this language of extremity or disorder is probably the wrong approach – after all, most people experience nomophobia. Instead, they argue we should view our relationship with our phones in terms of attachment theory. Specifically, they've tested the idea that we all have a certain kind of attachment to our phones, but that people who are anxiously attached in their human relationships (that is, people who are afraid of being abandoned) are also likely to show anxious attachment towards their phones.
For their exploratory study, Veronika Konok and her team asked 142 young Hungarian adults (aged 19 to 25) to complete measures of their attachment style towards humans – whether they are anxiously attached, anxiously avoidant, or secure – and their attachment style towards their phones. This last measure included questions about phone checking and phone separation anxiety, and the ways the participants use their phone.
The results provided partial support for the researchers' predictions. For example, people with an anxious attachment style said they tended to get more stressed than others if they couldn't reach someone on their phone or couldn't answer a call. Anxiously attached people also described using their phones more for accessing social networking sites.
However, against the researchers' predictions, anxiously attached people did not report greater stress when they were separated from their phones. But there's a simple methodological explanation for this null result – nearly all of the participants, regardless of their attachment style, said they felt bad when they were apart from their phones.
"Some features of [people's] attachment to the phone are influenced by their interpersonal attachment style," the researchers concluded. "Specifically, anxiously attached people need more contact through the phone, and perhaps because of this they use the phone more for smart phone functions." The researchers hope more research in a similar vein will now follow, for example using neuroimaging to see if attachment to mobile phones "co-opts the same neuronal circuits as infant-mother or romantic attachment".
--Humans' attachment to their mobile phones and its relationship with interpersonal attachment style
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Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
You're not addicted to your phone, it's just that you have an anxious attachment style
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| Image: Victor/Flickr |
But writing this week in Computers in Human Behaviour, a team of researchers from Hungary say this language of extremity or disorder is probably the wrong approach – after all, most people experience nomophobia. Instead, they argue we should view our relationship with our phones in terms of attachment theory. Specifically, they've tested the idea that we all have a certain kind of attachment to our phones, but that people who are anxiously attached in their human relationships (that is, people who are afraid of being abandoned) are also likely to show anxious attachment towards their phones.
For their exploratory study, Veronika Konok and her team asked 142 young Hungarian adults (aged 19 to 25) to complete measures of their attachment style towards humans – whether they are anxiously attached, anxiously avoidant, or secure – and their attachment style towards their phones. This last measure included questions about phone checking and phone separation anxiety, and the ways the participants use their phone.
The results provided partial support for the researchers' predictions. For example, people with an anxious attachment style said they tended to get more stressed than others if they couldn't reach someone on their phone or couldn't answer a call. Anxiously attached people also described using their phones more for accessing social networking sites.
However, against the researchers' predictions, anxiously attached people did not report greater stress when they were separated from their phones. But there's a simple methodological explanation for this null result – nearly all of the participants, regardless of their attachment style, said they felt bad when they were apart from their phones.
"Some features of [people's] attachment to the phone are influenced by their interpersonal attachment style," the researchers concluded. "Specifically, anxiously attached people need more contact through the phone, and perhaps because of this they use the phone more for smart phone functions." The researchers hope more research in a similar vein will now follow, for example using neuroimaging to see if attachment to mobile phones "co-opts the same neuronal circuits as infant-mother or romantic attachment".
--Humans' attachment to their mobile phones and its relationship with interpersonal attachment style
_________________________________
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Our free weekly email will keep you up-to-date with all the psychology research we digest: Sign up!
- Anxiously Attached People Are Ace At Poker And Lie Detection
People who worry habitually about separation and abandonment - the "anxiously attached" - tend to be highly skilled at lie detection, an attribute that means they excel at poker. That's according to Tsachi Ein-Dor and Adi Perry whose new...
- The Children Of Securely Attached Mothers Think That God Is Close
Children's sense of God's closeness is apparently related, not to their mother's religiosity, but to their mother's attachment style - that is, whether the mother is calm and confident in her relationships or anxious and uncertain. Specifically,...
- The Advantage Of Having An Anxiously Attached Person On Your Team
Psychologists talk about different attachment styles, such as secure, anxious and avoidant. The secure style is usually the one we're supposed to aspire to. They're the calm people who find it easy to get close to others, but not in a clingy way....
- Thirty Years On - The Babies Judged Negatively By Their Mothers
If a mother has a negative perception of her baby when it's just one month old, there's a strong possibility that same baby will have attachment problems as an adult, thirty or forty years later. That's the claim of a longitudinal study that...
- When It's Dangerous To Walk And Talk
It's well established that talking on a mobile phone while driving is distracting and dangerous. But what about talking on a mobile phone while walking? After all, pedestrians can often be seen marching about town, phone clutched to their ear, blissfully...