Linking Phubbing Behavior to Self-Reported Attentional Failures and Media Multitasking

Kayla S Sansevere,Nathan Ward

doi:10.3390/fi13040100

Abstract

Phubbing, or using a phone to snub another person, has been investigated through social and personality frameworks. Phubbing involves attending to and performing competing tasks, implying the involvement of attentional abilities. Yet, past research has not yet used a cognitive framework to establish a link between phubbing and attention. Using self-report data from a large online sample, we explored the associations between phubbing and everyday attentional failures. Phubbing was associated with difficulties in attentional shifting and distractibility, frequent attentional lapses, spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering, and attention-related cognitive errors. When examining these attention variables alongside several psychosocial and personality variables, attention-related cognitive errors acted as the biggest predictor of phubbing behavior. Phubbing was also positively correlated with media multitasking, which is a conceptually similar yet distinct technology use behavior. The results suggest that perceived everyday attentional failures are strongly associated with, and to an extent can predict, phubbing behavior, even more so than some social and personality variables. Technology has incorporated itself as a necessity, or at the very least a favored convenience, in most people’s lives. Characterizing technology multitasking behaviors from a variety of frameworks can help us better understand who is engaging in these behaviors and why.

Highlights

Because all of the everyday attentional failures were correlated with phubbing, we investigated which of these domains was most predictive of this behavior
The primary aim of the current study was to use self-report data to explore the relationships between phubbing behavior and everyday attentional abilities
We first examined the associations between phubbing behavior, as measured by the Generic Scale of Phubbing (GSP), and self-reported everyday attentional failures, as measured with the Attentional Control: Shifting (AC-S), AC-D, Mind Wandering: Deliberate (MW-D), MW-S, Mindful Attention Awareness Scale—Lapses Only (MAAS-LO), and Attention-Related Cognitive Errors Scale (ARCES)

Summary

Introduction

The average adult in the United States spent nearly 12 hours a day consuming media across these devices, which included but was not limited to watching television and movies, listening to music, browsing the internet, and playing video games [1]. For many Americans, cell phones in particular are always present and turned on [2]. In a sample of over 3,000 adults in the United States in 2015, 89% reported that they used their phone at least once during their most recent social interaction despite the fact that 82%

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