Personality And Smartphones
British psychologists have begun to discern what our smartphones might reveal about our personalities. A team from Lancaster University and the Universities of Lincoln and Hertfordshire recruited 576 smartphone owners via an online survey and then used a series of questionnaires to glean information about the participants, their personalities and their attitudes toward their phones. Based on the data they gathered, the team determined that iPhone users are more likely to be younger, more than twice as likely to be women, more likely to see their phone as a status symbol and more extroverted. Android users were deemed more likely to be male, older, more honest, more agreeable, less likely to break rules for personal gain and less interested in wealth and status. The team later developed a computer program that can predict what type of smartphone an individual owns based on the personality differences observed between iPhone and Android users. They also noted that earlier research from the UK had concluded that men and women use their phones differently: women make more calls, take more pictures, and send and receive more texts while men use their phones more to play games and watch videos.
Source:
Heather Shaw and David A. Ellis et al, “Predicting Smartphone Operating System from Personality and Individual Differences.” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, November 16, 2016; DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2016.0324
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