The effect of mobile messaging during a conversation on impression formation and interaction quality

By M. V. Abeele, Marjolijn L. Antheunis, Alexander P. Schouten. Computers in Human Behavior, 2016

294 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper presents two experimental studies investigating the impact of mobile messaging during an offline conversation on relational outcomes. A first study examined the impact on impression formation. A 3ź×ź1 experiment revealed that phone users were perceived as significantly less polite and attentive, and that self-initiated messaging behavior led to more negative impression formation than messaging behavior in response to a notification. A second study examined the impact on perceived conversation quality and social attraction. A 2ź×ź2 experiment revealed that perceived conversation quality was negatively affected by co-present mobile messaging behavior, while social attraction was not. Whether persons were acquainted or not with the phone user did not moderate this relationship. We examined whether co-present texting impacts negatively on relational outcomes.In experiment 1, co-present texters were perceived as less polite and attentive.In experiment 2, co-present texting caused perceptions of lower conversation quality.Experiment 2 found no negative impact on social attraction.Concerns over the harmful effect of co-present phone use appear warranted.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/55e53b2f94da69a0d1299cd54a7750341e26f133

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

The effects of "phubbing" on social interaction (2018, background): “However, another recent investigation proposed and found evidence to support the idea that mobile phone use during face-to-face interactions influences impression formation as a result of conversational norm violation (Abeele et al., 2016).”
Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions (2017, result): “These results build on other recent work showing that phone use is associated with less positive social impressions (Vanden Abeele et al., 2016), lower interaction quality with friends (Brown et al., 2016; Misra et al., 2014), and lower relationship satisfaction with a romantic partner (Roberts &…”
“Mom, dad, look at me”: The development of the Parental Phubbing Scale (2020, background): “For instance, Abeele et al. (2016) found that people who used a smartphone during a conversation were perceived as less polite and attentive than those who did not use it, especially when their phubbing behavior was self-initiated and not done in response to a notification (i.e., smartphone…”
Boss phubbing, trust, job satisfaction and employee performance (2020, result): “Additionally, a large body of research has found that smartphone use while interacting with others is considered “rude and socially inappropriate” (Abeele et al., 2016, p.562). This is consistent with research by Cameron and Webster (2011) which found that, in certain circumstances, employees who we”