2023-11-10 01:44:43
A research team from the University of Granada (UGR) has demonstrated for the first time that we are not “addicted” to the mobile phone, but to the social interaction that this electronic device allows us. This work, published in the scientific journal Psychothema (1), represents the first experimental scientific evidence of this theory, which was developed by Professor Samuel PL Veissière, researcher at McGill University in Montreal (Canada) in 2018.
To carry out this experiment, UGR scientists worked with a sample made up of 86 subjects, which they divided into two groups. “In one of the groups (the social expectation group) we instructed each participant to send a message via WhatsApp to their most active contacts explaining that they were going to participate in an “exciting task within a universe of virtual reality” (the same message in all cases)”, explains Jorge López Puga, researcher at the Department of Personality, Evaluation and Psychological Treatment of the UGR and main author of the work.
The other group (control group) was not asked to send that “exciting” message to their contacts. “Next, we asked both groups of people to deactivate their notifications and leave their mobile phones face down on the table while they carried out an unusual activity immersed in a virtual reality environment. When the interaction with the virtual reality task ended, we left the participants doing nothing and unable to use their mobile phones. After this period of “doing nothing”, we allowed all participants to use WhatsApp again,” explains the researcher.
Electro-galvanic activity of the skin
Throughout the process, the UGR scientists were measuring the electro-galvanic activity of the skin, a parameter that is interpreted as an indicator of the activity of our autonomic nervous system, that is, a kind of physiological measure of anxiety.
“We thus observed that the group with social expectation was more tense throughout the experiment. It was also observed that this group became more anxious when asked to stop using the mobile phone. Furthermore, when they were allowed to use the mobile phone again, this group experienced much more pronounced excitement,” says López Puga.
These results show that the mobile phone is not the cause of psychological problems, but rather, how it is used and what this device is used for can better explain certain psychological problems.
References (1) Social Expectancy Increases Skin Conductance Response in Mobile Instant Messaging Users. Psychothema.
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