Trait, belief, habit, and phone access correlates of distracted messaging among college students

What is it about?

The goal of the study was to test models of phone messaging behaviors among college students across three contexts, where messaging behaviors represented disengagement from the primary context: a meal time with friends, attending class, and driving.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Across the three contexts, stronger phone-related habits and normative beliefs about phone usage accounted for relations between personality traits and messaging behaviors. In addition, stronger normative beliefs for messaging behaviors and stronger phone-related habits predicted unimpeded physical phone access. Moreover, more frequent messaging behaviors were most strongly predicted by lower trait self-discipline, greater trait anxiety, and greater trait altruism via stronger phone-related habits. The results suggest targeting both phone-related habits and normative beliefs about phone use may be the most effective points of intervention for attempting to reduce distracted messaging behaviors across all three contexts.